November 17, 2015

AS I SEE IT

By Neal A. Shipman
Farmer Editor

The free world was shaken to its core when a quiet, peaceful evening in Paris last Friday turned into a blood bath that left at least 129 killed and hundreds more injured.
It was the deadliest attack in France since World War II.
In a very orchestrated attack by ISIS, terrorists unleashed their war on western countries as they gunned down innocent civilians and detonated body bombs killing others. And this slaughter of innocents follows on the heels of an ISIS bombing of a Russian airliner that killed another 224 civilians.
Make no mistake, ISIS is at war with western nations.
And on Monday, following this weekend’s air strikes by France and other nations on ISIS locations in Syria, the terrorists warned that more attacks are forthcoming and that they are targeting Washington, D.C.
In a video released on Monday, the Islamic State warned that countries taking part in air strikes against Syria would suffer the same fate as France, and threatened to attack in Washington.
Speaking in the video, a man identified as Al Ghareeb the Algerian, states, “We say to the states that take part in the crusader campaign that, by God, you will have a day, God willing, like France’s and by God, as we struck France in the center of its abode in Paris, then we swear that we will strike America at its center in Washington.”
If anything has been learned since Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists flew two planes into the World Trade Towers in New York City, another into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to regain control of the aircraft, is that radical Muslims are bent on destroying the free world as we know it.
As U.S. President Bush stated after the 911 attacks and now as French President Francois Hollande said on Saturday, these actions by radical Muslims are “acts of war.”
It is time for the United States and the rest of the free world to recognize that the time has come to change the direction by which this war is being fought. It is not possible to destroy ISIS by targeting top individuals in drone strikes. It is not possible to stop ISIS by holding meetings of world leaders.
Just as when the world decided that the only way to prevent Hitler from overrunning Europe was to take the fight to him, the time has come when the world needs to take the fight to ISIS.
ISIS, and its leaders, have decided that they are going to negotiate in the trenches and not around conference tables.
Their ominous warning of “I say to the European countries that we are coming, coming with booby traps and explosives, coming with explosive belts and (gun) silencers and you will be unable to stop us because today we are much stronger than before,” by Al Ghareeb, needs to be heard and understand not only by the leaders of the United States and Europe, but the citizens of those countries as well.
ISIS has brought the fight to the free world. It is time for the free world to respond in kind by taking out those who threaten us.

WATFORD CITY WEATHER