I normally do not opine about national issues, as I am a state legislator. But I find I must make an exception in this case, partly because I was recently named the Chairman of the Georgia Base Realignment and Closure Committee whose mission is to protect our Georgia military installations.
The other is that I spent the vast majority of my military career fighting the same sort of savages who perpetrated the infamous attack in Orlando … and it angers me that the President has thrown away the hard work that the men and women whom I served with did to make our nation safe.
The violence is unspeakable — but sadly familiar. It happened in San Bernardino and at the Boston Marathon. It happened in Paris and in Belgium and in Spain and in England. The difference in Orlando is that this terrorist attack was the worst on U.S. shores since 9/11.
As you recall, 9/11 was caused by a group of radical Islamic terrorists who did not employ guns, yet killed thousands of people. For a very short time our nation rallied together, denouncing those thugs for the barbarians they were. Democrats and Republicans voted together to authorize a war both on Afghanistan and, then, Iraq.
We hunted down Al Qaeda in a military campaign that kept the U.S. terror-free until President Obama pulled our troops out of Iraq. That act – a retreat that our military advisors warned against – was the birth of ISIS, the “JV Team” that has brought terror to America again.
Two days after the President claimed that ISIS was contained, terrorists gunned down scores in Paris. A few days after Orlando, the President claims that we were winning the war against ISIS. Yet just two days later the CIA Chief directly refuted him, saying that ISIS was better poised to attack us now than ever before.
To deflect their failure, the Left blames the NRA for Orlando. That is absurd. The killer yelled “Allah Akbar!” and posted on Facebook dozens of times during the massacre to make sure everyone on the planet understood that he was committing his atrocities on behalf of Islam. He sought out a LGBT night club because ISIS routinely murders every LGBT person they come across. That is a well-documented fact. It is also a fact – and sad irony – that in the 1970’s when Iran deposed the Shah, the Iranian LGBT community vigorously supported Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution.
Guess what happened when he got in power? Khomeini jailed and murdered those same LGBT members. If any group in the West should fear radical Islam, it is the LGBT community.
Gun-control advocates believe we could stop this violence by making guns illegal. Yet France and Spain and Belgium and England have far more strict gun laws than we do – so does Chicago for that matter — yet it didn’t stop those attacks. Somehow the “bad guys” always find a way to kill people.
Nearly all mass shooting events happen in “safe zones” where guns are prohibited. Why? Because the criminal — who doesn’t have a problem with getting guns illegally – knows he is “safe” from being shot by law-abiding citizens. The “safe zone” creates a “safe” environment for the shooter. The Left wants us to put our trust in the government, yet that same government clearly failed when they mistakenly took the murderer off the terror list. It is exactly because the government is so inept that law abiding citizens must arm themselves.
Radical Islamic terrorists have been waging war against America since days of the Barbary pirates. Trying to figure out a way to negotiate with these slavers, President Thomas Jefferson read the entire Koran to help understand their motivations. This is what he wrote: “It was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority are sinners that it is their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners.” He eventually ordered the Marines to storm Tripoli in a battle that is famously memorialized by the Marine’s Hymn’s “From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli.”
Some of you might think I’m drudging up useless history. But consider this: the high-water mark of Islamic expansion occurred in 1683. A vast Muslim army was about to accomplish something they’d been trying to do for centuries; conquer the jewel of Europe – Vienna. The invaders bombed out a part of the wall and were ready to storm the Austrian capital when a Polish king came to the rescue, smashing the invaders in the largest cavalry charge in history. The ignoble defeat of the Muslim army – just when they were on the verge of a glorious success – has been a source of angst for centuries after. Osama Bin Laden actually wrote about this before his horrific attack before Sept. 11.
Patrick Henry once said, “Gentlemen may cry, peace, peace: but there is no peace. The war is actually begun.”
Whether we like it or not, radical Islam terrorists are waging a war against us. If we don’t fight to win, we can expect decades of withering losses. The difference? Our children will be counted amongst the dead.
