The Anniversary Approaches

The nation will commemorate the America's worst ever terrorist attacks in a few short days. Some will do acts of service that day, which is wonderful, but the most important aspect of the national effort must continue to be preventing the next jihadist outrage. The best way to deter whatever operation is being planned is not to concentrate on whatever the terrorists did last but to out think them and thwart whatever novel tactic they will try next. Does anyone think that a handful of men with box cutters could seize a crowded passenger plane ever again? Knowing now what happened then, the passengers and crew would never permit it. There remains an elephant in the room that few are talking about and that is what the future nature of Islam will be. If just one percent of the world's one and one half billion Muslims sympathize with jihad or are jihadist themselves, that would comprise more people than there are Jews in the world. The radical Muslims have committed themselves so much to their evil mission that they have murdered people from countries on every continent on earth and they are glad to die to fulfill world conquest. Those perpetrating these acts are in no way limited to al-Qaeda or the Sunni version of Islam practiced by the September 11, 2001 hijackers. The Shia Islam we see in Iran was before the 2001 attack the greater threat as Americans were killed in the hundreds by the Shia members of Hezbollah most notably in the Beirut airport attack which prior to the September 11, 2001 assault was the worst single terror attack against Americans. The Mahdi Army and the Iraqi Party of God (Hezbollah in Iraq) killed many Americans as we liberated Iraq and continues to pose a threat. Hezbollah operatives have spread their tentacles into Latin America and even into Mexico, reportedly now cooperating with Mexican drug traffickers. While Sunni terror still threatens, it is Shia radicalism that now poses the greater threat. A religion that presents itself as a great faith should police itself and eliminate the terror threat from its own ranks but all too often, in the case of Islam, those who should shout the loudest against the murder of innocents are silent, and to decent people, the silence is deafening.