What if?

Liberal-left commentator, Dana Milbank, noticed something fairly obvious about Barack Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday (here's my take). Milbank writes:

In 1938, Winston Churchill published “While England Slept,” about Britain’s failure to prepare for the Nazi threat.

Let’s hope that, when the history of this moment is written, the 2015 State of the Union address will not be retold under the title “While America Slept.”

Not since before the 2001 terrorist attacks has there been such a disconnect between the nation’s focus and the condition of the world. As threats multiply in the Middle East and Europe, President Obama delivered on Tuesday night an annual message to Congress that was determinedly domestic. And his inward-looking gaze is shared by lawmakers and the public.

Thousands of foreign fighters have joined with Muslim extremists in Syria and Iraq, and their fanatical cause has inspired sympathizers across the globe: 17 killed by terrorists in Paris; terrorism raids and a shootout in Belgium; a hunt for sleeper cells across Europe; a gunman attacking the Canadian Parliament; an Ohio man arrested after buying guns and ammunition, allegedly with plans to attack the Capitol. Even Australia has raised its terrorist threat level.

And yet, when it comes to countering the terror threat in America, the State of the Union is nonchalant. “We are 15 years into this new century, 15 years that dawned with terror touching our shores,” Obama said at the start of his speech. “It has been, and still is, a hard time for many. But tonight, we turn the page.”

Obama, full of swagger, turned the page — several pages — from the start of his address, when he assured Americans that “the shadow of crisis has passed,” before arriving at his discussion of national security.

I'm not a big fan of Dana Milbank, but in this case, he's right on target.

As the son of a Holocaust survivor, I, more than most, do not take the term "Nazi" lightly, nor do I use it to describe political opponents or others with whom I disagree—no matter how noxious they are. The Nazis of the 20th century were a special breed of "extremists"—true believers led by demagogues who started with Kristallnacht and ended with Auschvitz and the deaths of millions. They epitomized pure evil, and yet, millions of their German countrymen sat quietly while their barbarism spread. And millions in the West, including some of our most influential media outlets, remained silent when evidence of their murderous ways came to light. In 1938, few demanded that Germans act to stop the extremism in their midst.

On numerous occasions over the past few years, I have used the phrase "21st century Nazis" in describing a vein of Islam that is growing in strength as well as influence. Radical Islam, as evidenced by groups like ISIS, al Qaeda, and Boko Haram (and actively supported by groups like Hamas, Hezballah, Ansar-al-Islam, al-Nusra and many others) are a growing threat to a civilized, free, and peaceful world. Today, relatively few in the West demand that Muslims act to stop the "extremism" in their midst.

Daniel Greenfield discusses the recent slaughter of 2,000 Nigerian civilians by Boko Haram and then states a very unpleasant truth:

Two Islamic States, one in Nigeria and another in Iraq/Syria, are engaged in genocide. [Barack] Obama delayed responding to ISIS until it was already engaged in genocide and was moving on Baghdad. His people have done everything possible to avoid responding to the Boko Haram genocide in Nigeria.

The usual excuses are there. The central governments are compromised, incompetent and corrupt. The only possible solution is political. The real issue is poverty. Meanwhile the killing and the denial go on.

The foreign policy infrastructure, the human rights NGOs and the self-important scribblers who presume to tell the world what is important in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post have fought hard to avoid connecting the killings by the Islamic State in Nigeria to the killings by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. And they have fought hardest of all to avoid connecting these killings to the thousands murdered in the streets of New York and the latest bodies strewn about Paris. The killings can be connected with three simple words: global Islamic genocide.

The European intellectuals of the last century were too fixated on their vision of a better world to understand what was happening in Germany and Japan [in the 1930s and 40s]. And what had to be done about it. While they dreamed of a world government that would do away with war, the killing had already begun.

The intellectuals of this century are equally unwilling to take their attention away from microfinance, climate change and world government to see the beginnings of a worldwide Holocaust underway.

Genocide isn’t new to Africa or the Middle East so they put it down to local tribal conflicts. Terrorism isn’t new to America or Europe, so they blame political extremism. Like the elephant and the blind men who touched its trunk and thought it was a snake, they respond to the local manifestation of Islamic genocide by seeing a familiar local phenomenon; tribal war, political extremism or minority problems.

And anyone who sees the big picture is instantly denounced as an Islamophobe. But what if the Muslim genocide of Hindus and Buddhists in Asia and the Muslim genocide of Christians and Jews in the Middle East are part of the same phenomenon?

What if the Islamic State killers in Nigeria who shout “Allahu Akbar” during their massacres share a motive with the 9/11 hijackers who were told to “shout 'Allahu Akbar,' because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers”?

What if a common bloody thread of Koran verses runs through the massacres of non-Muslims in the Philippines and Kenya, in Israel and Australia, in France and China, in Thailand and Syria?

What if the acts of terror on the evening news are not random events, workplace violence, mental illness and political extremism, but the beginning of another global Islamic genocide?

And what if we're at the beginning of another Nazi era, one that will, frighteningly, lead to the same end result—mass murder of millions and global war?

What if the weak leaders of the West reflexively follow their counterparts of 80 years ago? What if they refuse to act, refuse to resist, refuse to even name our enemy?

What if the denials, the obfuscation, the accusations of Islamophobia or racism (or whatever the proponents of political correctness think will silence those who have begun to ask questions) lead to blindness, to complacency, to madness?

What if nothing is done, and the 21st century's Nazis grow in power, in reach, in virulence?

What if?