The dangers of wishful thinking

This Thanksgiving we have more to reflect upon than simple gratitude. We’re in the 14th consecutive year of war.

After the epochal attacks on the 11th day of September 2001, the United States was forced to confront a painful truth: a portion of the Islamic world hates us.

They don’t hate us like Dodgers fans hate Giants fans. They hate us in a foaming-at-the-mouth, maniacal, psychotic way.

They hate us so much they aspire to murder and die while murdering. Parents raise their children to be martyrs in a diabolical cause.

While we seem to agree on precious little today, every poll shows Americans across the spectrum are sick of endless warfare — understandable after so many years — yet it’s fair to ask, why?

Why are we so sick of a war that has asked us to sacrifice so little?

Only a tiny fraction of Americans actually wear the uniform of this country and do the fighting and dying. Military families have every reason to be sick of war. I sometimes think the rest of us are just sick of hearing about war.

Or are we really sick of losing a war to homicidal maniacs?

That’s the unasked question because the answer makes us very uncomfortable.

And we are losing the war on terror. Don’t be deceived.

We’re not losing tactically. Despite a handful of lone wolf attacks, we’ve been able to successfully thwart any large-scale strikes within our borders. Where we’re losing is where it counts most — the hearts and minds of millions upon millions of young men and women who see ISIS butchers as noble and the United States as the Great Satan.

Within hours of the attacks on Paris President Barack Obama issued a boilerplate pledge of retribution and “justice” along with the obligatory words of condolence.

Inadvertently President Obama also revealed why America is losing the PR war to monsters.

The attack on Paris, said the president, was not just an attack on the people of France, “but an attack on all of humanity and the universal values that we share.”

The president couldn’t be more wrong.

There are no “universal values.” The beheaders and suicide bombers, the homophobic and misogynistic Ghazi who willingly destroy themselves as long as they can take an Infidel with them share nothing with the liberal tradition of Western civilization. Because America is the top dog, we’ll always be in the crosshairs of terrorists, but it’s Western culture itself the Jihadists really want to destroy.

America’s military, economic and cultural power is the tent pole holding up the civilized world. It doesn’t matter if you think this is true; the Jihadists believe it, and it matters greatly that President Obama and so many Western leaders have failed to grasp this fundamental reality.

The Jihad seeks global domination, the Grand Caliphate, a world where speech is not free, women are property, homosexuality is punishable by death, and outside ideas are intolerable.

A month or so prior to the September 11th attacks, the Taliban blew up thousand-year-old statues of the Buddha from the mountains of Afghanistan. What does Buddha have to do with Israel? With big oil? With America, for that matter? Those statues pre-dated Columbus by 500 years.

The answer, of course, is nothing. The Buddha statues represented a foreign concept to the incredibly draconian world-view of the extremists.

Pretending the world shares “universal values” will not create universal values. Unless we are willing to defend our values, not rhetorically, but physically, we will lose the very freedoms that make life worth living.

It should go without saying that all Muslims are not terrorists, but in these toxically PC times, let it be said yet again.

Still, let it also be said there is a terrible problem within the Muslim world.

Less than 24 hours after 130 people were slaughtered in Paris, the PA announcer at a soccer game in Turkey asked the fans for a moment of silence. Instead thousands, maybe tens of thousands, whistled and jeered and chanted “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!”

Obviously it wasn’t “Terrorist Night” at the Turkey vs. Greece game. Yet thousands of people showed by their booing and chanting their sympathies lie not with the murdered but with the murderers.

That’s something all of us should chew on over this Thanksgiving.

Doug McIntyre’s column appears Sundays. Hear him weekdays from 5-10 on AM 790. He can be reached at: Doug@KABC.com.