OPINION:
With blizzards, deflated footballs and green-lipsticked YouTube personalities dominating recent news, it was easy to miss two hugely important truth-telling moments. If only they had received the same coverage as air pressure in NFL regulation footballs.
“The truth has no agenda,” the late Andrew Breitbart often said. “The truth is the truth.” And yet in the years since the Sept. 11, 2001 Islamic terror attacks, few brave souls have been willing to speak the truth about the real nature of the global Islamic threat.
Now, with the jihadi slaughter in Paris at Charlie Hebdo magazine, the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) and its routine beheadings, the collapse of Yemen to an Iranian proxy, Tehran’s unstoppable march toward nuclear weapons, the mass murders and kidnappings carried out by Boko Haram in Nigeria, and the Pakistani Taliban killing rampage that left more than 100 children dead, an ever-increasing number of people seem willing to tell the truth about the variants of jihad, what drives it and its utility in achieving the ultimate goal of Islamic supremacy.
The small ranks of truth-tellers got a boost over the past week from two likely candidates for the Republican nomination for president: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Both made unequivocal statements regarding the nature and motivations of the enemy that deserve attention.
In a speech in London, Mr. Jindal spoke of three organizing principles for U.S. leadership: freedom, security and truth. A nation cannot enjoy the first two unless it is willing to fearlessly embrace the last one.
Mr. Jindal identified our primary and urgent security threat as “ISIS and all forms of radical Islam.” Note that he said “all forms” of radical Islam. That means not limiting the enemy to the violent jihadis flying planes into buildings, shooting up magazine headquarters and beheading Americans. It means recognizing that the jihad comes in different forms, including the gradual universalization of Shariah law.
AUDIO: Monica Crowley with Andy Parks
As Mr. Jindal put it, you cannot have both Shariah and freedom. Freedom “means the right to speak freely, to publish any cartoons you want. It means the right to worship freely. It means the right to self-determination.” But “radical Islamists do not believe in freedom or common decency, nor are they willing to accommodate them in any way and anywhere.”
Further, their version of Shariah “is not just different than our law, it’s not just a cultural difference, it is oppression and it is wrong. It subjugates women and treats them as property, and it is antithetical to valuing all of human life equally. It is the very definition of oppression. We must stop pretending otherwise.”
Mr. Jindal called nonsense political cowardice, lies and excuse-making for the enemy. How refreshing. How desperately necessary.
Meanwhile, in a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the endless negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, Mr. Rubio did his own truth-telling, schooling the Obama administration about the true objective of the terrorist regime:
“This is not a traditional nation-state undergoing a cost-benefit analysis,” he said. “This is a cleric-led regime, a clerical government, with a clear intent of ultimately one day unifying the entire world under the flag of their radical version of Islam, led by someone who believes that, that will only happen after a cataclysmic showdown with the West.”
Mr. Rubio questioned why we should trust that the Iranian leadership will give up its nuclear pursuit, given its belief in an apocalyptic fight: “We are not dealing with Belgium here. We’re not dealing with Luxembourg. We are dealing with a radical cleric, with a radical view of his obligation and role in the world and he wants nuclear weapons to be able to do it .
“They will retain all the infrastructure that it takes to enrich, they will have the weapons design, and they will have the delivery system and the missiles, and at some point — three years, five years, 10 years — they build a weapon and now the world is at their mercy.”
Exactly so. The Islamic State, al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran, the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Organization of the Islamic Conference: Their tactics and strategies often differ, but their goal is the same: the global domination of Islam. Imagine how much more quickly and easily it can be achieved if Iran acquires nuclear weapons.
That is the truth. The United States will not get our security and moral standing back in the Middle East and globally until we recognize it. Good for Mr. Jindal and Mr. Rubio for having the guts to speak it boldly.
If only all of our other leaders had such clear-eyed knowledge and public courage, we’d be well on our way to fighting this war to win it.
• Monica Crowley is online opinion editor at The Washington Times.
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