We are opposed by men of Cain's character, who, if they could push a button and destroy Western civilization, killing every man, woman, and child, would push that button and call it a good day's work well done. They do not hate us as individuals, but that is irrelevant, they hate the perverted vision of the West they have constructed for themselves, a vision that, above all, excuses their own failure and the failure of their culture. Attacking the predatory, corrupt, and immoral West of their imaginations is the only purpose left to them. Their impulse is toward immolation, of themselves and us, toward annihilation, toward apocalypse. Armageddon junkies to a man, they imagine their god is whispering in their ear, and that he is telling them to kill. Theirs is the jubilation of massacre, a side of mankind we cannot wish away. Do not look for reason. Expect hatred.
The key to fighting such beings is not military power, or wealth, or good intelligence, or diplomatic skill, or building robust alliances, or even clever police work, although all of these things certainly matter. The key is strength of will.
This is not - yet - a clash of civilizations. But if we are honest, it is a clash between Western civilization and the most violent, obsessed extremists. We must not talk ourselves into fear or false guilt. It is not up to us alone to prevent this crisis from becoming a contest between civilizations - it is, largely, up to extremists. Their moment of truth has arrived. They must decide between barbarism that perverts religion, and the path of greater openness, tolerance, and modernity. The crisis is more theirs than ours, and the coming years will change their world, for better or worse, far more than they will change the West.
When Japan attacked the United States of America at Pearl Harbor in 1941, the enemy was obvious, the enemy was a nation state, the United States knew where the enemy was, and knew what it would take to defeat the enemy. But individuals, not a nation, attacked the United States 60 years later. These individuals committed suicide attacks and cannot be brought to justice personally. Further the identity of their sponsors is akin to a wispy web that stretches in and through nations all around the world. In 1941 the United States declared war on Japan, but 60 years later the United States declared war, not on an offending nation, but on an ideology, the ideology of terrorism. Compared to warfare strategies of the past, it is a new direction to declared war on a concept, not a nation state.
The weapons of war are new as well, for the first time the military will have to play a parallel role with a number of other weapons. Diplomatic strategies will have to build a coalition of allies around the world to eradicate terrorists. Financial tools will have to be used to freeze and dry up terrorist's resources. Trade embargoes will have to be implemented against nations, which give safe harbor to terrorists. Social strategies will have to be used to isolate and ostracize those in the world community who reject the worldwide fight against terrorism. Finally, military will have to be employed to find and bring to justice those individuals directly responsible.
Ironically, the modern multifaceted approach to war has a parallel in the most ancient of wars of all, the war between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light. Ever since Satan's fall, he and his minions have conducted a millenniums-long series of running terrorist attacks on the people and purpose of God. During these millenniums of war both sides have perfected their warfare and it became an art, exactly planned, perfectly tuned, and executed without remorse. To enter into this war is the most dangerous step anyone can make. Not to enter in this war, is the biggest mistake anyone can make. The choice to make, is the choice of life or death and whatever choice has been made, it will be for eternity.
A great task lies before us. We entered into the first war of the twenty-first century. In this war there will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri, only milestones along the way. But this war must be fought, a war that has been forced on us since the beginning of time. This war is going on for several millennia, ever since our real enemy started it. It was fought in abstruse ways, hiding the real objective. But today, in this century, it finally came into the open. It is not any longer a war between countries, but a war between two conflicting concepts of being.
