“I say to America that the Islamic Caliphate has been established. Don’t be cowards and attack us with drones. Instead send your soldiers, the ones we humiliated in Iraq. We will humiliate them everywhere, God willing, and we will raise the flag of Allah in the White House.” –Abu Mosa, spokesman for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)

So, how are those isolationist urges working out for you, my fellow Americans? You know what I’m talking about. The hand-wringing and/or the shrug of the shoulders accompanied by the “we can’t be the world’s policeman” bit. Far better to let the rest of the world burn if necessary, so we can solve the problems we have “right here at home.”

I get that America is “war weary,” or more to the point, that the American left and more than a few conservatives have convinced large swaths of the public that any intervention in foreign conflagrations constitutes the fulfillment of  a “neo-con fantasy.” Yet I would submit the real fantasy is the idea that America can somehow insulate itself from the scourge of Islamic terror, the one accompanied by another familiar bromide as in, “they’ve been killing each other for centuries, we don’t need to get involved.”

You know the trouble with being war weary? It is an utterly bankrupt notion when it rubs up against the reality that those dedicated to the destruction of Western civilization have no weariness of war whatsoever.

I’ll grant you there was a time when geography made the luxury of war weariness – and it is a luxury – reasonably possible. The familiar refrain of America being “oceans away” from the world’s hot spots certainly resonated. Technology has rendered that sort of isolationism completely obsolete. So has a completely poisonous ideology embraced by those willing to commit suicide to advance their agenda. In a nation where common sense was still prevalent, “willing to die in order to kill”  would be seen as the game-changer it truly is. The game-changer that also renders the concept of “containment” as obsolete as isolationism.

There was a brief moment in time when Americans understood this. Unfortunately it took the toppling of the World Trade Center, damage to the Pentagon, a would-be attack on that very same White House targeted by ISIS – along with the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans – to snap the nation to attention. Yet even as the bodies remained buried under tons of smoldering rubble, the hand-wringers who reflexively look to blame America first began their tireless and ultimately successful efforts to take a paradigm historical shift and turn it into a national mea culpa. “Why do they hate us?” gained an unseemly traction, ultimately leading to the “Bush lied people died” campaign that itself was a lie. One based on 2004 Democratic presidential aspirations, as opposed to the realpolitik of Islamic savagery.

Perhaps if the cynicism had been stopped there, Americans today might have a genuine understanding of the threat we face. Unfortunately, that cynicism has metastasized. The war in Iraq, along with what even progressives themselves once labeled as the “good war” in Afghanistan, has been denigrated as “completely unnecessary,” as if 9/11 never happened and the current threat is insignificant. Putting American troops in harm’s way has become unthinkable, and anything resembling a proactive confrontation against the greatest threat this nation has faced since WWII, is completely dismissed as “war-mongering.”

Nidal Hasan? “Workplace violence.” The bombing of the Boston Marathon? Another “bump in the road” that we shouldn’t over-react to. The countless near misses, as in Somali-born U.S. citizen Mohamed Osman Mohamud not getting to blow up the Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland; Pakistani-born Virginia resident Farooque Ahmed not being able to bomb Washington D.C.-area subway stations; Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a Jordanian legally living in Texas, unable to take down the 60-story Fountain Place office tower in Dallas with a car bomb; U.S. citizen Rezwan Ferdaus getting 17 years in jail before he could fly explosive-laden model airplanes into the Pentagon; Najibullah Zazi, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Bosnia, who didn’t get to blow up a New York subway car; or Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, a Bangladeshi national, who didn’t get to destroy the New York Federal Reserve?

Isolated incidents, as opposed to red hot warning signs.

Even those who label 9/11 as a “one-off” or a historical “anomaly” apparently forget that atrocity was the second attack on the World Trade Center following the semi-successful one in 1993 that killed “only” six people, courtesy of a truck bomb that was supposed to accomplish what the attack on 9/11 did.

And so we have the emergence of a transnational caliphate that far too many Americans see as something that can be contained within the Middle East–as long as one can ignore a 58 percent increase in Islamic terror groups worldwide since 2010, the latest outburst of anti-Semitism in Europe, the enslavement and/or annihilation of Christians in the Middle East and Africa, the escalation of anti-Semitism at our own PC-infested universities, and the virtual disintegration of our Southwest border that has provided thousands of individuals from terrorist-sponsoring nations a progressive-abetted welcome mat into America.

And while all of this occurs, Iran continues its steady march towards a nuclear weapon. A nuclear weapon the mullahs who believe in the return of the Twelfth or Hidden Imam, Islam’s version of the Second Coming, wouldn’t hesitate to give to ISIS. Remember that reality the next time you hear some clueless twit complaining about how much it “costs” to fight the Islamists. You know what might be a tad more economically problematic? A spate of terrorist attacks at American shopping malls, akin to the one perpetrated in Nairobi. A nuclear device detonated in an American city, followed by the promise of another and another – until the flag of Allah is raised over the White House.

Impossible? Nineteen hijackers armed with box cutters precipitated the worst domestic attack in the nation’s history. And right now, an army of ruthless, bloodthirsty thugs is currently cutting through Iraq and Syria like a hot knife through butter, even as they vow to expand the franchise. All while this administration talks about a measured response, and utterly naive leftists wring their hands and bemoan "mission creep.“ Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) epitomizes the intellectual bankruptcy. "I support strictly humanitarian efforts to prevent genocide in Iraq,” she states. Translation: I support the slaughter of Iraqis – as long as they die with their stomachs full.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest further “reassured” the public on Friday as well. “The president is just as determined to make sure the United States is not dragged back into a prolonged military conflict in Iraq,” he stated. Americans with self-inflicted amnesia like to forget why we were fighting a prolonged military conflict in Iraq, as well as Afghanistan. The idea was to prevent the conflict against Islamic jihadism from being fought in America ever again. But instead of fighting for unambiguous victory and withdrawing, we engaged in a contemptible cornucopia of politically correct warfare, highlighted by such bankrupt concepts as the Rules of Engagement, “winning hearts and minds” and an announced, scheduled troop withdrawal, all of which gave our enemies the one thing you can never give an enemy during wartime:

We gave them hope.

Is there any doubt that rampant American fecklessness has given ISIS the idea that their future shines ever brighter? “There is no doubt that their advance their movement over the last several months has been more rapid than the intelligence estimates, and I think the expectation of policy makers both in and outside of Iraq," said the Commander-in-Chief, who as recently as January dismissed this army as the equivalent of  JV basketball team. Sadly the only JV squad engaged in this civilizational struggle is the Obama administration.

And make no mistake: it is a civilizational struggle, and one side is pursuing unconditional surrender, and will continue to do so until it is ultimately achieved. Tragically, it’s not us.

© 2014 The Patriot Post.