One month ago, on 13 November 2015, jihadist terrorists loyal to Daesh (or I.S.I.L., the Islamic State of Iraq & the Levant, among many other names) murdered one hundred thirty defenseless civilians in Paris & Saint-Denis, France. These outrages were the deadliest acts of radical Islamist terrorism in Western Europe since the Madrid train bombings in '04 (11 March 2004) & came as Paris was still recovering from the January '15 jihadist attacks, the Charlie Hebdo massacre & subsidiary attacks during the subsequent manhunt.
The day before the massacre & bombings, the American president, Barack Obama, declared Daesh "contained," a most unfortunately timed remark. The French president, François Hollande, declared "war" against Daesh: French airstrikes against I.S.I.L.'s "caliphate" in Iraq & Syria have stepped up in intensity & emergency powers have been proclaimed within metropolitan France, leading to massive police raids & arrests. Brussels, the capital of Belgium, was "locked down" for four days (21-25 November) while police sought a Paris suspect. In the aftermath, the degenerate state of American political discourse was on full display, as instead of debating how best to go about destroying Daesh & rescuing the peoples of the Middle East from the "caliphate's" barbarism, discussion focused on the resettlement of Syrian refugees—despite the fact that all of the Paris attackers were E.U. citizens, not refugees. On 2 December, a husband & wife team of jihadist gunmen attacked San Bernardino, California, murdering fourteen before themselves being killed in a shootout with police. In response, presidential candidate (& aspiring Fascist strongman) Donald J. Trump, the avatar of everything ugly in the American soul, proposed a moratorium on entry into the United States by Muslims are all nationalities—despite the fact that one of the San Bernardino jihadists was a native-born American citizen.
I urge you, dear readers, neither to forget the tragedy of Paris nor to despair that the end is nigh. If "The Explorers' Club's" continued observation of the centenary of the Great War of 1914-1918 teaches us nothing else, it should be that Western civilization has endured worse days than these. The War on Terror that began in earnest after 9/11 & was declared "won" in the early years of the Obama administration will continue for the foreseeable future. The struggle against radical Islam is a generational one, a fight that will be waged principally within Islam itself, which must confront the disillusionment with the twenty-first century that makes the savage, mediæval ideology of al-Qaeda & its affiliates & Daesh & its affiliates attractive & appealing to a small but significant percentage of the ummah, the worldwide Muslim community. Radical Islam is the enemy of Islam, as well as both Christianity & secular humanism.
(Another time, we shall discuss the differences 'twixt the challenge posed by radical Islam in the twenty-first century with that posed by Soviet Communism in the mid-twentieth century, differences that made containment s viable strategy against the latter but not against the former.)
We are engaged in a terrible struggle, a war not of our choosing but a war we dare not lose. We are fighting a war for civilization itself, a war to determine if we shall be masters of ourselves or if we shall bow to the whims of whomever is ruthless enough to impose his will upon us. We are fighting a war for the freedom not just to vote or to worship the Lord as we understand Him, but the freedom not to be murdered while standing in line to enter a sporting event, the freedom not to be murdered at a concert, the freedom to walk down the street without worrying about a suicide bomber. We are fighting for the simple right to live unafraid, to live as we choose. We are fighting for the right. I leave you with the words of Abraham Lincoln, from the Cooper Union speech of 27 February 1860:
"Let us have faith that right makes might, & in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."
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