On any given day in Iraq or Syria, ISIS and or al-Qaida takes dozens of men and young boys, lies them in a ditch and then slaughters them with small bursts of machine gun fire from AK 47's. In Afghanistan, the Taliban slaughters entire villages, while Boko Haram militants rape hundreds of female captives in Nigeria.
Within the last 10 days, ISIS has claimed responsibility for the downing of a Russian airliner in Egypt that killed 224 people, a double suicide bombing in a residential area in southern Beirut, killing at least 43 and injuring 200 more, and the simultaneous shooting and bombing attacks in Paris that left at least 130 dead, and more than 250 injured.
This is the world of radical Islamic extremism and the enemy we face both here and abroad. Call it ISIS, ISIL, al Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah, or as you wish — this is an enemy that threatens every nation that lives in freedom, or that believes in human and women's rights, or believes in the freedom of religious expression.
It is not a conventional enemy, or an enemy of a state, but one of chameleons that have the ability to blend into our communities, and wants the annihilation of our societal values and beliefs, the annihilation of Israel and Christianity, and believes wholeheartedly that it has the right to execute anyone who differs from its beliefs.
There is no diplomatic solution here. These are not people that you can negotiate with, or convince they are fighting a losing battle. What makes this an enemy like no other, is that they believe in martyrdom, and dying for their cause and there is nothing worse than fighting an enemy that wants to die.
In Paris, as the terrorists slaughtered innocent men and women lying on the floor in Bataclan Hall, just like those men and boys in Syria, once confronted by the police, they detonated their suicide bomb belts, only to cause more death and devastation.
This attack was strategically coordinated and so sophisticated that French law enforcement believes that they were actually using encrypted communications, to avoid detection by the French national security authorities.
The lessons learned here are many: some we have known for close to three decades but like ostriches with our heads in the sand, we've ignored. With each passing day, the chances of an attack on U.S. soil like the one we witnessed in Paris, increase.
Our intelligence networks although far better than they were on Sept. 10, 2001, but I cannot stress the need for them to be the best they can be because in reality, that is our first line of defense against an attack like Paris.
Our state and federal law-enforcement authorities, particularly the FBI, need resources to adequately investigate possible terror targets in the U.S. Our local and state police need specialized resources, equipment and training in preparation for responses to acts of terror here at home.
We've already heard that some of the attackers in Paris entered Europe on a refugee program, which clearly dictates our refugee and immigration issues need to be resolved sooner than later.
Would we allow a known terrorist into this country legally? Of course not! So why is it, knowing the threats we face, we are doing little to nothing to secure our borders? If we cannot vet the refugees attempting to come in from Syria and Iraq, then send them elsewhere.
Our political leadership has for one reason or another, skirted the issue of combating terrorism in any real effective way. The bottom line is, we now face an enemy that is dead-set on one thing and one thing only: killing anyone that disagrees with them or prevents them from caring out their mission. Kill, or be killed.
In my testimony before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, on May 18, 2004, I said these words: "I believe our battles have only just begun. We must stand firm, stay pre-emptive, and never believe for one minute that this war is over. They brought this war to us and it is a war we cannot afford to lose."
We are definitely at war . . . not against Muslims, but against Muslim radical extremists, and it’s a war, as I said then, we cannot afford to lose.
It is kill or be killed, and now it is entirely up to us.
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