Is The War Against Islamic Terrorism Over? Essays in Commemoration of 9/11

as Operation Neptune Spear, is chronicled in a new book, No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama bin Laden, published today, by one of the Seal team commanders, who adopted the nom de plume Mark Owens. As the author said on a CBS 60 Minutes interview, “we were just doing our job” in an operation long in the planning stages and fraught with daunting difficulties, including the crash of one the stealth Black Hawk helicopters. According to the author’s account, the operations yielded a treasure trove of intelligence in the long war against Islamic Jihadism. This despite Pentagon accusations that No Easy Day may have violated Pentagon security reviews, although the author insists that no real secrets were revealed. 

Milestones. Qutb helped foster an unrelenting violent Jihad war against unbelievers so as to impose a world Islamic Caliphate governed under Sharia law.

designation of the Haqqani network in neighboring Pakistan as a foreign terrorist group. Haqqani is allegedly supported by Jihadist cadres of the nefarious Inter-Service Intelligence agency. 

court martial trial is about to begin at Fort Hood Texas on charges of committing a murderous Jihad massacre of soldiers and civilians at a deployment processing center in November 2009. Then there was AWOL 101^st Airborne Pvt. Naser Jason Abdo who was tried and convicted at a federal court in Killeen, Texas  on charges of planning another attack at Fort Hood to avenge US military combat against his Muslim brothers in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Richard L. Rubenstein is President Emeritus of the University of Bridgeport and Lawton Distinguished Professor of Religion Emeritus at Florida State University and author of many works including most recently, Jihad and Genocide.

Finally, a word should be said about the problem of infiltration into our government and prison system. If, for example, persons with connections to the Muslim Brotherhood continue to serve as senior advisors to our government, we are asking for trouble. Admittedly, the situation is worse in Europe but, unfortunately, under Obama we are becoming more, not les,s like Europe.

Paul Eidelberg: The Tragedy of 9/11 and American Exceptionalism

What may we learn from 9/11, the Islamic attack on the United States on September11, 2001? Osama bin Laden had already declared war against the U.S. on August 23, 1996. Al Qaeda forces had already attacked two American embassies in Africa on August 7, 1998 and a U.S. naval vessel on October 12, 2000. So what is so significant about 9/11 when hijacked commercial airliners struck the New York World Trade Center and the Pentagon?

Of course, we cannot forget that almost 3,000 innocent human beings were murdered on that day by Muslims terrorists. They were cheered as martyrs throughout the Arab-Islamic world. Let us try to elicit the significance of this tragedy and its relation to American Exceptionalism.

Clearly, the Declaration of Independence is based on ideas drawn from the Bible of Israel and should be understood as a Judeo-Christian document. This, dear reader, is the only solid foundation of American Exceptionalism. It is the heart and soul of America which has been abandoned by its political and intellectual leaders.

America has become a norm less democracy, where freedom and equality have no rational and ethical constraints, where wealth is the measure of human worth, where the here and now is the preoccupation of men and women, where change, change, change devalues all values, shatters personal identity, erodes a sense of community and national purpose.

What you most boast of, freedom and equality, are corrupting you. Your unrestrained freedom spawns licentiousness and undermines the family. Your indiscriminate equality undermines excellence and levels all moral distinctions. Your ever-expanding government and entitlements eviscerate personal responsibility and self-government. Your value-free capitalism fosters avarice and envy. Your university-bred doctrine of multicultural relativism erodes national loyalty and fosters atheism and cynicism.

Let us therefore cease worshiping, without neglecting, wealth and power, which we shall sorely need in the crisis of our times. But let us also cease worshiping the false god of norm less or live-as-you-like democracy and restore the normative and dignified democracy of our Founding Fathers. Let us revive the vision to which American Exceptionalism aspired. Let us build a nation where freedom dwells with virtue, equality with excellence, wealth with beauty, the here and now with love of the Eternal.

Shoshana Bryen is the Director of the Washington, DC-based Jewish Policy Center.

Dexter Van Zile is the Christian Media Analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA). His opinions are his own.

Islamist totalitarianism remains the single most important threat to world peace and human rights in the world today.

Christians and other religious minorities in Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East are the targets of an ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Elites in the West need to send a clear signal to governments in the region that further acts of violence and oppression against these minorities will result in their diplomatic and economic isolation.

We also need to make it perfectly clear that international institutions such as the UN and human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and church organizations such as the World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches that fail to publicize and condemn human rights abuses in Muslim majority countries contribute to their own de-legitimization. This is true for the Vatican as well.

We must also break the transmission belts of dhimmitude in our own society. Our churches, our colleges and our media failed to warn us about the threat of Islamism prior to 9/11 and to varying degrees have failed to educate us about the impact of Muslim doctrine on human rights since the attack. This is inexcusable.

God has blessed the American people.

May He continue to do so.

Amen.

published by Fox News in the immediate wake of the death of Bin Laden in may 2011.

The demise of Bin Laden should be the beginning of our search as to how we got into such vulnerable position in the first place. We must make sure that no enemy can ever again be allowed to bring harm upon us because of our own failings.

Bin Laden was emboldened with each subsequent act of terror because the lack of action by U.S. was seen as a weakness and further verification that he was invincible. Clearly, it appeared to him, Allah was on his side.

His commitment was total and led to the most heinous crime ever executed on America soil 11 years ago. It instigated our fight on terror and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Billions of dollars have been spent, draining our economy to the point of bankruptcy, and costing the lives of thousands of our heroes. Yet it is our failure to know and understand the enemy and the ideology that drives him that allowed one hateful individual to grow so powerful as to bring us to such profound harm.

The Iranians formed Hezbollah, helped Islamic Jihad, armed and trained terrorists across the region and took hostages with fatal results. For their efforts, we rewarded them with arms in exchange for the freedom of a few (Iran Contra). Our actions, or lack thereof, again signaled our weakness and affirmed their belief that Allah is the one and only God and that they have his protection.

We cannot allow history to repeat itself. Today we are facing an evil much worse than Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

Appeasement and vacillation do not work. World peace, global stability and millions of lives are on the line. Our first priority should be to stop these radicals in their tracks and to help Iranians free themselves from this evil. A new regime in Iran could transform the world for the better securing global stability and an end to much of terrorism throughout the world.

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