A Time for Choosing

Will we fight to preserve the American way of life, or will we cave from lost American leadership?

President Obama must now face the reality that Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and so many others, Democrats and Republicans alike, have known since before September 11, 2001. Terrorism is a real threat to America, and now we know that the Islamic State (ISIS) is not a Junior Varsity team as the current president boldly proclaimed them to be.

The president’s very own Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, said yesterday at the Pentagon that “[the Islamic State] is an imminent threat to every interest we have, whether it’s in Iraq or anywhere else. They are beyond a terrorist group. They marry ideology [with] a sophistication of…military prowess. They are tremendously well funded. This is beyond anything we’ve seen,” he added.

For those of us for whom this is not news, this is a shocking statement coming from this administration which tells us just how bad this threat has grown over the past six years under his leadership (or lack thereof). It was not so long ago that President Obama told the world that al-Qaeda was on the run. It wasn’t true when he said it, and radical jihadists have now become the threat not previously seen by the civilized world.

“This is an organization that has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision which will eventually have to be defeated,” said General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Obama administration is now awake. Unfortunately, our enemies have already tried our president’s mettle of leadership on the world stage and his enlightened condition may be a day late.

The glaring failure in Syria that gave birth to ISIS, the lack of integrity to stand with Ukraine as promised against the thug of Russia (Putin) who is marching to overthrow the country, the soft support (and often criticism) of Israel against their war against an obvious evil, the tragedy in Benghazi, Libya, and the premature withdrawal of troops from Iraq that has nearly produced the most barbaric regime we’ve seen in modern history (to name a few), may mean we are all in grave danger.

With the leadership of the United States, the allied forces buried the greatest evil the world knew (at that time) by winning World War II. The United States, along with Great Britain and the influence of others, toppled communist Russia and the fear of world annihilation. These were among the greatest evils of our time. We didn’t beat these evils by signaling timelines for withdrawal or by fighting based on popularity polls. We fought evil to defeat it at all costs. We fought with strength. The world is witnessing the resurrection and takeover of that same evil because (I perceive) the greatest force of good, the United States, is virtually absent from the world stage.

Notwithstanding the Progressive ideology that screams all war is bad, radical environmentalism is good, religion is for the ignorant, and Phil Robertson (Duck Dynasty) is a homophobe, we should be able to agree that ISIS must be defeated at all costs.

To that end, I leave you with a few thoughts from one of our greatest presidents who in 1964 said the following in one of his most memorable speeches in support of Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate for president, during the rise and threat of our arch enemy at that time-the Soviet Union.

“We’re at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it’s been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent it from happening.” — Ronald Reagan

He eloquently finished off his speech and said, “We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope [America] of man on earth, or we”ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.”

What will we do? Once again, it is a time for choosing. We must fight or die!

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Marc Little is the author of The Prodigal Republican: Faith and Politics. His web site is The Prodigal Republican.