Why we Fight

The reason we have to fight
By MICHAEL COREN

Imagine a history book being read by people in 100 years time. In a chapter entitled, Why We Fought, it would list the crimes of an ideology and a movement, Islamic fundamentalism, that became so powerful and so grotesque in the opening years of the 21st century that the civilized world was obliged to resist.

The book would explain that some of the wars of resistance were unsuccessful, or even ill-advised, but that in the end the forces of light triumphed over the death-black darkness.

It would also recount how some people in the civilized world opposed the struggle, out of self-loathing, cowardice, leftist politics or simply because they were part of the jihadist movement.

But right always wins in the end, the readers would be reminded, and did so in this great culture war. Because the crimes were as many as they were devilish.

They beheaded Christian girls in Indonesia who were making their way to school. They stopped them at gunpoint, forced them to kneel down and then cut off their heads, the blood drenching their tiny uniforms.

They planted bombs in places of worship that belonged to their own Muslim faith, murdering scores of people who they knew to be innocent, apolitical and intent only on worshipping and praying. They demanded that others respect Mosques but simultaneously used them as killing fields.

They murdered 150,000 of their own people in Algeria in an attempt to destabilize their government. Often they would slit the throats of children in front of their parents before in turn killing those horrified mothers and fathers.

In Iraq they kidnapped people who had devoted their lives to helping the impoverished and the abused, tied those good people up like animals and then tortured and humiliated them. They videotaped their screams and their wild pleas for mercy and help and then slowly cut off their heads with a knife, holding the severed object up to the cameras.

They pulled organs from within the bodies of their victims and offered them to children, then ran away with severed limbs as if they were treasured trophies.

In Lebanon they dragged badly wounded co-religionists from their hospital beds and beat them to death on the street. Many of these men had been their allies only days before. In northern Israel they kidnapped families and forced fathers to watch their tiny sons having their brains literally beaten out of their heads on the rocks.

They declared their intention to target children because, they said, they knew their enemies valued children most of all and loved life. For them, they boasted, death was more important than life. They vomited this philosophy all over the world, in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and Australia.

They indoctrinated their own children and taught them to hate and loathe and lust for blood and death. They bombed schools, mosques, churches, hospitals, crowds of children asking for candy, old people's homes, funeral possessions.

They despised progress, freedom, grace, gentleness, empathy, tolerance, civilization, truth, thought, understanding, joy, laughter and love. They hated humanity and they hated God.

That, the readers would be told, was why we fought. And that is why we fight. Because if we genuinely care about all that is fine and grand and important we have no choice.