http://nypost.com/2015/04/05/its-war-out-there-obama/It’s war out there, Obama
By Michael Goodwin
April 5, 2015 | 12:14am
As two of mankind’s great religions prepared to celebrate Easter and Passover, terrifying events on a single day involving a third religion revealed the perilous state of the world, circa 2015.
It was early last Thursday in Kenya when Islamists belonging to an al Qaeda franchise stormed a college, slaughtering nearly 150 Christian students. Survivors said hostages who could recite the Shahada, the Islamic creed, were freed unharmed while all others were murdered.
That same day, two Muslim women in Queens were arrested on charges of plotting to detonate a bomb in New York. They are said to be supporters of the Islamic State, with one woman allegedly telling an undercover FBI agent: “It’s war, it’s f- -king war.”
Also on Thursday, in Switzerland, the United States and other powers announced a tentative deal they claimed would block Iran from getting nukes. Although Iran declared victory and accused America of spinning the terms, President Obama hailed the unsigned outline as a “good deal” that would “make the world safer.”
The president is wrong, the jihadist from Queens is right. The war is on, it’s a world war, and because her side is more determined to win, nobody is safe.
Obama’s goal of bringing Iran in from the cold is, like much of his presidency, a vision divorced from reality. His hollow rhetoric echoes the appeasers who sought to stop Hitler in 1939 by giving him what he wanted.
This latter-day Chamberlain will be no more successful. Armed, expansionist ideologies must be stopped because they cannot be accommodated.
The Second World War and its aftermath confronted the West with two existential challenges. First came Nazism and fascism, followed by communism. We prevailed because our leaders saw the enemies for what they were and resolved to defeat them.
Many in the West, including some Americans, drank the Kool-Aid that Herr Hitler wanted peace. When he invaded Poland, many insisted we could sit out the war.
Thankfully, Roosevelt and Churchill knew otherwise.
Even after the great Allied victory, many argued we should accept that vast swaths of humanity were condemned to live under another oppressive system that could not be challenged.
Thankfully, Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II saw communism for what it was.
The paths to victory in both World War II and the Cold War were hardly smooth, but the West was blessed with leaders whose will was as mighty as our war machines.
They had the wisdom and compassion to make the world safe for democracy, which eventually took root around the globe. Scores of millions of people were liberated and a relative golden age of peace and prosperity marked the seven decades since, especially the last 25 years.
That era is over. It officially ended on 9/11, when war came to America, just as Pearl Harbor ended the fiction that fascism was somebody else’s problem.
But unlike our earlier leaders, Obama wants peace at any price. His refusal even to call the enemy by its name reflects a willful blindness to an ideology that has declared war on us. A survey of the global battlefield says we are in retreat.
Nazism, communism, extreme Islam — each seeks to conquer and enslave. Like the first two, violent Islam is setting the world on fire, and there is no escape through geography or appeasement. It is an international death cult, making it potentially more dangerous than Hitler or Soviet Russia.
Iran is a center of this orgy of mayhem. Its revolution knows no boundaries and it arms Hamas and Hezbollah, two groups perpetually at war with the lone Jewish state. It sponsors the Houthis, who now control Yemen and demand “Death to America, death to Israel.”
Henry Kissinger said years ago that Iran must decide “whether it is a nation or a cause.” Against all evidence, Obama has provided his own answer, imagining Iran as a “nation” that wants peace and can be managed, even with a nuclear bomb. His willful misreading is astounding, given Iran’s continued support for terrorism everywhere. That defines it as a “cause,” which is why it must be confronted.
So far, only a coalition of Arab nations, along with Israel, recognize Iran for what it is. Saudi Arabia and perhaps Egypt will get their own nuclear weapons, an understandable yet terrifying proliferation owing directly to Obama’s appeasement.
In this holy season, the world moves closer to Armageddon.
