I’m
a big fan of the 1 percent. No, not the dastardly 1 percent of Occupy
Wall Street myth; I’m partial, instead, to the 1 percent of Congress
that takes seriously the threat of Islamic-supremacist influence
operations against our government. The people have 435 representatives serving in the House and another
hundred in the Senate. Of these 535, a total of 288 are Republicans —
241 and 47 in the lower and upper chambers, respectively. Of these, only
five House conservatives — five — have had the fortitude to
raise concerns about the Islamist connections of government officials
entrusted with positions enabling them to shape U.S. policy.
Think about that. Republicans purport to be the national-security
party. For decades this claim was well founded, starting with Ronald
Reagan’s clarity in seeing the Soviets as enemies to be defeated, not
accommodated. President Reagan’s plan for the Cold War was, “We win,
they lose,” and he pulled it off because he was not under any illusions
about who “they” were. But something happened to the GOP in the Bush years. For all the
welcome understanding that Bill Clinton was wrong — that the jihad could
not be indicted into submission — the Bush administration never learned
a fundamental truth that Reagan knew only too well: You cannot defeat
your enemies unless you understand them, and you cannot even begin to
understand them if you are too craven to name them.
As they gather in Tampa for their quadrennial showcase,
Republicans, but for the 1 percent, remain timorous on the subject of
America’s enemies. Oh, they’ll tell you that we must confront
“terrorism” and crack down on the “terrorists.” But that’s not much
different from claiming to be against “burglary” and “burglars.”
Terrorism is a vicious crime, but it becomes a national-security threat
only when it is an instrument of an ideology that aims to destroy our
country. What made the terrorist organizations armed and trained by the
Soviets in the Sixties and Seventies a threat was the Soviets, not the terrorism.
America’s enemies are Islamic supremacists: Muslims adherent to a
totalitarian interpretation of Islam who, like Soviet Communists, seek
to impose their ideology throughout the world, very much including the
United States.
