The orchestrated international outrage over the death and mayhem at Qana leads to only two possible conclusions. The first possibility is that Hezbollah possesses an incredibly capable global publicity machine. Yet all aspects of that organization show it to be little more than an oversized street gang, fervent in its devotion and animalistic in its ferocity, but hardly able to oversee the worldwide dissemination of propaganda.

 

The second, and only plausible explanation for the situation is that innumerable other organizations are actually digesting and distributing Hezbollah disinformation, with the rag-tag band of terrorists merely being willing foot soldiers in this effort.

 

Brutal and murderous as Hezbollah may be, something much bigger and more sinister looms behind it. Ominously, it is against this entity that Western civilization, even when supported by American military might, may prove to be absolutely defenseless.

 

With each sunrise, Iran draws a day closer to nuclear capability. In response, the perennially impotent United Nations has given Iran an ultimatum to halt its nuclear program by August 31 of this year. Yet absolutely nobody, least of all Iran’s fanatical president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, believes that the UN will do anything whatsoever to back up this demand.

 

Thus the Iranians’ crude effort to join the nuclear club is in no way matched by any Western resolve to prevent it from doing so. In truth, the anemic remnants of Western Civilization are daily exhibiting less and less of a determination to stop, or even to slow any advancement of the Islamist movement spreading insidiously through the world.

 

Instead, Westerners seek to find solace in the appearance of pockets among the Islamic culture that do not openly advocate or accommodate violence, as if that fact somehow dilutes or neutralizes the words and deeds of those who do.

 

Such momentary comforts may appear to allow for a brief retreat into the memories of that era before the Islamic threat metastasized into its present state. But in the long run vain longings of this nature merely ensure that the threat will continue to grow unchecked.

 

Meanwhile, the Islamists press forward, intending to dominate society in its entirety. Nor have their intentions varied in the slightest during the past fourteen hundred nears. But throughout most of that time, the western culture against which they strained was as intransigent as they were devoted. Such is no longer the case.

 

Upon its establishment, the European Union quickly abandoned the traditions and culture that, for centuries, had immunized its member states against such encroachment. And as “moral relativism” and “political correctness” continue to dominate and supplant the cultural tenets of its past, they make its undergirding philosophy increasingly frivolous and silly.

 

Ultimately, it is not any moral “clarity” on the part of the Islamists that gives them an advantage. Rather, it is the moral bankruptcy of the West that renders its chances of prevailing against militant Islam to be ever bleaker.

 

With Vietnam, a generation of Americas learned the bitter lesson that an enemy can prevent a far superior military power from prevailing, merely by its dogged refusal to surrender. Eventually, the willingness of the North Vietnamese to stay their course exceeded the willingness of the American people to endure the hardships of an offensive war, and so they quit the fight and came home.

 

Since then, the comfort and prosperity enjoyed by a subsequent generation of Americans has rendered it so soft, so self absorbed, that even the load of concern over an incurring enemy on its own soil is apparently too large of a burden to carry. Hence, an increasing number of Americans are frustrated and annoyed over their government’s present preoccupation with the “War on Terror,” as if the option exists to simply walk away from this looming threat.

 

So similar is this nihilistic mindset to that of the “Sixties” generation, now entrenched in such institutions as the colleges and media, that the two forces naturally draw together to spew their anti-American, anti-Western diatribe amidst airs of moral superiority. In the minds of such people, 9-11 notwithstanding, America can simply opt to placate those who have sworn its destruction, and thereafter everyone will simply get along.

 

It is from this manner of thinking that much of the current anti-Semitic diatribe is being fomented, which claims that the carnage in southern Lebanon is the result of Israeli aggression, and that the United States ought not support Israel in its effort to neutralize Hezbollah as a threat to its security.

 

Moreover, America’s abandonment of Israel might, in the minds of its critics, serve as a goodwill offering to the murderous religionists of Islamofacism. Subsequently, from such a cauldron, peace will somehow ensue.

 

Yet the problem goes deeper still. The very assertion by Hezbollah that the terrorist group is following the example of North Vietnam presumes the despicable cooperation from American and European leftists who cling to the subversive model they established during the height of the Cold War.

 

Ironically, the status quo of that era, precarious though it may have been, served to convince the cultural elites that their nations’ leaders had overstated the Soviet threat. But unlike the titanic confrontations of the Cold War, fought on such an enormous scale that the common citizen could never comprehend their scope, the war against militant Islam has already reached the streets of Europe and America.

 

Devoid of the moral certitude necessary to confront this enemy as the true evil it is, they similarly expect that platitudes and indifference will immunize them against the malevolent intentions of the Islamists. But just as surely as Hezbollah’s Katyusha rockets keep raining down upon northern Israel, if the buildup of militant Islam is not immediately brought to a halt, the nations of the west can surely expect much worse on their own soil.