“The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism,” stated Samuel P. Huntington, “It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.” The above statement was in his 1993 book Clash of Civilizations.

I just finished Michael B. Oren’s book Power, Faith and Fantasy and I read this 780 page book in five days. I could not put it down. My first recommendation is that all elected officials and military members read this book immediately. Most Americans believe that the first war the new United States fought, after the Revolutionary War, was the War of 1812. In fact, in 1801 Tripoli declared war on the US because we objected to Muslim pirates attacking US ships and forcing the passengers and crew into slavery.

The pre-Islamic Arab and Persian world and the subsequent Islamic Arab and Persian world had been in the slave business for over a thousand years. They had been selling off sub-Saharan Africans as slaves for hundreds of years before anyone ever sent a future slave to the Americas. Taking Europeans and Americans from ships and sending raiding parties into European counties to acquire over 1.2 million “white” slaves for North Africa was just part of the normal Muslim culture.

Approximately 650,000 black Africans were sent to the US as slaves over the course of 300 years. It has been estimated that 11 to 12 <I>million</I> black Africans were removed from sub-Saharan Africa and sold off as slaves by Muslim slavers. Again, it is a cultural thing and Islam to this day still supports and believes in the taking of slaves and the use of forced labor.

In the early days of the new United States, most of the States did not want a standing Navy. They were afraid that it would be used as a tool of the US government to control the individual States. The modern US Navy owes its existence to the hostile Muslim slaving industry. Congress approved the formation of the Navy to fight the North African Muslim pirates. The US Marine Corp was formed to provide a ground fighting force for the new Navy.

The major underlying issue that I took from Oren’s book was that the US and the rest of the non-Muslim world just, still, does not "get it" when it comes to Islam. We continue to make excuses for Islam and blame the never-ending hostility towards the West on small groups of Islamic fundamentalist and “radicals.” The truth is, Islam’s one and only goal is the conversion, subjugation or destruction of the entire non-Muslim world.

Their problem is they do not have the power to force their religious and cultural ideas on the rest of the world. If Islam were a bordered country, in a defined geographical location, it would have been crushed centuries ago. The problem for the West is Islam is not just a country, it is a dangerous, never-to-let-up religious culture that does not understand the word "no."

The US’s stance has never been to colonize the Muslim world as Europe did. They foolishly just wanted to send help. We would give them ships and weapons and this would make them stronger Muslim pirates. Once the art of war progressed beyond the sword and shield, the Muslim world has been hard pressed to project its faith without acquiring advanced technology from the West.

This is a major source of their frustration. They want to be taken serious as the future dominating force in the world, but they can’t make it happen of their own volition. There are plenty of people in the West, including in the US, who are happy to sell or even give them the weapons and technology to help advance the course of Islamic domination. Of course, Pakistan has nuclear weapons. You have to know that they did not create them on their own. We in the West sold them what they needed to build their bombs and now we worry that an Islamic state has weapons of mass destruction.

We naively believe we can keep appeasing the Islamic world. Help them, even save them from their own kind (i.e. Kuwait) and maybe they will be good to us or at least leave us alone. Winston Churchill got it right “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”

Potential destructive force from the West it the only thing the Islamic world respects. Fear can be a great weapon, Islam uses it, how about the West?