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The future of the United States and the survival of Israel both depend on the world view of the next president. Specific policies put forward in the heat of a campaign matter far less than the terms in which a candidate sees the defining struggle of our time.
Like past conflicts with Hitlerism and Soviet Communism, our current war with Islamic extremism represents an implacable battle between good and evil. John McCain understands the nature of that struggle; his opponent does not.
Negotiation, appeasement, U.N. resolutions, pretty speeches and anti-poverty programs won’t prevail against religious fanatics who seek the total destruction of the west and its values. Israel wants to live in peace and security with its neighbors, and has made consistent commitments to co-exist with a new Palestinian state. Israel’s enemies, on the other hand, seek obliteration of the Jewish state and the genocide of its people. Such struggles don’t allow for a split-the-difference compromise. One side is right, the other wrong; one party wants life, the other glories in death.
Barack Obama acknowledges the existence of evil – but the three examples he cited in the televised Saddleback Forum with Rick Warren involved child abuse and street crime here in the United States, as well as the violence in Darfur. He never even mentioned Islamo-Nazi terror as the most obvious and menacing evil of our time – a form of monstrous depravity that elevates suicide, and the slaughter of innocent children, into a holy act.
More than any American leader since Reagan, McCain emphasizes the moral dimension in international conflict, and the importance of core values. And like Reagan, he understands that evil must be called by its name and, ultimately, defeated.
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