What America Is Really Up Against
By Mike Bayham
October 17, 2002

This past week was a stark reminder of the fact that our war against terrorism has not ended. First there was the attack on US military personnel in Kuwait. Then in what was basically a reenactment of the bomb attack on the USS Cole from 2000, a French oil tanker was severely damaged and a crew member was killed when a small boat full of explosives sped toward it and detonated. As was the case with the attack on the US naval ship two years ago, the attack took place off the coast of Yemen, a nation that has been used as a base for terrorists.

And most recently, terrorists killed 183 people when they bombed a nightclub frequented by young people in the tourist resort of Bali. It is probably not a coincidence that these events have all come after Congress' recent passage of a resolution authorizing the president to use force against Iraq. The culprit behind these hateful acts of barbarism is both obvious and elusive.

At the risk of sounding like a "tongues speaking" snake handler or a superstitious saint statue-Mary worshiping papist, I'll tell you who is responsible for the troubles in the world today... and for that matter yesterday and the year before.

Though the war against terror has been focused mainly on the Muslim world, our true enemies are not exclusive to any race, religion, or region. In fact our opponents aren't a who but a what. Its name is simple: evil, though in religious circles he is formally known as Satan.

Ronald Reagan was scoffed at for using the phrase in describing the Soviet Union and George W. Bush still receives ridicule from politicians, journalists, and academics regarding his characterization of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as members of an "Axis of Evil." Apparently to some people, evil is too strong or hokey a word to use to describe people who blow up crowded buses, murder children, and ruin entire nations.

As corny as it might sound, evil is precisely what this country has been fighting over the past century though it assumed different identities in each of the respective confrontations. Evil and its destructive forces have taken many shapes and names over the years.

Sixty years ago two of civilizations greatest threats came from two different sections of the globe to destroy and reshape the world as we know it. From the west came the Nazis whose campaigns of genocide and ethnic cleansing sought to eliminate from the world those whose only crime was belonging to a particular ethnicity or faith. From the east were the imperial Japanese who raped and murdered indiscriminately across China and reveled in the torturing of American servicemen.

After their defeat, a group that was driven to world conquest by the godless ideology of Communism quickly filled the "evil" vacuum. Though for some regrettable reason, their names do not share the same stigma as the German fuhrer's, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, and Kim Il Sung all practiced or inspired acts of barbarism against their own people and their neighbors.

Even though all of those mentioned have since left the mortal confines of the earth, the legacies of the departed leaders in Communist China and North Korea still oppresses generations of people who know of no other life than persecution, poverty and misery. While North Korea and China have ceased to be an overt threat to America, a new evil has taken the place of Marxism as America's primary adversary: militant Islam.

Militant Islamists have been at war with Israel since the creation of the Jewish state. Israel has been invaded several times and though there has not been a declaration of hostilities made against it recently, there has been an informal war against the people of the country by terrorists who have engaged in a number of suicide bombings and random shootings of religious pilgrims.

Despite the fact these atrocities were taking place in a land very far away, it was only a matter of time before these terrorists set their sights on Israel's main ally, the United States. Radical Islamists are possessed by the same megalomania that that guided history's previous harbingers of evil. Though the Russians have received a bad rap for their handling of Chechnya, the world has shown little regard for the terrorist attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians in various parts of Russia by Chechen militants.

Shortly after the United States stepped into Yugoslavian internal affairs to prevent Serbian soldiers from massacring Albanian Muslims in Kosovo, the "victims" became the aggressors and initiated a war against the peaceful Balkan nation of Macedonia.

Though there are more than a few Muslims that still moan about the near millennium old crusades by European's Christians, it should not be forgotten that northern Africa and a large part of the Holy Land was Christian until the forces of Mohammed swept in from the east and engaged in conversion by the scimitar.

Militant Islam is only the latest form of the kind of wickedness of human nature that has caused more innocent blood to spill and tears of sorrow to be wept. That evil will be forever present in the world until the end of days is a reality Americans must face with enduring vigilance. Though there will never be a conclusive victory by man over this nemesis, it can be contained by confronting the present threat without letting cowardice or weariness dissuade us from facing the next one. Judging by evil's past track record, the cost of confronting it will save more lives in the end than by letting it have its way.