I have seen recent posts which are shocked that some military experts are proposing that the War against IslamoFascism could last forty years. Actually, the West has been engaged in this battle for about 1400 years, so why anyone is incredulous about it continuing seems a little naive to me. Islam is the most dangerous enemy Western culture has ever fought, and we have never been less prepared to fight them.

Why do I consider them more dangerous than Nazism or Communism? The former was a radical ideology centered essentially on one person, Hitler, and its effective lifetime was about twelve years [1933-1945]. While a horrible philosophy which subjected the world to perhaps the worst six year period in history [1939-1945], it was easily eradicated because it was so new and hadn't really entrenched itself in human psychology. It was a terrible aberration which it took a world war to destroy, but it was destroyed, and even before its ultimate downfall the people under its sway were losing faith in it.

Communism lasted about seventy years [1917-1989] as a governing ideology, with the sole large power still clinging to it [China] actually trying to be a large Singapore, practicing an authoritarian capitalism. Soviet Communism probably would have met its demise much sooner if not for WWII, which gave it a level of legitimacy its economic policies never warranted through its leadership of the nation during a life and death struggle. Having lived through the Cold War, and its image of the mighty Soviet Empire, once it fell and we got to peek behind the curtain, we were surprised to see a morally, militarily and economically bankrupt system where alcoholism was rampant and the basics of life rare. This attempt to create Marx's secular religion had left its practitioners bereft of any spirituality or material rewards and deservedly was abandoned. Aside from its nuclear arsenal, it had never really been a threat, but we had to defeat it to find that out.

Which brings us to Islam, something all together different. Mohammed was the only founder of a religion who was also a military leader, and his secular empire went hand in hand with his spiritual dominion. Islam has never been a religion predicated on peace, unless you mean by that a peace imposed by subjugation. And over the 1400 years that is has waged war against those who refuse to bow to it, it has maintained its fervor and fanaticism because it has as its bedrock belief faith that God supports it. While the semi mystical Nazism and atheistic Communism attempted to create faith in its followers, Islam IS Faith, and , tied to its militancy, it motivates and comforts its believers like none of the other enemies of the West has ever been able to do. Muslims believe they are special, and that gives them a fearful strength.

Now they have been defeated in the past. The Mongols decimated them [the Mongols decimated everyone!], but they always seemed to bounce back. After WWI the secularization of Turkey after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire seemed to herald the "Reformation" of Islam, when its harsh tenets would be "softened" by the modern world's values. However, what happened was that after centuries the exhausted ideology went into hibernation for a while , awaiting its wakeup call, which came when the  radical Wahhabi strain made its appearance and gave birth to fundamentalist movements  which sought to recapture past glories.With the geopolitical realities of the world, the Arab population was ripe for a belief system which told them they were "special" and "chosen", and so as the West grew wealthy and satisfied, the people of the Middle East licked their wounds and sulked and plotted, comforted and motivated by the only kind of ideology capable of sustaining men in hard times, religious belief, coupled with their knowledge of the past worldly success of bygone empires.

And so today we face this enemy and threat yet again, but today we are a people without the comfort of our own faith, or the strength that brings. As  children of the Enlightenment, we cherish Reason, and treat religion as a quaint relic of a superstitious time. But reason does not provide that inner fortitude which comes from believing you are special, and that what you represent is worth fighting and dying for. Reason moderates your sense of self, and as listening to any Liberal will prove, results in relativism, and if you really see no true difference between yourself and your enemy, why die fighting him? So as we  face Islam [I am getting tired of saying IslamoFascism, which is just another attempt to avoid the truth] as have countless of our ancestors before us, we do so with better weapons and more wealth, but lacking the resolve  and determination that comes with faith. Because of that we should be very scared.

James Biga has written a series of posts on the Islamic threat which I think are excellent, and can be read at http://bigasrants.townhall.com/. His latest has a link to a website which is trying to organize action against the Muslim Enemy.