Confronting ISIS in Europe and the United States: A Time for Action

As evidence mounts of the monumental slaughter in Nice, France; Orlando, Florida; San Bernardino, California; Brussels, Belgium; and Paris, France, the citizens of France, Western Europe, and the United States must also endure the horrific spectacle of barbarians who boil people to death and who burn young girls alive because they refuse sexual advances by Islamic jihadists.

As a consequence of these attacks, ISIS (the Islamic State) has placed the world’s most powerful countries on notice and on edge. This is a civilizational struggle between the West and historically barbaric evil.

In France this civilizational struggle casts a long shadow over its future. This is particularly true since some 30,000 radical Islamists live in France. This danger is amplified because more than 10,000 Muslims living in France have been identified as dangerous to the security of the state. Similar dangers are richly implicated by the plans of Western political elites to admit – without any semblance of meaningful control – more refugees and immigrants from the Middle East when they cannot be thoroughly vetted.

As the frequency and the human costs of terror attacks rise – with 130 killed in Paris this past fall, 14 Americans murdered in San Bernardino last year, 49 Americans slaughtered in Orlando this past month, and 84 individuals, including 10 children, mowed down in Nice, France – vital questions surface.

How many people must be tortured and slaughtered before the West realizes that ISIS and other radical Islamic terrorist organizations have launched an existential war on the West, one that they intend to win?

Responding to this existential threat to Western civilization, the ACLJ, with offices around the globe including offices in both France and the United States, has outlined a plan of action to defeat ISIS and other radical jihadists wherever they may be.

We recommend the following actions:

(1) Secure our nation’s borders, a move that would require stronger border controls and stronger vetting procedures;

(2) Follow the French example and name the enemy for who they are—radical Islamic jihadists—rather than fall prey to the politically correct view that naming our enemy strengthens our enemies’ resolve;

(3) Fix our broken intelligence systems since, in both in the United States and in France, intelligence failures have contributed to the problem;

(4) Ramp up our intelligence efforts to monitor social media accounts and increase the use of undercover sting operations to smoke out jihadists at home or abroad, a move that would require the actual destruction of the Islamic State’s ongoing Internet access in Iraq and Syria by military force;

(5) Prosecute at home the individuals supporting Jihad; expel foreigners and individual with dual citizenship who support Jihad; refuse the return to Western countries of nationals who took part in the Jihad;

(6) Unleash the exercise of military force by NATO and the individual countries that comprise NATO in order to utterly destroy ISIS militarily in Syria, Iraq, Libya or anywhere else in the world where they may be found. To that end, we strongly urge Congress to pass an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) – in addition to the general anti-terror AUMF already in place – targeting ISIS for destruction as we combat this civilizational threat;

(7) Unleash a full-throated ideological effort to combat the toxic jihadist ideology that fuels terror attacks;

(8) Support the religious and ethnic minorities in their countries of origin and defend the right, especially of refugees, to leave Islam.

Western countries should be confident in the strength of their culture, noting that radical Islam is the barbaric expression of an inner crisis of Islam caused by its incompatibility with the values of globalized modernity.

These steps will require fortitude in the face and danger. Such steps will demand that the West enter into this civilizational struggle with both the will to win and the knowledge that the projection of only “soft power” and political correctness that refuses to name our enemy is a recipe for defeat.

The West must prepare itself to make this momentous life-or-death decision. It is time to confidently strengthen our resolve and make the correct choice. To do otherwise amounts to a declaration of surrender, one that threatens our future and the future of our children.

This article was written by ACLJ Director of Policy Harry Hutchison and ECLJ Executive Director Grégor Puppinck.