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What is the most appropriate way for Americans to
commemorate the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon? How is it possible or even appropriate to “remember” an
event that Americans have been living with every day for the past year?
What did Americans do to observe the anniversary of the attack on Pearl
Harbor on December 7, 1942? Whatever memorial events that might have taken
place then were overshadowed by the fact that the entire country was in
the midst of a war against the enemy who dared to attack the United States.
Memorials, commemoratives and similar events should not take place until
the threat to Americans has been eliminated.
In 1942, it was clear to every American that imperial
Japan and Nazi Germany were the enemies of the United States. Sixty years
later, there is an extreme reluctance to identify the enemy: militant
Islam. For the past year, our leaders have been treading on eggshells to
avoid offending the Saudi “allies” or hurting the delicate feelings of
Muslims in America, out of a sense of misplaced guilt over the treatment
of Japanese-Americans during World War II. But there is a significant
difference. The Nisei, the Japanese-Americans, in spite of their
mistreatment and internment, went out of their way to prove their loyalty
to their adopted country. Japanese-American combat units fought valiantly
against the Nazis. If it was wrong to put loyal second-generation
Japanese-Americans into internment camps, it was only because the same was
not also done for German-Americans who openly supported the Nazis.
In contrast to the patriotic Americans of Japanese
ancestry, the Muslims in America have done little to demonstrate their
loyalty. They are very quick to complain about every real or imaginary
instance of “discrimination” and “profiling,” and very vocal about
demanding respect for themselves, and accommodations for their religious
observances, but remarkably slow and silent when it comes to condemning
the acts of terror committed by their co-religionists, or in teaching
their own members to be tolerant and accommodating of Jews and Christians.
Meanwhile, other Americans are beginning to ask
themselves how it is possible to conduct a war while showing so such
obsequiousness to people who profess sympathy for the enemy. Can there be
anything more grotesque than the National Education Association’s
recommended curriculum for teaching American schoolchildren about the
lessons of September 11: in which sensitivity to the hurt feelings of the
enemies in our midst is more important than preventing these atrocities
from every happening again, and that the deaths of thousands of innocent
Americans must go unpunished lest we make a mistake and harm even one
“innocent” of the enemy?
Here, then, is the plain lesson of September 11—a
lesson which is crystal clear to Americans of the World War II generation,
but one which educators today are trying very hard to suppress.
America is at war with an enemy that is just as
evil, if not more so, then the enemy we fought against in 1941.
This evil has a name: it is militant Islam.
If those in this country professing the religion
of Islam can not find it in themselves to forcefully condemn this evil,
and fight against it, then they belong to the enemy.
May the Almighty give us the strength to prevail
against our enemies, and protect us from our own blindness.
The blood of thousands of innocents cries out from
the earth of “Ground Zero” and the Pentagon. |
