A Very Simple Explanation

Investor’s Business Daily posted an article on Thursday about the futility of appeasing terrorists. The reason behind opposing terrorists is very succinctly explained by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The article reports:

Speaking via satellite to AIPAC’s annual conference in Washington last week, Bibi Netanyahu used the Brussels bloodbath, which Islamic State has taken responsibility for, to explain succinctly why there is no appeasing this barbaric new enemy.

The Israeli leader identified “the chain of attacks from Paris to San Bernardino to Istanbul to the Ivory Coast and now to Brussels, and the daily attacks in Israel” as “one continuous assault on all of us.” And he reminded Americans that, “in all these cases, the terrorists have no resolvable grievances.”

Those five words, “terrorists have no resolvable grievances,” should be the equivalent of “in hoc signo vinces” for the global war on terror. Those were the Latin words Constantine saw in a vision, accompanying a cross of light — “In this sign you will conquer.”

Western countries would do well to remember that the ultimate goal of ISIS is the establishment of a worldwide caliphate. This has been the dream of the Muslim Brotherhood since the Ottoman Empire fell. The caliphate that was the Ottoman Empire ended in 1924. That was less than one hundred years ago. In 1928, after it was clear that Turkey, the heart of the former Ottoman Empire, was going to be a secular state, the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt. The purpose of the Muslim Brotherhood was to implement Sharia Law worldwide and to re-establish the caliphate worldwide. Right now, both ISIS and Iran share those goals. The disagreement between them is over who will rule that worldwide caliphate.

I listened to an interview this morning of an expert on terrorism. In the interview he pointed out some facts about the terrorist attack in Belgium that I have not heard widely reported in the media. The main part of the attack took place near the American Airlines terminal. It was timed to occur when passengers for a flight to Philadelphia were checking in for their flight (thus most of the victims would be American). The attack was also near a Starbucks Coffee Shop, where many of the Americans would go after they checked in. The suicide bombers were on a watch list in America, and it is doubtful that they would have been able to enter American legally to carry out attacks. However, the attack they did carry out does seem to have targeted Americans.

The article at Investor’s Business Daily concludes:

President Obama’s repeated assurance that ISIS is “not an existential threat to us,” last week pairing it during his Latin American trip with the crack that “I’ve got a lot of things on my plate,” telegraphs not moral clarity but politically expedient complacency, as he plans the exhibits in his presidential library.

Obama ought to be reminded that when it comes to the lives of the four or more Americans missing in Brussels, ISIS may very well have been an existential threat.

Netanyahu’s words, meanwhile, should be carved in stone for the ages and spur total commitment to the destruction of today’s terrorists — everywhere and ASAP.

That’s good advice.