The fundemental conflict
Reader comment on item: Washington Finally Gets It on Radical Islam

Submitted by Ralph C. Whaley MD (United States), Apr 25, 2005 at 12:22

America is in a war of self defense against an enemy dedicated to our destruction. We have been attacked because our way of life offends their religion. The enemy nations must be identified and defeated to protect America. The fundamental problem for America is not persuading Muslims to moderate their religious beliefs but to defeat the Muslim nations that have attacked us.

We must destroy both their ability and willingness to wage war by massive destruction of their weapons, their facilities for production and their will to fight. The primary enemy is Iran, the fountainhead of the hatred of America. That hatred springs from militant Islam and more fundamentally from Faith which is the essence of all religion. Individuals and nations can only exist in peace using reason and persuasion to deal with each other. Faith (belief in the absence of or in contraversion of evidence) necessarily appeals to force because persuasion requires facts, logic and making a case. The moral response to such an attack is force used in righteous defense.

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