Sometimes the success and freedom of the United States can be to our detriment. Not that I would I would be willing to part with either. To be free is man's greatest longing and to succeed—at whatever one endeavors in—is a wonderful byproduct of freedom. Here in America we've been blessed with the former, which enables us to achieve the latter. The two seem to go hand in hand.

But while we go about our lives, free and occupied with attaining our part of the American dream, we sometimes forget what freedom really means. We sometimes forget that it wasn't just always there, guaranteed and always available to be enjoyed. The catastrophic events of 9/11 reminded us of how precious our liberty is. The bizarre, yet mainstream, Islamic concept of khilafah (the eventual conquest of the world under Islam's dominion) and its implementation through violent jihad are antithetical to American liberal democracy.

What happened on 9/11 is the inevitable result of a backward, violent, and supremacist politicoreligious culture's inability to come to terms with the fact that its unreformed core principles are completely wrong and absurdly unrealistic (not to mention cruel and wrongful). Since America is at the vanguard of the modern civilization which sounded the death knell for Islam's hopes of world domination, we are the obvious primary target for Islamic rage.

That was only four years ago. We've killed a lot of Islamic terrorists since then. We've captured many others and sent them to our complimentary, all-inclusive Islamic resort in sunny Cuba. We've freed the women and children they oppressed and brutalized in God's name. We've taken extraordinary pains to respect their retrograde faith, which is what compels them to hit the ground running with infidel tombstones in their eyes in the first place. We've reached out to Muslims who have come to America to put down the roots of their death cult here. They generally don't reach back since up to 80% of mosques and Islamic institutions in the United States are funded and run out of Saudi Arabia with their hate/kill the infidel brand of Salafi Islam. The other 20% aren't willing to take the risk of proving that Islam is indeed the Religion of Peace™. Four years ago they came to kill us en masse with no regard for our noncombatant status or our respect for diverse cultures.

Today, a virtual army of pandering liberal politicians, leftist NGOs and advocacy groups, multicultist academics and their sycophant drones, and Islamosupremacists and their Western useful idiots are all working hard to appease the Muslim sense of entitlement worldwide and to accommodate the depraved holy warriors who are on a mission from God to kill us. Through the blatantly sympathetic mainstream media, these disparate groups have united in their hostility to American democracy, their alliance with our enemies, and their hatred of George Bush and his administration. They all avail themselves of the supreme American freedoms they claim are nonexistent to push their totalitarian agenda.

Recent polls indicate that their efforts are paying dividends. This week the Pew Research Center released the results of a poll which showed that 46% of Americans surveyed want our troops pulled out of Iraq asap. This, not long after a Gallup poll put the number at nearly 60% of Americans favoring a partial (31 percent) or total (28 percent) pullout of American troops. The anti-America bloc has learned how to capitalize on the short American attention span and the American public's disenchantment with wars that aren't bite-sized and fast. That might change if the mujahideen are allowed to come back for their encore to 9/11. They watched, waited, and planned while Clinton was in the White House, and that's what they're doing right now.

In the last couple of months, mainstream media have continued on in their wild and reckless anti-America bender. Qur'an abuse; the disturbingly obsessive, almost eager, preoccupation with maintaining the scorecard of how many of our boys died defending American freedom each day (Can you imagine this during the Battle of the Bulge, D-Day, or Midway?); ignoring the plenitude of good news coming out of Iraq, thanks to our fighting men and women. It's always negative and cynical.

Amnesty International mocked the suffering and death of millions by equating Guantanamo Bay Detention Center (which is filled with Islamic terrorists who won't think twice before cutting your infidel throat) to Soviet Russia's gulags. Democratic Illinois Senator Dick Durbin did AI one and two better by adding the Third Reich and the Khmer Rouge to the pile of agitprop idiocy used to describe the United States' firm, yet ethical, stance in defending itself. This hyperbolic rhetoric isn't just untrue, it also gives aid and comfort to the enemy and the enemy's cheerleaders, as illustrated with the Arab media field day with Durbin's cheap and vile display. I guess maybe that's the point. Such irresponsible remarks also diminish the unutterable fate of millions upon millions of innocent humans who did absolutely nothing to deserve the agony and eventual death they suffered at the hands of evil, authoritarian monsters.

Islamic terrorists are not human. They are human beings who have eschewed the simple human values that most of the world can relate to. They are incorrigible killers with black, hateful hearts. And they're not going to stop or be swayed or "understood" because they are irrevocably convinced that what they do is God's divine and holy will. Why shouldn't they?—it's in the Qur'an and sunnah.

I don't care if the mujahideen are too hot, too cold, chained to a floor, or subjected to 90 decibels of bass-thumping hip-hop. These are vicious maniacs who kill for God, not teenagers with ADD. I don't know what's more nauseating: that the Western left intelligentsia would give them the same moral standing as us, or that some of us, including some of our leaders, could accept such a warped ethical calculus. And to think that our actions would be compared to those of the Nazis, right on the Senate floor on live television... it's insane. We see every day the depravity that these people are capable of, yet some exercise our free speech to make us into the villain.

Americans are being lulled into an American torpor, while our enemies are hyperalert, training hard, and nursing their murderous hatred. Here at home, while our guys are keeping the holy war far away (instead of in downtown Manhattan or D.C.), the left and their Islamosupremacist allies look to politicize and break every tool at our disposal in the war on jihad. In reckless disregard for our security, they work to debilitate our efforts at Guantanamo, our work in Iraq, the Patriot Act, Homeland Security—the institutions and ventures which are all that stands between us and the homicidal Islamic fiends who are nowhere near as ambiguous as we seem to be about the fact that we are at war.

The Bush administration needs to get proactive in this matter—right now. The president and his cabinet ought to be out in front of a microphone as often as it takes to remind Americans why we cannot relent in, and indeed that we must increase, our efforts at keeping the jihad outside of our borders. This administration cannot treat the war in Iraq as a done deal, because it's not. The complacence of the Bush White House, I regret to say, is exceeded only by that of the increasing number of Americans who are willing to concede that we've done all we can in the so-called war on terror, and should now perhaps just cut our losses and pack it up. If we go home and forget about the grave existential threat hanging over us, maybe it'll go away and the world will like us again. We need President Bush's strong leadership and firm determination more than ever. We need to see him making it clear to us what is at stake and why we must persevere.

You're free now, but that's only because of the clear vision, steadfast commitment, painful sacrifice, and indefatigable resolve of the American spirit that won our freedom. Those among us who want to abandon that spirit in the cause of a self-loathing "progressive" utopia don't seem to mind that this endangers our lives and liberty. So, it's up to us to remember that we're free and that freedom is not cheap. We must remember how it was paid for, and we ought to show that we appreciate its value. Our enemies, who hold our way of life in absolute contempt, understand its worth and they're willing to do whatever it takes to tear it down, whether or not we make it easier for them.

Copyright ©2005 Patrick D. O'Brien: may not be copied, published, or otherwise used (except for quotes) without express permission of author. Originally posted at Clarity & Resolve.