Early in 2002, just a few months after the 9/11 attacks, I heard Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deliver a message to the USA in a speech at a conference in Miami, Florida. He said that America needed to realize two things about terrorism and terrorists.
First, the fight against terrorism will last a long time. And second, the terrorists want to kill all of us, namely, the people of Israel, the people of the USA, and any other nations that do not conform to their radical Islamic extremism.
It's 14 years later and Paris is now the latest target of this sick ideology.
However, there are big differences between today and 14 years ago. There are more terrorists, more terrorist organizations, and more countries are being attacked unexpectedly. Terrorists and terrorist organizations are also hitting more "soft" targets, just so they can cause as much death, destruction and disruption of people's way of life as they can.
Although the USA has been hit several times since 2001, many terrorist attempts have been thwarted by our intelligence agencies. But it is impossible for the intelligence agencies to always bat a thousand, so they will not be able to thwart every attack.
As individual citizen, we can only "say something if we see something", and continue to live our lives as normally as possible. But it would be encouraging if the Obama Administration would call it what it is, radical Islamic extremism, and devote the necessary resources – which could come from a host of wasteful initiatives like fighting “climate change.”
Then our intelligence agencies could do a more thorough job instead of merely trying to minimize the potential damage, while the administration continues to downplay the serious threat of radical Islamic terrorism.
People who want to kill all of us are not the “JV team,” as Obama insisted as recently as last year. Just look at the latest coordinated attacks in Paris. Let's continue to pray for Paris and the affected families, and lend our support where we can.
But also, let's pray for the USA and the rest of the world. Our worldwide fight against radical Islamic terrorists is going to be a long one as Netanyahu said. We’re in it for a long time.
