southchild

This past Thursday, 20 July 2006, Senator Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) delivered a speech at the National Press Club that is perhaps the most important speech yet uttered on the threat of Islamic fascism to free, democratic countries in general and the United States in particular.

Please read his entire speech, The Great Test of This Generation. It is superb, timely and sobering. Here are some highlights that I hope will entice you to read it.

We are in the same kind of conflict today. Some say we are fighting a War on Terror. That is like saying World War II was a war on blitzkrieg. Terror like blitzkrieg is a tactic used by our enemy, not the enemy itself.

In World War II we fought Naziism and Japanese imperialism. Today, we are fighting against Islamic fascists. They attacked us on September 11th because we are the greatest obstacle to their openly declared mission of subjecting the entire world to their fanatical rule.

I believe that the threat of Islamic fascism is just as menacing as the threat from Nazism and Soviet Communism. Now, as then, we face fanatics who will stop at nothing to dominate us. Now, as then, there is no way out; we will either win or lose.
…

Every major Islamic fascist leader, from heads of states to heads of al Qaeda and Hizbollah, has openly identified the United States as their prime target, and repeatedly promises the creation of a new, global, “caliphate” where Islamic fascism will rule mankind. This language comes from both Sunni and Shi’ite fanatics, whether Arab, Persian, Indonesian, American, or British.

And yet we are foolishly reluctant to come to terms with this terrible reality. It’s an old, sad story isn’t it? Over and over again, our enemies announce their intention to attack us, and we refuse to believe them.

Hardly anyone took Mein Kampf seriously and when Nikita Khrushchev pounded his shoe on the table at the U.N., announcing, “We will bury you,” it was widely treated as a moment of comic relief.

If we have learned anything from the twentieth century, it should be this lesson: when leaders say they are prepared to kill millions of people to achieve their goals, we must take them at their word. Particularly in this case when the enemy sees dying for their cause as a desired objective as opposed to a tragic consequence.

But we have not learned that lesson. I submit as evidence of that fact the recent publications of top secret intelligence programs.
…

There is a bigger problem: our fear of speaking clearly, publicly, and consistently about the enemy. It is unfashionable in some quarters to speak about the Islamo fascists, because of the misguided cultural reflex that condemns anyone who speaks critically about others’ practices or beliefs. Therefore, we can’t say or do anything that might offend Muslims.

But that’s backwards. The real offense to Muslims is to remain silent about an ideology that produces the systemic murder of innocents. Mostly, Muslim innocents. They are the first victims of Islamic fascism, and the enemy directly targets them, as we have heard once again in the most recent audiotape from Osama bin Laden.

Those who refuse to criticize Islamic fascism undermine the cause of freedom of religion because if the Islamic fascists win this war, no other religion will be permitted to flourish.

Paradoxically, when we refuse to criticize anybody, we end up patronizing everyone, which is offensive to everyone and self-defeating.

It makes a mockery of freedom of speech, and traps us in the discredited nonsense of moral equivalence. This war is not between two morally equivalent sides; it’s a war between brutal totalitarian fascism and freedom.
…

Islamic fascism is the great test of this generation.

Senator Santorum then details the threat posed by Iran and its nuclear ambitions

Islamic fascism is truly evil. Such a regime cannot be permitted to build an arsenal of atomic weapons, and I don’t expect that we are going to convince them to abandon their nuclear program at the negotiating table.

You can’t reason people out of something that they didn’t arrive at reasonably in the first place.

There’s so much more. Click here to read the entire speech. Our struggle to defeat Islamic fascism is the great test of our generation. When will the civilized world accept this difficult, yet unmistakable, reality?

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 22nd, 2006 at 9:31 pm and is filed under General, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.