I read a Care Bears storybook from my childhood the other day. This story was about a boy who was being bullied at school. Of course, the Care Bears encouraged the child to befriend the bully because the poor bully was just misunderstood. The two became friends and everything was great in the end. Unfortunately, that's not always how it works.
On September 11th, 2001, I was in college. I was walking across the courtyard and caught sight of one of the school maintenance men. He was muttering and cursing to himself. We asked him what was wrong and he told us. Everyone crowded around televisions, tears refusing to fall because the shock was so great. I had seen the World Trade Center only a few months earlier on a visit to New York. My heart and my innocence broke that day as I watched the billowing smoke.
You see, Islamic extremists are bullies of the worst kind. They don't bully because they're calling out for help. They don't bully because they secretly want to be friends. These people bully because the fabric of their fiercely held faith tells them to. They are instructed in no uncertain terms to wage war on those who are different from themselves. That morning, they waged war on people just like you and me. It could have been us choosing a death by falling dozens of stories as opposed to burning alive. It could have been us, killed by debris while trying to search for survivors. It could have been us on those airplanes, hijacked by suicide Jihadists.
When we were children, we were taught that bullies aren't anything to be afraid of. If we 'killed them with kindness,' they would leave us alone, maybe even be our new friends. Perhaps we learned that by reading books like the one I mentioned. But these bullies, we must fear them. We must fear them enough to have no misunderstanding of their motives. In our hearts, we need to have that terrible morning run a loop to remind us of our fleeting freedom and our fleeting lives. Our children and our children's children count on us to be discerning about lessons like these. A school bully? Sure, being friendly and non-confrontational may work. But these people were never interested in being our friends.
If we value our lives as free-living and free-worshiping Americans, we will educate ourselves about these people. We will read the Qur'an instead of burning it. We will set aside our 'live and let live' dreams and wake up to a 'they live and we die' reality. Humans are animals first and animals who have never been taught mercy cannot show it. The more rope we give them, the more rope they have to hang us with. Do not forget that morning, that bright September morning. Do not forget that someone just like you and me took their last breath because of intolerance and hatred at the hands of one of the biggest bullies the earth has ever known.
