They Simply Don’t Get It

In an essay entitled “Our Plan for Countering Violent Extremism” (a title which should immediately give its reader some pause) Secretary of State John Kerry writes, “Eliminating the terrorists of today with force will not guarantee protections from the terrorists of tomorrow.  We have to transform the environment that gave birth to these movements…….This means building alternatives that are credible……The most basic issue is good governance”.  This had been preceded a few days earlier by comments from State Department spokesperson Marie Harf, who responded to a question in a press briefing that “We cannot win the War on Terror, nor can we win the war with ISIS, by killing them.  We need to find them jobs.  We need to get to the root cause of terrorism, and that is poverty and lack of opportunity in the terrorist community”.

You can’t make this stuff up.  This is total nonsense.  It’s Peace Corps language.  This kind of thinking can only come from an environment in which we have completely forgotten who we are and how this evil world of disorder that we face differs so drastically in kind from the world of order.  This is a battle and a critical time of decision about which direction the West will pursue, while the Islamic world fights over who speaks for Islam and who defines it.  In many ways we find ourselves in the midst of an Islamic Reformation and the outcome will be existential for a lot of people—millions of them.

America is uniquely qualified to lead, but we must first shake the multicultural blinders of our leadership for long enough to remember who we are and what our role should be as the indispensable nation.  And it starts with properly identifying the true nature of the enemy, establishing moral clarity, and recognizing that, in addition to a killing war, this is a war of ideas and worldviews, and the fact that we have yet to fight on this basis is a strong indication that we don’t get it.  Or do we?