A ghost is haunting the world — the ghost of radical Islamist terrorism.  Cities worldwide have experienced terror, mass murders, and destruction by terrorists. Radical Islamists demand absolute theological, political, and cultural compliance. The conflict is between the divine law of Islam and secular Western laws.

  In America, there is separation of church and state. According to Osama bin Laden and his cohorts, there cannot be such a separation in religion. They also define the political doctrine that directs how Islamists must deal with their non-believing neighbors. These terrorists are by-bproducts of their militant ideologies. We must address the underlying ideology logically and persistently. If we do not, our efforts are wasted.  We must not hesitate in this effort under the guise of political correctness.  Europe and America cannot afford to continue to ignore the actions of radical terrorists.

  America’s foreign policy in the Middle East and its support of Israel has not caused terrorism, as the liberals would have you believe.  The cause, instead, is 1,400 years of jihad.  Statistics bear this out.  In many non-western countries such as India, Thailand, and Nigeria, there are very few Jews and Americans. Yet these nations have experienced jihadist terrorism.

  Addressing the underlying Islamic political ideology should have fallen to the liberal intellectuals in our own universities. The consequences of the left’s silence on radical Islam have been dire.  By their inaction, the liberal intellectuals in the West have tacitly supported the Islamist agenda.

  Since September 11, the Bush administration’s response to terrorism has been to wage war on Afghanistan and Iraq.  Five years and trillions of dollars later, what results have the Bush administration achieved?  There is no victory or even the promise of victory on the horizon.

  President Bush supports countries whose ideology he opposes. For example, Mr. Bush opposes Wasabi’s al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden.  Yet, he supports Saudi Arabia, the homeland of al-Qaida and bin Laden. He opposes the Shiite ayatollahs in Iran, but embraces the Iraqi government led by those very same Shiites. He cannot continue to have his cake and eat it too.

  There is a better way to win the global war against terrorism.  The war must be waged on two fronts: ideologically and militarily.  We must declare an ideological war on militant jihadists.  Finally, we must create a united front of democracies consisting of the United States, Britain, Western Europe, India, and Israel to combat the global problem of terrorism. Only after a concerted effort to destroy the ideology behind jihadism can we hope to win the war against militant Islam and the terrorism that it creates.