The Middle is Always Evil

“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”

-Barry Goldwater

The reason we cannot win this war is simple; it results from our inability to name our enemy. Thus far, we’ve called it a war on terrorism.

But terrorism is a tactic; the United States cannot win a war on a tactic. In World War II, we did not fight a war on Kamikaze pilots; we did not fight a war on blitzkriegs; we fought fascism and totalitarianism– ideologies. In the Cold War, we did not fight a war on espionage; we fought Communism– an ideology. You see, a tactic implies a tactician; a tactician with certain motives, beliefs, and goals.

But for some reason, we are unable to state the motives, beliefs, and goals of our enemy. We are unable to do so much as name him. This is the direct result of our low moral self esteem. There is such a cult of moral grayness in the west that any proclamation of moral superiority is immediately taken to be naive and immoral. Didn’t you know that whats wrong to you may not be wrong to someone else? The only people worse than those who preach this tripe are those who know it to be misguided but appease the people preaching it anyway. It is these kinds of people that are running the war. Instead of standing up and proclaiming moral superiority over the enemy, Islamic Fundamentalism, they appease the liberal intellectuals and call it a War on Terrorism.

I couldn’t invent a better example of such appeasement than this. A US military sniper was using the Qur’an for target practice; the wrong people found out, and he got arrested. Not only was he arrested, but George Bush officially apologized, and

U.S. military commanders in Iraq held a ceremony to formally apologize and presented a new copy of the Qur’an to tribal leaders in the area where the incident took place.

When your military commanders are presenting tribal leaders with a copy of the book that inspired the death of nearly 3,000 of your fellow citizens as an apology for an act of desecration taken against that same book, you’ve lost the war that you’re fighting, and you aren’t going to win.

If we are unable, as a country, to proclaim our moral superiority over Islamic Totalitarianism, then we can’t win, and we should end the war and come home.