Victor Davis Hanson has one of the best arguments I’ve seen yet against those who would seek to appease the Islamofacists. Hanson writes in the Spring 2004 Issue of City Journal:
Most important, military deterrence and the willingness to use force against evil in its infancy usually end up, in the terrible arithmetic of war, saving more lives than they cost. All this can be a hard lesson to relearn each generation, especially now that we contend with the sirens of the mall, Oprah, and latte. Our affluence and leisure are as antithetical to the use of force as rural life and relative poverty once were catalysts for muscular action. The age-old lure of appeasement—perhaps they will cease with this latest concession, perhaps we provoked our enemies, perhaps demonstrations of our future good intentions will win their approval—was never more evident than in the recent Spanish elections, when an affluent European electorate, reeling from the horrific terrorist attack of 3/11, swept from power the pro-U.S. center-right government on the grounds that the mass murders were more the fault of the United States for dragging Spain into the effort to remove fascists and implant democracy in Iraq than of the primordial al-Qaidist culprits, who long ago promised the Western and Christian Iberians ruin for the Crusades and the Reconquista.
Read the whole thing. We have indeed overlooked the rising threat for too long. Backing away from it now would be foolish if we wish to protect American lives from those who want us dead whether or not they are appeased.
The use of force alone is only a temporary fix if the dangerous worldview of radical Islam is left to exist. Here is where the boundaries of government end. American Christians should pray that Islamic nations are met with the liberation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ—just as we pray for those in need of liberation in our own country. Proclaimation of the gospel in Islamic countries angers the heralds of appeasement just as much as (perhaps even more than) American military action. Christians must stand strong as well, and not shirk the giving of those in Islamic countries the only true hope they can can have.