New documentary: Obsession, Radical Islam's War Against the West

Friends,

I wanted to direct your attention to my movie review published this morning by FrontPageMag.com of Obsession: Radical Islam's War against the West. This is an absolutely MUST SEE documentary from HonestReporting.com. Sadly, this isn't something that you're likely to see on PBS or the History Channel.

I think that there are three important points made by the movie (I'm boiling this down from about 20 important points):

1) The jihad of radical Islam is a global movement. The US media does not do a good job of covering the terrorist attacks outside of the West (compare the coverage of the 7/7 London bombings last year that killed 55 vs. the coverage of the Mumbai train bomb in India that killed 200+ earlier this month). You probably don't understand how widespread the jihad really is. The first 10 minutes of this movie will correct those misunderstandings.

2) Radical Islam as an ideology is a greater threat than Communism and Nazism. The movie notes that the threat is not just to Westerns, but to Muslims themselves that do not share the views of radical Islam. The parallels between the West's lack of action in the 1930s to Nazism and the laissez-faire policies of the West today regarding Islamic extremism are strikingly similiar.

3) Pretending that the threat doesn't exist, or recognizing that the threat exists and choosing to do nothing about it, is a suicidal policy that threatens us, our children and our grandchildren. Ignoring it will not make it go away. Each one of us must decide what we will do in response to this menace.

I can't say it strongly enough that this is a movie that you, your family, your friends, your church, your civic group, your school, and your elected representatives needs to see. The film is a very balanced presentation and they do not resort to graphic images of carnage (which they easily could have done). It is a family-friendly movie. Even at 73 minutes, it moves along at a quick pace. This is not your lazy documentary. They squeeze in a lot of information in a short amount of time.

You can view a trailer or purchase a copy from the movie's website. Buy extra copies to loan out to friends and to give to others.

This film will rock your complacent Western world!

"The only thing need for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke

New Article at American Thinker

Greetings to everyone joining us today from The American Thinker and Boars Head Tavern. My most recent article, Radical Islamists and Western Governments, is up this morning at American Thinker. If this is your first time here, you can also read my previous articles for FrontPage Magazine by going to my author's page. My Islam-related blog posts can be found on the sidebar on the right of this page.

Thanks for visiting! Enjoy your stay!

The Architect of the New Global Jihad

When US intelligence officials confirmed in May that Mustafa bin Abd al-Qadir Setmariam Nasar, one of the top five wanted al-Qaeda leaders and better known to the world under his nom de guerre, Abu Mus’ab al-Suri (“The Syrian”), was in US custody after being taken in a sting in Quetta, Pakistan last November, few mainstream media outlets in the US outside of the Associated Press and NBC News took notice at the time. The Washington Post finally stepped up to note the importance of al-Suri’s capture and career in a May 23rd article, Architect of New War on the West.

In fact, al-Suri’s capture may be the most significant in the Global War on Terror since that of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the Number 3 man in al-Qaeda and the operational leader of the 9/11 attacks, in March 2003. One analyst has called al-Suri “the most dangerous terrorist you’ve never heard of”. Identified by European intelligence officials as one of the operational leader of the al-Qaeda bombings in Madrid and London, al-Suri is also responsible for crafting and implementing a new terror strategy to unleash a new campaign of indiscriminate attacks at America and its allies in Europe and the Middle East. Unfortunately, despite his detention by US authorities, al-Suri’s legacy as the architect of the new global jihad will continue well into the forseeable future.

In March 2006, Brynjar Lia, a senior researcher for the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) and the author of a forthcoming book on al-Suri’s career and ideological innovations, published an extended profile on the al-Qaeda strategist (which I have relied on heavily in preparing this article), noting his impressive terrorist resume:

• Al-Suri began his career in the early 1980s with the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, where he received extensive training from Egyptian, Iraqi and Jordanian military officials in guerilla warfare and explosives engineering. He served in the organization’s leadership in Baghdad after the Syrian Ba’ath regime suppressed a revolt by the Brotherhood in 1982, finally breaking with the group due to their growing ties to Saddam Hussein.
• He moved to Spain in 1985 where he opened an import business and planned to continue the resistance in Syria. During this time he authored an extensive and advanced study of the strengths and weaknesses of the Syrian resistance, The Syrian Islamic Jihadist Revolution – Pains and Hopes, marking his talents in theory and strategy. He also penned a number of essays under the pen name Umar Abd al-Hakim. After marrying a Spanish convert to Islam in 1988 (thereby gaining Spanish citizenship), he left to join the muhajadin in Afghanistan, who were still fighting the Soviet occupation.
• During his tenure in Afghanistan from 1987-1992, he quickly rose to prominence due to his extensive training in Syria and after catching the attention of Abdullah Azzam, the father of the Arab-Afghan movement, mentor to Osama bin Laden, and one of the chief founders of al-Qaeda. Al-Suri claims to have been in constant company with Azzam until Azzam’s assassination in 1989 in a struggle over direction of the Afghan resistance. He eventually was promoted to al-Qaeda’s Shura Council as Emir of the Syrians, representing the Syrian contingent in Afghanistan. In 1990, al-Suri published the first draft of his Call for a Global Islamic Resistance, which has gone through several subsequent revisions and expansions. As Lia notes (p. 6), this period is when al-Suri recognized the local emphasis of jihadist revolution needed to be expanded to a global scale.
• In 1992, al-Suri left Afghanistan and moved back to Spain to establish an al-Qaeda cell there. As a result of his many international contacts obtained in Afghanistan and as one of the most experienced leaders in the global Islamist movement, the Spanish cell became a primary backbone for al-Qaeda operations in Europe and al-Suri became one of its most important leaders. During this time he also became actively involved in supporting the Islamists in Algeria and Bosnia.
• In 1994, he moved to London to establish an al-Qaeda media center, the Islamic Conflicts Study Bureau, where he organized interviews for the BBC and CNN with Osama bin Laden. As Lorenzo Vidino of the Investigative Project noted in a May 2004 National Review article, al-Suri was one of the chief architects of the radical Islamic scene now referred to as “Londonistan”. He also contributed a number of articles to the UK-based Al-Ansar Magazine in defense of the murderous Algerian GIA; and his close associate, Abu Qatada, described as “Bin Laden’s Ambassador to Europe” and chief editor of Al-Ansar, issued a fatwa allowing for the killing of women and children by the GIA. Because al-Suri was suspected of being involved in the 1995 Paris metro bombing and his active contacts with bin Laden, he was briefly arrested by British authorities and released.
• Al-Suri returned to Afghanistan in 1998 after the Taliban takeover to escape what he thought was increased scrutiny by British intelligence. He initially directed a training camp for bin Laden schooling Arab jihadists, and in April 2000 he swore bayat to Taliban leader Mullah Umar and was charged with establishing a Taliban military camp, al-Ghuraba (“The Aliens”), at the Taliban’s Kargha military base for training sleeper cells made up of Muslims from all over Europe and the US. He was also involved in WMD training at the Durunta training complex near Jalalabad.
  

Safely back in Afghanistan, al-Suri began producing a series of strategic studies of the global jihad movement, including a detailed and frank analysis of the Taliban regime, which, according to Lia, concluded that “despite some weaknesses, must be considered a true Islamic Emirate, and the only true Islamic State on the planet” (p. 10).

It is during this critical period in the life of the jihadist movement and al-Suri’s career that he began reevaluating al-Qaeda’s tactics and began questioning the direction of the group’s leadership. One of the most telling indicators of the shift in his thinking is an email sent by al-Suri and his associate Muhammad al-Bahayah to bin Laden in July 1999, which was discovered when a reporter covering the fall of the Taliban regime in November 2001, Alan Cullison, unknowingly purchased an al-Qaeda official’s laptop that had been left behind in the evacuation of Kabul. The email is reprinted in Cullison’s September 2004 article in The Atlantic, Inside Al-Qaeda’s Hard Drive.

In al-Suri’s email, he expresses frustration with bin Laden’s obsession with international publicity and the danger that it posed to their Taliban safe haven by attracting the attention of Western authorities. “I think our brother has caught the disease of screens, flashes, fans, and applause,” the pair wrote. Disagreements notwithstanding, when suspicions were raised about a fracture within al-Qaeda, al-Suri appeared on al-Jezeera TV in 2000 to dismiss the rumors, and he still served among the highest ranking officials within al-Qaeda.

But the 9/11 attacks changed the playing field for al-Qaeda and for al-Suri’s thinking on the future of the global jihadist movement in particular. Some intelligence reports place him at the July 2001 “Tarragona Summit” in Spain when Mohammad Atta met with al-Qaeda officials to complete instructions for the 9/11 attacks. Ominously, in December 2004 after it was announced that the US government had put a $5 million bounty on al-Suri’s head and listed him as one of the top five wanted al-Qaeda leaders, he posted on his website a denial of his involvement in the 9/11 attacks and offered his assessment of how weapons of mass destruction should have been included in the planning:

I – along with millions of other Muslims – enjoyed watching the beginning of the collapse of America…if I had been consulted about this operation, I would have advised them to select aircraft on international flights and to have put weapons of mass destruction aboard them. Attacking America with weapons of mass destruction was – and still is – a difficult and complicated matter, but it is still a possibility in the end, if Allah permits us. More importantly, it is becoming a necessity…Let the American people – those who voted for killing, destruction, the looting of other nations’ wealth, megalomania, and the desire to control others – be contaminated with radiation! We apologize for the radioactive fallout.

In the wake of the American response to the 9/11 attacks and the fall of the Taliban, al-Suri’s prediction of the end of their Afghan safe haven was realized. For three years he was on the run, alternating hiding places between Iran and Pakistan before his capture last November. According to his December 2004 statement, he claimed he had not seen bin Laden since November 2001, at which time he pledged bayat to the al-Qaeda leader.

During that time in exile, he reassessed the global jihad strategy and reworked his tactical masterplan, Call for a Global Islamic Resistance. What his post-9/11 experience had taught him was that the standard tactic used against the Soviets of drawing them into a protracted conflict in a Muslim territory and waging a war of attrition was now futile. Not only had the American military learned the lessons from the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan by working with indigenous opposition forces, the overwhelming US airpower decimated the ranks of the al-Qaeda fighters. The muhajadin strategy was suicidal against the US.

What the situation demanded, and what al-Suri proposed when he republished his 1,600 page revised version of Call for a Global Islamic Resistance in 2004, was a dramatic restructuring of the global jihad. According to Lia,

Al-Suri concluded that in the post 9/11 era territorial consolidation and guerrilla warfare from fixed bases in rugged terrain is impossible. A new Afghanistan is unimaginable, at least in the short term. Instead, the future jihadist war must be led by small decentalised, mobile units operating completely independently of any centralised organization. (p. 16)

The changes recommended by al-Suri in his “individualized terrorism” strategy include:

• Identifying the weaknesses of past strategies, especially the reliance on safe havens, like Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan.
• Understanding the vulnerability of the current hierarchical model and moving to an independent, decentralized structure for operations.
• Reorienting the emphasis from confrontation in one particular country to a regional goal of pushing Western forces out of the Muslim world.
• Requiring that all cells be financially self-sustaining to reduce the risk of detection.
• Recognizing that the global jihad should no longer be the exclusive domain of an Islamic vanguard, but should be responsibility of the entire Islamic ummah. Jihad should be open to Muslims everywhere, and not limited to one group or set of leaders.
• Expanding the operational parameters beyond the Middle East to create a global theatre of terror.
  
  

What is perhaps most important about the shift in al-Suri’s doctrine of jihad is his advocacy for jihadists to impose a “template of terror” in their actions worldwide, as Lia explains:

Al-Suri’s slogan is: nizam, la tanzim, ‘System, not organisation’. In other words, there should be ‘an operative system’ or template, available anywhere for anybody, wishing to participate in the global jihad either on his own or with a small group of trusted associates, and there should not exist any ‘organisation for operations’…The glue in this highly decentralised movement is nothing else than ‘a common aim, a common doctrinal program and a comprehensive (self-) educational program’. (p. 17)

Al-Suri’s “template of terror” and “individualized terrorism” is what has been used in the post-9/11 al-Qaeda attacks in Bali, Istanbul, Madrid and London. In the case of bombings in Madrid and London, this new strategy has been put into practice effectively in the West. Evidence indicates that these operations were under the direct oversight of al-Suri. Documents recovered after the March 11, 2004 Madrid train bombings, which left 191 innocent civilians dead, indicate that al-Suri not only had direct control of the operation and ordered the action to immediately precede the Spanish parliamentary elections, but he also planned a second wave of suicide bombings in Spain – a plan that was foiled when Spanish authorities trapped the bombers in their hideout, where they blew themselves up rather than surrendering.

Spanish intelligence authorities also recovered evidence in the wake of the Madrid massacre that al-Suri was planning an action in the UK and reported such to British intelligence at least four months before the 7/7 bombings in London last summer. Needless to say, despite the advanced warning of al-Suri’s plans, British officials were not successful in defusing the threat. Immediately after the 7/7 bombings, Western intelligence agencies were already acknowledging al-Suri’s role in the attack, as reports from the London Times and the Chicago Tribune indicate.

The Madrid and London attacks are both textbook examples of al-Suri’s “template of terror” strategy, and probably foreshadow the kind of attacks to be launched in the future against the US. In his last public statement before his capture published in August 2005, al-Suri stated his hope to see these kinds of operations conducted in the American heartland:

We also have mujahidden living amongst you. We will unleash the mujahideen to detonate themselves amongst you so that you will all taste the death and terror that you have forced on all of our people, including targeting women and children…In short, and in a sincere way, we would like to tell the Americans and their European allies that we will never obey you…Do you really understand why so many people are so excited to become human bombs and blow you up?

Despite his capture and detention (hopefully he is experiencing the kind hospitality that the CIA is well-known for), al-Suri’s legacy as the architect of the new global jihad extends far into the foreseeable future. I suggest there are four identifiable reasons why this is so:

1. Al-Suri has trained through his studies, manuals, sermon tapes and instructional videos, as well as his tenure directing al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, a new generation of terrorists, what one analyst has called “the Third Generation of Salafi-Jihadists”. The breadth of training he has provided this new generation is stunning in its scope: media relations, tactical operations, organizational structure, long-term strategy and planning, and individual disciplines critical for the future of jihad (guerilla warfare, explosives engineering, WMD, etc.).
2. He has rightly identified the best method for advancing the cause of Jihad by recognizing America’s special vulnerability to his “individualized terrorism” tactics. And because of the decentralized nature of the sleeper cells that he himself has planted, most, if not all, of the details about these cells waiting for activation in Europe and the US are unknown to him and may not be exposed no matter how much interrogation he is subject to. In many respects, he prepared al-Qaeda for his own capture.
3. When reading his writings, it is clear that in recent years his attitude towards the West – particularly Britain and the US – had degenerated into an unbalanced rage. This is reflected in the terror methods he advocates: terror is no longer a means, but an end in itself. He recommends terror for terror’s sake. It might be a difficult contention for Americans to swallow and to look at objectively, but even the 9/11 attacks had concrete strategic value beyond terror: the attacks were aimed at destabilizing our governmental, military and economic institutions, which it accomplished to varying degrees (more economic, less governmental and martial). But bombing a school bus, shooting up a shopping mall, or bombing a church in middle America solely has terror as its objective. Terrorism is no longer to change American policy, but for perceived blood vengeance.
4. The one area that should be a concern for all Americans is the shift in al-Qaeda strategy related to WMD represented by al-Suri and the technical training he has provided. Just last year, al-Suri posted a 15-page “how-to” instructional pamphlet entitled Biological Weapons on his website. As one WMD terrorism analyst has observed, “Al-Suri, in a sense, has departed from the current strategy of al-Qaeda’s traditional leadership. Al-Qaeda’s leadership has been primarily concerned with providing the justification for jihadis to use WMD, while al-Suri advances this to actively advocating CBRN weapons as essential to the ‘end-game’ strategy.” Al-Suri has shifted the debate from seeing WMD as one of many options for al-Qaeda to use to WMD as a key component to victory of jihad against the US, going so far as to say that their use is “a necessity”.
   
   

The capture of al-Suri is a significant accomplishment for the US, but in realistic terms, it might have done nothing to mitigate the threat from his sleeper cell network which may begin operations on their own without activation by al-Qaeda. As the architect of the new global jihad, through the execution and improvement of his “individualized terrorism” and “template of terror”, along with his ideological shift regarding the use of WMD, Americans may experience the victims of al-Suri’s legacy for many years, or even many generations, to come.

The Decline of Western Civilization, Part 1

I was watching Late Night with Conan O'Brien this evening when I encountered perhaps the most telling sign of the decline of Western Civilization I have ever been witness to - David Lee Roth singing Van Halen tunes to country music. "Jamie's Crying" played to a banjo, steel guitar, fiddle, mandolin, the whole works. I wish I was lying.

Is nothing sacred anymore!!!!

Apparently, Roth has cut an entire album, Strummin' With the Devil: The Southern Side of Van Halen, filled with this sacrilege. What's more, various country artists have joined his Satanic coven to defile these sacred tunes. May David Lee Roth and his record company executives rot in the deepest bowels of Rock N' Roll Hell for such blasphemy!

Thoughts on Gothic, Part 1

(Note: This is something I wrote for a book project several years ago. I ran across it in my files and thought it worthy of a reprint, with a few modifications. Also, see this previous post taken from my unpublished devotional using encounters with Gothic cathedrals as an allegory for life.)

Among the few remaining cultural glories of the Age of Christendom are medieval Gothic cathedrals. Having had the opportunity over the years to visit dozens of cathedrals all over the globe, I recall those magnificent structures, with their spires, windows, statues and gargoyles, and have concluded that a Gothic cathedral is a vivid expression of resisting the tyranny of the urgent. Towering above the city skylines, cathedrals are a testament to the slow, deliberate, long-range thinking of the medieval mind. Built with painstaking precision and incredibly complex detail, their edifices rose at a painstakingly protracted pace, generation after generation.

Standing almost a thousand year after they began to appear, it is safe to say that they are the antithesis to our fast-food, disposable culture – they took forever to build, and when finished, they were impossible to get rid of. Because of the awful physics of the project, the cathedral builders had to be equally mindful of both the means and the end. Any shortcut would eventually have catastrophic consequences, possibly costing many lives and undoing hundreds of years of work. Patience and safety were the order every single day.

But there is more than the mechanics and science of it all. There is the psychology of cathedral-building. Every successful cathedral project, including the modern-day Gothic revival churches, required astonishing leadership ability. It took remarkable people skills to build ongoing support in a community to initiate and sustain a project that the original participants, their children, their children’s children, and several generations after that would never see to completion. The organizer of the project, whether it was a bishop, an abbot, or an architect, had to be spiritual leader, project manager, financier, cheerleader, and intergenerational visionary all rolled up into one. They had to make such a dramatic impact in their time to propel the project into the future with such a force that successive generations would pick up the ball and run. The cathedral-builders had to not only cast a vision, they had to literally build the foundations for it. The talent, time and resources necessary for building a cathedral meant that many who tried, failed.

Motivating these leaders was a worldview that wanted to proclaim an inspiring vision of God and an understanding of man’s role in the universe. They wanted to display eternal truths, beauty and art. They sought to make a powerful statement about their ideas and understanding of human existence. These medieval visionaries believed that these radical buildings were symbolic representations of an ordered reality. Furthermore, the cathedral-builders intended their work to be a monumental protest against the prevalent ideas of that time.

The appearance of the cathedrals was a revolt against the Romanesque style that dominated Europe. Rather than being places to display art, such as mosaics and tapestries, the cathedral itself was the art. It was also a massive insubordinate statement of the metaphysical views of the day. The high, upward thrust of the walls was intended to defy gravity, allowing the worshipper to transcend earthly existence to heavenly reality. The walls of glass represented the power of the spiritual world to penetrate the material. Light, seen as absolute truth, was not intended to shine on objects to merely illuminate them; instead, the light of truth would penetrate the walls of our hearts from all directions, to transform and change it. The truth was not subject to our judgments of how it was to shine in our lives; rather, it passed through us regardless and leaves its reflection in a multitude of colors.

As Jean Gimpel notes in his book, The Cathedral Builders, more stone was quarried in France during the 13th Century for cathedrals than for all the pyramid-building at Giza. The architecture of the cathedral, much like the enormity of the pyramids or the extravagant grandeur of Versailles, was intended as propaganda. But the cathedral-builders contradicted the spirit of the Egyptian pharaohs and the French Sun King, because they were marketing, not the vanity and brilliance of man, but the glory of God and His perfect and proportionate attributes reflected in the created order. And they determined to fashion the building with God’s own materials – stone and light.

The medieval visionaries wanted to put our lives in perspective to the divine. Anyone who has walked into Notre Dame de Paris, Cologne, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s, or the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. understands that they are entering sacred space. They created a clear-cut distinction between our everyday lives and entering into eternity. Cathedrals are a backhanded statement about our mortality. We all have a beginning and an end, with the tombs and crypts of previous generations in the cathedral itself serving as an unmistakable witness to that fact. The world we live in is bigger than any of us. But there is a role for us in the eternal order of things if we would only look up and realize our place and come to terms with the purpose of our lives. It is an experience only comparable to viewing the staggering geography of the Grand Canyon; or gazing at the supreme heights of the Rocky Mountains; or watching the powerful shaping energy of the waves of the Pacific Ocean. That was the intent – to take your breath away and to place you into eternal perspective.

Cathedrals are also a profound statement about the medievalist view of the future. And at best, the project would take a lifetime to complete (Salisbury Cathedral being one of the few completed within one lifetime). The more ambitious the program, the further it extended plans into the future and grew more distant from the planners themselves. The commitment and time frames involved are unparalleled in the field of human endeavors. Thus, it required tremendous assurances in the ability to train and pass off the project to their progeny. In glaring contrast to our era of just-in-time delivery, the construction of a cathedral took incredible foresight and dedication on the planners and builders. As the German poet, Heinrich Heine, noted: “In the Middle Ages, they had convictions, whereas we moderns today only have opinions; and it takes more than opinions to build a Gothic cathedral.”

The Gothic cathedral is an excellent allegory for leadership. At the very beginning, you must have a plan. Failing to develop a strategy inevitably leads to little being accomplished. Then you need solid foundations sufficient to bear the weight of the building. If you are not grounded in your first principles, what you are attempting to build will begin to sink and become unstable. And as the walls grew higher, there had to be buttresses to support the downward pressures that would otherwise crush the structure. Remove the supports of family, friends and faith from a leader, and the gravity of circumstances will merely do its job and bring things crashing down.

And finally, you need time. Any attempt to rush the project of your life is flirting with disaster. If you want to build something that will really last, you can’t be constantly consumed with the here-and-now. As a leader, you must always have an eye on the future while simultaneously working in the present. You have to be both visionary and strategist. You have to know where you are going and how you intend to get there. And you have to take the time to find suitable ground to do your work. Anything less will mean that you will end your life with a pile of rubble. But getting the mixture right will mean that you have an incredible legacy that will serve as an example for future generations.

Reflections on the American National Spirit (reprint)

NOTE: In commemoration of our nation's 230th birthday, I am reprinting here a creative writing piece I published a few months ago. It still seems appropriate. Happy Fourth of July! - P

I was recently reading an article by Victor Davis Hanson, Has Ahmadinejad Miscalculated?, regarding the ongoing pot-banging by the Iranian ayatollahs’ current political stooge, Iranian President Ahmadinejad. We offer our congratulations to the Iranians for their recent nuclear achievements. We’re glad that you’ve joined the 20th Century now that we are in the 21st, and that you’ve been able to replicate the accomplishments of an American generation that has largely passed into history. We must note, however, that you were only able to reach this goal by using American methods and using our own technology. At best, the rest of the world can only imitate America.

I’ve always appreciated Hanson’s understanding of ancient and modern warfare. But what struck me was something he said towards the end of the piece. He wrote:

Ever since September 11, the subtext of this war could be summed up as something like, “Suburban Jason, with his iPod, godlessness, and earring, loves to live too much to die, while Ali, raised as the 11th son of an impoverished but devout street-sweeper in Damascus, loves death too much to live.” The Iranians, like bin Laden, promulgate this mythical antithesis, which, like all caricatures, has elements of truth in it. But what the Iranians, like the al Qaedists, do not fully fathom, is that Jason, upon concluding that he would lose not only his iPod and earring, but his entire family and suburb as well, is capable of conjuring up things far more frightening than anything in the 8th-century brain of Mr. Ahmadinejad. Unfortunately, the barbarity of the nightmares at Antietam, Verdun, Dresden, and Hiroshima prove that well enough.

In these few sentences Hanson captures the essence of the American national ethos. Americans are by nature decadent, rebellious, brash and reckless – we always have been. But history has recorded time and again that when America has been threatened and attacked, from the deepest recesses of the American heartland rises a fierce response prepared to let slip the dogs of war to hound its enemies into submission or oblivion.

This national spirit is something we need to remind ourselves of occasionally; and quite honestly, it is something we have tucked away like an old nostalgic remembrance that we only bring out on flag-waving occasions, like during the Gulf War or after the 9/11 attacks. We live in a troubled time when patriotism is mocked more than celebrated; vices are indulged and virtues are forgotten; heroism and sacrifice replaced with self-interest and inaction. That notwithstanding, the national ethos that Hanson identifies still is in the lifeblood pumped by the heart of America. It is woven into the very fabric of American life itself; it is in our civic institutions; it is in our politics; it resides in its people. The fire of the American spirit can be doused, but never extinguished.

The sense of steely determination in the face of terrible odds and fierce enemies has been in the American bloodline since the beginning. In the dark days when General George Washington and his men were struggling for survival, Thomas Paine would write these stirring words of encouragement in The Crisis:

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but "to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER" and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.

These are indeed the times that try men’s souls. Our faith in America’s founding spirit is waning. Critics from all sides express their doubts in loud, whining tones and wring their hands in self-imposed grief at the present state of affairs, all while America’s men and women in uniform live day-to-day in harm’s way in the furthest reaches of the globe to extend freedom to peoples who not long ago were (and some who still are) our enemies. These critics are the summertime soldiers and the sunshine patriots of our day.

Yet it is the weary and wounded men at arms fighting for their lives from disease and the cold that would gamble America’s future on crossing the icy Delaware just days after Paine’s words were first published and capture the Hessian garrison at Trenton, reversing the trend of constant defeat and forced retreat for the embattled colonial troops. George Washington, the Father of our Country, understood the value of risking all to take the battle to our enemies. In the years that followed, America’s hard-won victories and tragic defeats that followed in the War for Independence would eventually win our nation’s freedom. And when the final victory at Yorktown was secured, no one begrudged the summertime soldiers and sunshine patriots from celebrating as well. Even so, few could name any of those colonial naysayers today. America loves the winner.

It isn’t unusual for Americans to lose their way, though Providence has a way of forcing events upon us to remind us of who we are as Americans. These events are the adrenaline that gets the heart pumping our lifeblood to the body politic once again.

As I’ve thought about Hanson’s essay over the past few weeks I have been reminded of two historical incidents (though there are many to choose from) that I think captures the two-sided nature of the American national spirit.

The date of the first event is September 13, 1814. It is an event that we commemorate every time that we sing our national anthem. However, many Americans forget the circumstances surrounding the British assault on Fort McHenry in the misnamed War of 1812. Just weeks before the attack on Baltimore, the British had sailed up the Potomac and put Washington D.C. to the torch, forcing President James Madison and his Cabinet to flee for their lives. The burning of Washington in August 1814 was a demonstration of British military power intended to show America’s military impotency. The British quickly sailed to capture the strategic port of Baltimore to issue the coup de grace and bring America to its knees and back under the dominion of the British crown.

This is the plan that America’s enemies had in mind.

But the British miscalculated. They didn’t underestimate the number of men or firepower of the American troops huddled inside Fort McHenry; it was the spirit and resolve of the American forces that the British misjudged.

The British landed a large force at North Point and advanced within sight of the city of Baltimore. The British command intended to sail their fleet up to Fort McHenry and literally pull out their big guns and pound the American forces into submission and surrender and press in to take the rest of the town. On the morning of September 13, 1814, the British Navy began the most intense bombardment ever unleashed in the history of human warfare up to that time against the huddled defenders of Fort McHenry – a bombardment that would continue through the day and well into the night.

Francis Scott Key was an accidental observer to these events. He and a friend had approached the British under a flag of truce to secure the release of an elderly doctor that had been captured and accused of giving aid to some British deserters. As they negotiated with British officials for their friend’s release they became privy to the battle plans of the British and were held onboard one of the ships as a precaution until the British had secured their victory. Even though Key would only observe the bombardment from a ship distant from the battle, the rockets, bombs and flares of the ferocious attack on the American defenders could clearly be seen from miles away.

Using their superior long-range cannons, the British fleet attacked Fort McHenry beyond the effective range of the American guns. The only American weapon was courage and resolve as the massive bombardment continued. When the shelling stopped at 1 a.m., the dark prevented any view of the American battlement. Key and the other American observers down river would have to wait until morning to see who had won the victory. Those hours of waiting must have tried their souls. They surely must have thought that the awesome firepower of the British fleet had prevailed against the outmanned and outgunned Americans. But the darkness held out the possibility of hope. Maybe the men at Fort McHenry had been able to withstand the British fury.

When dawn finally came, what a sight Francis Scott Key would see: the Americans inside Fort McHenry had taken down their standard storm flag and raised a new massive flag in its place, telling the world of the American ability to withstand the mightiest blow that its enemies could strike and that England’s best was still not enough to prevail. Even though the British had just burned our public buildings in Washington to the ground, the commander at Fort McHenry had the larger flag prepared in anticipation of an American victory. This sign of the triumph of the American spirit was Key's inspiration as he sat down to pen those immortal words familiar to every American heart.

Raising that flag – that Star-Spangled Banner we can still see today at the Smithsonian Museum – was a haughty gesture, but one completely in line with the American national spirit. It was like General Patton pissing in the Rhine as he and the crusading American forces were storming into Germany on the verge of crushing our Axis enemies. On that day in Baltimore Harbor, America had taken the most savage beating ever unleashed in the history of warfare from the greatest military power in the world – and won. How utterly American.

We should remember that at the time of the siege of Fort McHenry, the British had Napoleon imprisoned on Elba, and that a year later after his escape they would finally vanquish Bonaparte at Waterloo. The great Napoleon was defeated; America was victorious. American courage and resolve alone had won the victory that brave day on the Chesapeake. This is what our national anthem means when we sing, “O say can you see by the dawn’s early light…”.

Yet it means even more than that. When we sing that immortal refrain, “O say does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave,” we should remember what that Key’s question is rhetorical: he urges us to recall that, yes, the flag still waves and Americans remain free and brave. It means you can burn down our Capitol and White House and send our elected officials fleeing, but the American spirit will allow us to take your best shot and overcome. As long as Americans remain on the field of battle, the American spirit will remain. Through the darkness we remember, just like Francis Scott Key, that hope remains for America, because our most potent weapon has always been Americans themselves.

I think it’s for this reason that Americans love a good fight. Raising the Star-Spangled Banner that day recalled the spirit of Leonidas and the Spartans at Thermopylae responding to the Persian King Xerxes demands to lay down their arms, telling the innumerable Persian foe that faced them, “MOLON LABE” (“Come and get them!”) Americans have been known to scour the world looking to join the other’s fights when we didn’t have our own to occupy us. We think of Davy Crockett and his Tennessee Volunteers arriving at the Alamo spoiling for a fight. And when all looked hopeless, Crockett, the Volunteers and the rest of the men of the Alamo didn’t flee. They had the American spirit. They knew that there are things more valuable than life and leisure; and that death and defeat could not measure up to disgrace and dishonor by abandoning hope in the face of our enemies.

This is the testimony of the Americans who died at the Alamo. And the Marines at Wake Island. And the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 on 9/11. They weren’t fighting to beat the odds; they were fighting because they refused to abandon the American spirit. At certain times in our history, all Americans have had left to fight with is their refusal – telling our enemies in desperate hours and deadly circumstances that they would not go gently into that good night. And laying down their lives, they knew there was hope because Americans remained. Their respective sacrifices were not the abandonment of hope, but the preservation of it. Those American heroes believed that the battle would be won and invested their lives in that hope. Through the darkness and doubt, hope remains for America.

The American spirit allows us to see our most prominent commercial and military buildings destroyed in acts of terror, killing thousands on our own soil on 9/11. And yet in ninety days our enemies that attacked us were forced to hide and fight in caves in the most remote point on the planet trying to survive the American fury. They had taken their shot at us and won a symbolic victory. But they miscalculated about the mettle of the American spirit, and most of them have paid with their lives, thanks be to God. That spirit of taking the best shot America’s enemies can deliver is what inspired the men at Fort McHenry: burn down our Capital if you can, because in short order we will chase you into the sea and out of America forever. You may give us your best shot but we will unleash the furies of Hell against you in due course.

America’s battles have been won because there is a parallel element to the American spirit. This added element to our national character is what brought to mind the second event that I recalled after reading Hanson’s essay. The date I have in mind is April 18, 1942. Just months before the worldwide furies of nationalism and fascism set their sights on America with the intention of taking her down and neutralizing her to end any opposition to their plans of worldwide domination.

The Japanese Empire struck their first blow on December 7, 1941 by raiding Pearl Harbor. Almost 2,500 American servicemen and civilians were killed that day, along with the destruction of most of our Pacific fleet. Almost sixty-five years later, the USS Arizona still lies in Pearl Harbor as a tomb for her crew. But our three Pacific aircraft carriers survived, and so did the American spirit. Through the darkness, hope remained.

Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who planned the assault and led the Japanese forces in the Pearl Harbor attack, was aware of this. Even as his planes returned hailing their decisive victory, Yamamoto warned his staff, "I fear that we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve." As a shrewd commander, he knew the character of his American adversary. Yamamoto knew more about the American spirit than many Americans themselves that dark day. Events like these force us to remember who we are and what we represent to the world.

The attack on Pearl Harbor brought to Americans clarity of vision by exposing the degree of threat posed by their enemies. Much like Hanson observes, it wasn’t just America’s international interests that were being attacked by the fascists Axis Powers – it was the way of American life itself that the enemy was determined to destroy. And Americans from every corner of the country and every walk of life rose to fight America’s battle on behalf of the free world. It was not America’s martial might that was released against our enemies; it was the American spirit itself. The country’s resources and industry were dedicated to retaking the initiative from our enemies, and this is precisely what Yamamoto rightly feared. Within months, the engines of American industry were put to the war effort and millions of American warriors were flung to the farthest reaches of the globe to defeat our enemies. Having taken their best shot against America, Yamamoto knew even then at the beginning of the conflict that the American spirit would prevail.

Still bruised and broken from the Pearl Harbor attack, America’s leaders drew deep from the well of our national spirit and approved a plan to take the battle to our enemies and to demonstrate the American resolve to win the war that had been thrust upon us. Less than a month after the attack, a cavalier Army Air Corps Lt. Colonel, Jimmy Doolittle, formulated a strategy to attack the Japanese homeland. The plan, however, was risky and would require that American technology and the flight crews themselves would be pushed to their very limits and beyond. The mission could easily end in total failure and death for all the personnel participating in the raid. One of the three aircraft carriers that had avoided destruction on December 7th would also be put in jeopardy. The B-25s that were used had never been launched from an aircraft carrier, and there was no margin for error as the planes took off. The risks were enormous, but it would be a perfect opportunity to demonstrate to our enemies and to ourselves the American national spirit. In a decision that reflects what is best and true about the American national spirit, just like George Washington crossing the Delaware, they took the gamble.

The stakes were raised even higher on April 18, 1942 when the carrier bearing Doolittle's sixteen B-25B bombers was spotted by a Japanese ship. One day and 200 miles away from their scheduled launching point, Doolittle decided to launch the attack. Flying 650 miles in single-file formation at wave top altitude, the American bombers reached the Japanese coast. In broad daylight, Americans were able to bomb the Japanese cities of Yokohama, Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya and the imperial city of Tokyo.

To any other country, such a raid would have been seen as foolish, unnecessarily risky and a likely failure. But as American bombs rained down on the Japanese that day, just weeks after suffering a stinging defeat at Pearl Harbor, America was delivering an unmistakable message to its enemies: we will bring the war home to you. That’s the American way.

Bombing Tokyo wasn’t a symbolic victory for America; it was a foretaste for the Japanese people of the fury that was to follow. Jimmy Doolittle and his raiders weren’t out to inflict revenge; they came as harbingers of reckoning. Taking the battle to our enemies is what Americans do. While the French national motto since the time of Napoleon has been, “Je me rends” (I surrender), the American national motto since our struggle for first freedom and independence has been, “Don’t Tread On Me!” The Japanese Empire learned first-hand that attacking America has fatal consequences. Strike us and we will apply our greatest minds to find ways to unlock even nature’s deepest secrets, as we did with the atomic bomb, to rain fire and death upon you.

The Doolittle Raid is a consummate example of the second element of the American spirit. Yes, Americans can take the worse blows that our enemies have to offer, just like we did at Fort McHenry. It is something we remember and celebrate. But our enemies who dare to tread on us should remember that in the end, we will bring the battle home to you.

And Americans never forget their blood-debt. Yamamoto found this out himself on April 18, 1943, one year after Doolittle’s Raid, when a squadron of American P-38s flew 430 miles under radio silence and caught up with his aircraft, shooting it down and killing Yamamoto.

This was the message we delivered to the world after 9/11 when we forcibly deposed the Taliban Islamic theocracy in Afghanistan and Saddam’s Baathist thugocracy in Iraq. Our enemies should recall that what the Soviet Union was not able to accomplish in ten years in Afghanistan, the United States of America pulled off in the matter of weeks. In Iraq, our military strategists developed and our soldiers executed a plan that left the largest Arab army in the world no other option than to go home rather than fight the invading American foe in open battle. It seems they learned from our American military’s last visit to the region. For that reason alone it was appropriate for President Bush and the entire country to greet the returning sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln and the soldiers who fought their way to Baghdad with the words, “Mission Accomplished!”

Yes, some of America’s fighting men and women lost their lives in the rush to Baghdad and Kabul. Some are still the targets and victims of terrorists and cowardly murderers today. Flag-draped coffins are the awful price we pay for our freedoms, but it has always been a price that Americans have been willing to pay. Each one of our war dead is an irreplaceable loss; but they are not irreplaceable because they were young or left families behind. They were irreplaceable because they were Americans willing to fight America’s battles. What better memorial to the American spirit do we have than these men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice to take the battle to our enemies?

As we are in a period of doubt regarding the progress of the Global War on Terror, we would do well to remember that America has always been plagued by cranks and cowards – those faithless souls whose iniquity in not losing faith in America, but losing faith in themselves as Americans. Regardless, we should never lose our faith. Even when Congress was considering the recognition of The Star-Spangled Banner in the early 20th Century, there were voices calling our great national anthem a “hymn of hate”. The summer soldiers and the sunshine patriots are always with us, whether they are retired armchair generals or craven moonbat politicians, singing their siren songs enticing us to crash upon the rocks of self-doubt, retreat and inaction. For our own sake, we should stay the course and steer clear of those waters.

America’s enemies should not take any comfort at what the cranks and cowards have to say. Islamists should remember the fate of their predecessors, the Fascists and the Communists, who were swept up into the waste bin of history by Americans. The sunshine patriots could be heard back then, too. And Iranians should remember that no matter how far they develop their nuclear capability that we have some old scores to settle with them as well. Jimmy Carter is no longer President and Iran has a blood debt still left to pay from attacks on Americans from Beirut to the Khobar Towers – and America has every intention of collecting on that debt. We always remember the wounds inflicted by our enemies and will repay at the hour of our own choosing.

The American spirit resides deep within our national soul: moral reckoning is our inspiration and war is in our life-blood. Americans should not ever doubt that the rest of the world marvels at our restraint, even though our enemies mistake our restraint for weakness – a mistake they make at their own peril. It is an everlasting testament to the rightness of America’s cause that at the height of our military power at the end of World War Two in sole possession of the most awesome weapon of destruction ever created by mankind that Americans didn’t blink when we disbanded our armies and sent the American legions home to live and work in peace. As former Secretary of State Colin Powell has said, when America has fought its wars on foreign soil, all America has ever asked for is enough land to bury our dead. The long list of countries that have had their freedom secured through American military might over the past two centuries should shame our loudest international critics and quiet our domestic sunshine patriots. Honest historians will never chronicle the story of an American Empire.

We must keep in our hearts daily the American soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen living in harm’s way all over the world. They fly the skies in Afghanistan; they patrol the deadly streets of Iraq; they keep in the peace in the Balkans; they sail the Taiwan Straits; they man the line along the 38th Parallel on the Korean Peninsula. America doesn’t have the largest army in the world or the largest navy. From the beginning America has known that it is not strength of arms alone that will secure victory; the America warrior and the heart that beats within him is why we will win the war against terror. And the American warrior is guided by the American national spirit. In war, America is protecting of the innocent; generous to our friends and allies; and merciless to our enemies, yet magnanimous in victory.

For two-hundred and thirty years, this has been the essence of the American national spirit and the heart of American war policy: we will take your best shot and we will bring the battle home to you. And America never forgets its blood-debt. As long as there are Americans left to fight our battles, our enemies should tremble in fear. I thank Victor Davis Hanson for reminding me of it. In this time of uncertainty and doubt about the progress of the Global War on Terror, it is something that both we and our enemies would do well to remember.