American Thinker The Case For Total Victory

Half-measures might end up worse than having done nothing at all.

Marc Weisman | April 3, 2026

In the words of Winston Churchill, this is a time for “victory at all costs.”  Rarely does history present an opportunity to resolve a long-entrenched conflict and reshape the global order.  The Middle East is now at such a moment — and the outcome may determine whether radical Islam declines, expands, or moves westward. If the current trajectory continues, the regional landscape will be fundamentally transformed: The Iranian regime will fall or be significantly weakened, Hamas will be disarmed, and Gaza will be rebuilt under an international framework.  The “ring of fire” surrounding Israel — long sustained by Iranian proxies — will cease to exist.  Hezb’allah will be weakened, giving Lebanon a chance to reclaim its sovereignty.  ISIS will be further diminished, and Saudi Arabia may well normalize relations with Israel.  The Abraham Accords will have withstood the stress test of October 7, and key Gulf states — even those once ambivalent — will continue their transition from radicalism toward economic and geopolitical pragmatism. Across Europe, Australia, and the United States, radical Islamist networks have increasingly taken root within liberal democracies.  A 2017 Pew Research Center survey found that roughly one in six U.S. Muslims perceived at least a “fair amount” of support for extremism within the community, while a Brookings Institution analysis documented the rise of “homegrown” jihadist networks across Europe. Radical Islamist persistence is reinforced in part by interpretations of canonical texts presented by extremists as divine mandates.  Like other Abrahamic religions, Islam contains teachings of charity and justice.  However, specific passages have been selectively invoked by extremist groups to justify violence against non-believers and apostates — including calls to “fight those who do not believe … until they submit”; the narration that “whoever changes his religion, kill him”; and the oft-cited hadith describing a time when “the stone or tree will say: ‘O Muslim, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him.’” Enter Donald Trump.  In his first term, his visit to Riyadh challenged Arab leaders to move away from radicalism, followed by the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states and signaled a new regional paradigm.  What was once unthinkable became a foundation for economic cooperation, tourism, and security coordination.  The countries that chose normalization — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan — did so out of calculation.  Integration into the global economy, access to Israeli technology, and alignment against shared threats offered greater benefits than ideological hostility.  The Gulf states now prioritize building over fighting.  In this environment, ideological warfare is economically irrational. Yet Iran continues to anchor the old paradigm, crying, “Death to America, death to Israel”; exporting revolutionary Islamist ideology; and sustaining proxy networks to undermine Israel and its Arab neighbors. Then came October 7, when Iran sought to seize a historic opportunity — to destroy Israel and cement regional dominance — but the effort has, so far, failed decisively.  Iran did not account for Donald Trump, who has long advocated for confronting the regime, dating back to the 1980 Iran hostage crisis.  The response — under a far more assertive U.S. posture — has paired Israel’s full-spectrum intelligence and military capabilities with overwhelming American power.  The result: Iran’s proxy network has been systematically degraded, its weapons pipelines disrupted, and its military infrastructure targeted, sharply reducing its ability to project power across the region. For more than two decades, leaders across the political spectrum have agreed on one principle: Iran must never obtain a nuclear weapon.  Yet today, that consensus is being obscured by many Democrats and left-leaning media, whose reflexive opposition to Trump — amplified across major outlets — compels them to obsess over oil prices, market volatility, and near-term disruptions. If this moment does not culminate in decisive victory over Iran and Hamas, the consequences will extend far beyond the region.  If the Iranian regime endures, it will claim victory simply by surviving — demonstrating that even direct confrontation with the United States can be “won.”  If Gaza remains under Hamas rule, the message will be equally clear: Islamist violence can outlast Western resolve — and Israel and the West are, in the end, paper tigers. It is far from certain that the West will again produce leadership willing to assume the risks required to confront these forces so directly.  If Iran remains a sponsor of terror and Hamas survives as a governing force, the result will not be a return to the status quo, but a revitalization of Islamist momentum that will echo not only in the Middle East, but in the West for decades to come. Across the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia, Christians face sustained persecution — from mass killings in Nigeria to the displacement of ancient communities in Iraq and ongoing repression in Pakistan.  Jewish communities face parallel threats globally. In the United States and Europe, the warning signs are clear.  Synagogues operate under heavy security, attacks like the 2018 Tree of Life massacre in Pittsburgh remain searing reminders, and Islamist-inspired violence — from Orlando to Vienna and repeated assaults in France — has targeted civilians and religious institutions alike.  What was once shocking is becoming familiar.  At the same time, rhetoric once confined to the fringe is entering mainstream discourse in major Western cities, a sign of eroding boundaries that once held such views in check. At its core, radical Islamism is a movement that challenges pluralism, opposing religious freedom, minority rights, and ultimately the foundations of modernity.  If this chapter of history ends with the decisive defeat of its state sponsors, radical Islamist ideology’s appeal will wane — particularly among younger generations.  Without Iran to sustain it, and without continued external funding, it will lose momentum. The United States and Israel have, through sustained military and intelligence efforts, degraded the most visible manifestations of this threat.  But the ideology itself will endure.  The West now faces a stark reality: The epicenter of radical Islam may lie within its own borders. Addressing this challenge will not be easy.  It will require tighter immigration controls, the removal of individuals who actively promote extremist ideologies, and more effective integration into Western norms.  It also requires a firm willingness to confront all who openly espouse hatred for Western values, making clear that constitutional protections are no longer a license to inflame, incite, or undermine the society that guarantees them. At the same time, the Middle East is shifting in ways few anticipated, as entrenched Islamist ideology gives way to economic and geopolitical pragmatism.  The weakening of Iran and its proxies presents a historic opportunity.  But whether that opportunity is seized or squandered will depend on decisive outcomes in Iran and Gaza, and on whether the West can overcome its long reluctance to confront radical Islam at home.

American Thinker Why Liberals Should Vote Republican — Just Once Dr. Marc Weisman May 30, 2026 Liberals and moderate Democrats should vote Republican — just once — and make clear exactly why they are doing it. Liberals and moderate Democrats should vote Republican — just once — and make clear exactly why they are doing it. Not because they suddenly became conservatives. Not because they joined MAGA. Not because they abandoned long-held liberal beliefs on health care, abortion, climate change, or social programs. They should do it as a statement that the Democrat party is no longer recognizable to many Americans who once formed its center-left backbone. Not because they suddenly became conservatives. Not because they joined MAGA. Not because they abandoned long-held liberal beliefs on health care, abortion, climate change, or social programs. They should do it as a statement that the Democrat party is no longer recognizable to many Americans who once formed its center-left backbone. The goal is to save the Democrat party by empowering moderates who have been silenced or politically marginalized by an increasingly radical activist left that now defines far too much of the party’s moral and political identity.  Political parties reform after losses. Many Americans believe that the Democrat party has become incapable of correcting itself internally because the people capable of restoring balance no longer appear to control the party. Leftists with radical viewpoints no longer merely influence the Democrat party; in many areas, they define its moral and political boundaries.  Moderate Democrats still exist, but many now fear activist backlash, donor pressure, social media outrage, and primary challenges should they openly dissent from progressive orthodoxy. Americans watched as “Defund the Police” moved from activist slogan to mainstream political discussion.  Riots were repeatedly described as “mostly peaceful.”  Masked demonstrators blocked highways, occupied campuses, vandalized businesses, intimidated opponents, and disrupted public life while political leaders often appeared reluctant to restore order decisively for fear of backlash from activist constituencies. Many Democrat leaders now appear politically trapped by the very activist movements they once encouraged. At the same time, basic border enforcement increasingly became treated as morally suspect.  Sanctuary policies expanded. Rhetoric minimizing illegal immigration entered mainstream discourse.  Even liberal cities eventually acknowledged that unlimited migration without enforcement was unsustainable. The Democrat party increasingly allowed ideological activism to replace practical governance. Perhaps nowhere has this shift become more alarming than in the explosion of antisemitism following October 7. Instead of universal moral clarity following the massacre, torture, rape, kidnapping, and murder of Israeli civilians by Hamas terrorists, many Democrats and much of the media immediately pivoted toward moral relativism, rationalization, or outright hostility toward Israel itself. Criticizing Israeli policy is legitimate.  Israelis themselves debate their government vigorously.  But questioning the legitimacy of the world’s only Jewish state is something very different. Zionism, stripped of slogans and propaganda, is simply the belief that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland after centuries of expulsions, persecution, pogroms, and ultimately the Holocaust. Yet increasingly, the left insists that the one Jewish state is uniquely illegitimate.  The Jews are among the only peoples continuously tied to the same land, language, religion, and identity for more than 3,000 years.  In what historical framework does an indigenous people — conquered eleven times, yet never fully removed from its ancestral homeland and repeatedly returning to it across centuries — become redefined as “colonizers”? Many Jews now ask whether this obsession is really about Israeli policy at all.  The answer becomes clearer when activism shifts from targeting governments to targeting Jews themselves. After October 7, synagogues, Jewish schools, and Jewish neighborhoods across the United States became sites of intimidation and harassment.  Protesters shouted “Globalize the Intifada,” “Go back to Auschwitz,” and “Khaybar, Khaybar ya Yahud” — a chant historically associated with anti-Jewish violence.  Demonstrators blocked entrances to synagogues in Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and elsewhere while chanting slogans such as “We need to make them scared.” They targeted Jews praying, gathering publicly, or simply existing openly as Jews. This is not an isolated incident.  It is the progression of fringe radical leftism into organized political influence inside the Democrat party itself, while the mainstream media increasingly function less as a skeptical observer and more as an ideological participant. In New York City, mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani alarmed many Jewish and moderate voters not only because of his socialist politics, but because his broader ideological movement increasingly appeared hostile toward Zionism, policing, and traditional liberal norms.  Mamdani’s wife publicly “liked” social media content celebrating or glorifying the October 7 murders of Israeli civilians, alarming many Jewish and pro-Israel voters. Meanwhile in Michigan, Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed aligned himself with “Medicare for All,” hostility toward private insurance systems, and rhetoric associated with “defund the police” activism.  He also associated himself with controversial far-left influencer Hasan Piker, who openly celebrates Hezb’allah, has used rhetoric encouraging political violence, and has repeatedly made comments about America and Israel that many moderates view as extremist and profoundly irresponsible.  Yet Democrat candidates still seek his support because of his influence among younger voters — evidence of how successfully radical ideology has been normalized among a rising generation. There was a time when mainstream Democrat politicians would have viewed associations with rhetoric excusing terrorism, glorifying violence, or demonizing America as politically toxic.  Increasingly, that no longer appears to be the case. Many moderates struggle to reconcile that Democrats are too insulated from scrutiny, accountability, and serious internal criticism by either the media or the Democrat party itself until it is no longer credible to insulate them. When progressive politicians are accused of extremism, agenda-driven media often appear eager to minimize or redirect attention elsewhere.  When conservatives are accused, the presumption often appears to be immediate guilt and moral disqualification. At the same time, massive fraud investigations in Minnesota involving billions of dollars in alleged public misuse, ongoing corruption investigations in Los Angeles, and catastrophic governance failures surrounding the Palisades fire response further erode public confidence in one-party progressive governance. Add it all up, and the conclusion becomes difficult for many moderates to avoid: The Democratic Party increasingly appears captive to ideological activism while marginalizing moderation. One figure can be dismissed as an outlier.  A handful as coincidence.  But when hostility toward dissent, normalization of disorder, anti-police rhetoric, antisemitism, and the courting of openly Marxist influencers whose rhetoric many Americans view as deeply anti-American and increasingly supportive of political intimidation all converge within the same political movement, one must recognize that the center of gravity inside the party has changed. That is why many lifelong liberals may need to consider doing something politically uncomfortable: voting Republican once — not out of loyalty to Republicans or devotion to Donald Trump, but as a strategic intervention designed to empower moderate Democrats to wrestle back the soul of the Democrat party. Healthy democracies require two sane, functioning parties capable of governing from the political center.  When one party drifts too far toward ideological extremism, electoral defeat may become the only mechanism capable of forcing introspection and course correction. Far from being a betrayal, this may be the only remaining path back toward a Democratic Party once again capable of representing ordinary Americans in the political center and center-left.

Trump’s legacy and the price of political expediency

Sometimes a job must be finished, regardless of what happens in the next election.

Marc Weisman | July 8, 2026

 

America may be on the verge of making one of the greatest strategic mistakes in modern history — not because our military lacks the strength to prevail, but because our politics may lack the courage to finish the job.

For the first time in nearly half a century, the regime that has financed terrorism against the United States, Israel, our Gulf allies, and much of the West appears genuinely vulnerable.  Yet instead of asking whether this historic opportunity should be seized once and for all, too much of our political debate shifted almost immediately to gasoline prices, election polling, and partisan advantage.

America’s adversaries have long understood that democracies can be weakened by manipulating public opinion through propaganda, disinformation, and increasingly sophisticated social media campaigns.  Russia, China, Iran, and other authoritarian regimes exploit political divisions because they know democracies often lose the will to fight long before they lose the ability.

What is more troubling is that, in my view, too many influential voices within the progressive movement and much of today’s mainstream media reinforced that dynamic — not through coordination, but by framing the conflict primarily through its domestic political consequences rather than its strategic objectives.

The political message became familiar: This is “Trump’s war.”  Inflation is Trump’s fault.  Higher gasoline prices are Trump’s fault.  End the conflict, elect us, and your economic pain will disappear.

Whatever the intent, this message places enormous pressure on an administration to curtail military operations before their strategic objectives are achieved, despite the strategic victory that should naturally follow the tactical victories achieved by America and Israel since October 7.

Imagine if, during the final months of World War II, Americans had concluded that the economic sacrifices of victory had become too burdensome and demanded that President Franklin Roosevelt — or, after Roosevelt’s death, President Harry Truman — halt the war before Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan had been decisively defeated.  Previous generations understood that temporary sacrifice was often the price of achieving a lasting peace.

That is the question before us today.

Are we willing to endure temporary economic discomfort if it offers the opportunity to permanently weaken a regime that has spent nearly half a century waging war against the United States and its allies through terrorist

If political pressure forces America to settle for merely damaging the Iranian regime rather than decisively ending its ability to finance terrorism, dominate the Middle East through proxy armies, and ultimately obtain nuclear weapons, historians may conclude that political expediency will accomplish what Iran’s military never could.

Since 1979, Iran has financed and armed Hezb’allah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Shiite militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, and other proxy organizations responsible for attacks that have killed Americans and countless civilians throughout the Middle East.  Every president since Jimmy Carter recognized the threat.  Each sought to contain it by different means — sanctions, diplomacy, deterrence, covert action, or limited military force — but none fundamentally ended Iran’s ability to project power through terrorism and proxy warfare.

Then something extraordinary happened.

For perhaps the first time in decades, Iran’s strategic position appeared genuinely vulnerable.  Its proxy network had been severely weakened.  Hezb’allah had suffered devastating losses.  Hamas had been crippled militarily.  Syria had become a far less reliable partner.  Iran itself found its military infrastructure under unprecedented pressure.

Victory was finally within reach.

Whether one agrees with President Donald Trump’s decision or not, he demonstrated something few political leaders willingly do: He appeared prepared to risk his presidency, his political future, and ultimately his historical legacy in pursuit of what he believed was a rare opportunity to permanently weaken the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.

History will ultimately judge whether that decision was correct.  What cannot honestly be disputed is that it required accepting extraordinary political risk.

Political expediency is not a Democrat vice or a Republican vice.  It is democracy’s oldest temptation.  The question is whether, at moments of historic consequence, statesmen are willing to rise above it.

In this instance, I believe that today’s progressive movement and too many Democrat leaders have allowed short-term political advantage to eclipse what should be a historic strategic opportunity.  Rather than asking how the United States might permanently weaken the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, much of the public conversation became focused on the next election.

That same political calculation can also be seen, in my view, in the willingness of many Democrat leaders to embrace or tolerate candidates whose rhetoric and positions would have been politically disqualifying for much of our nation’s history.  The Democrats’ nomination of Graham Platner for the U.S. Senate in Maine, despite his publicly reported remarks, raises legitimate questions about where those standards now lie.  Among the statements attributed to Platner are “Why don’t black people tip?,” (2013); his response to a video of an American soldier killed by the Taliban, calling him a “dumb MF” who “didn’t deserve to live” (2019); and, perhaps most strikingly, his 2021 declaration: “I got older and became a communist.”

Nor is Platner alone. Texas congressional candidate Maureen Galindo proposed converting an ICE detention facility into a prison for “American Zionists.”  New York congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier publicly joked that after forgetting napkins, she “just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.”  Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) has repeatedly used the phrase “from the river to the sea,” while many prominent Democrat leaders have been reluctant to unequivocally repudiate that slogan or others such as “globalize the intifada.”

Taken together, these examples raise legitimate questions about whether maintaining partisan unity has too often taken precedence over drawing clear moral boundaries.  More broadly, they suggest that rhetoric and positions previous generations of Americans would have regarded as politically disqualifying are now increasingly tolerated — or, at times, embraced — in the pursuit of electoral success.

Political parties are ultimately judged not only by the candidates they reject, but also by the candidates they elevate.

If history concludes that victory was within reach and America chose political expediency instead, the greatest tragedy will not be that our military lacked the strength to prevail.  It will be that our politics lacked the resolve to finish what history unexpectedly placed within our grasp.

Political expediency may yet accomplish what Iran never could.

History has not yet been written.  Let us prove that America’s political courage is equal to its military strength.

 

The Myth of the ‘Imminent Threat’

For nearly half a century, the Islamic Republic of Iran has treated its conflict with the United States as a war.  The real question is not whether Iran threatens America, but whether Americans are willing to recognize that reality.

A familiar argument has been repeated by politicians and much of the mainstream media: Iran posed no “imminent threat,” and therefore military action against it was unjustified.  But this claim ignores the true nature of the conflict between the United States and the Islamic Republic.

For many advancing it, the argument is less a strategic assessment than a political one — repeated to obscure danger in the hope of undermining the policy and weakening President Trump and Republicans ahead of the coming election cycle.

Iran’s war against America began on November 4, 1979, when Islamist revolutionaries stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held 52 American diplomats hostage for 444 days — cementing hostility toward the United States as a defining principle of the new regime.

The debate over whether Iran poses an “imminent threat” misses the broader reality. The United States has been under sustained attack from the Iranian regime for nearly half a century, and Iran’s hostility toward America — measured in lives lost, resources expended, and instability exported across the region — is beyond dispute.  The regime has never hidden its intentions, repeating its familiar mantra, “Death to America,” while pursuing a strategy of indirect warfare through proxies and militant allies.

Iranian-backed forces carried out the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Americans and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. servicemen.  Iran’s Revolutionary Guard later armed and trained militias in Iraq that deployed specialized roadside bombs responsible for a significant share of American casualties during the Iraq War.

Beyond direct attacks on Americans, Tehran has spent decades extending its influence across the region — dominating Lebanon through Hezb’allah, influencing Iraq through allied militias, and constructing what its leaders call a “ring of fire” of armed proxies surrounding Israel.  These networks allow Iran not only to threaten Israel, but also to challenge American interests and destabilize governments across the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Iran has continued advancing toward strategic capabilities that would dramatically shift the balance of power.  U.S. and international analysts estimated that Tehran was only weeks away from producing weapons-grade nuclear material when American B-2 bombers struck the Fordow and Natanz enrichment facilities last June.  At the same time, Iran has spent years expanding one of the largest ballistic missile programs in the world, steadily increasing the range and sophistication of systems that already reach eastern Europe and are projected to threaten western Europe — and potentially the eastern seaboard of the United States.

Is that not the very definition of an imminent threat?

An enemy does not suddenly become dangerous at the moment of impact.

One would have to suspend reality to believe Iran posed no imminent threat.  Clearly, it did.

Authoritarian regimes routinely probe their adversaries for weakness to exploit.  The familiar adage that weakness invites aggression is repeated so often because history continues to confirm it.  For revolutionary regimes like Iran’s, confrontation with the West is not merely opportunistic, but ideological, making perceived weakness especially tempting to test.

The lesson was illustrated dramatically during the very crisis that launched the modern conflict between Iran and the United States.  For 444 days, Iran held American diplomats hostage while negotiations dragged on through the final year of the Carter administration.  Yet the hostages were released on January 20, 1981 — minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president, ending the crisis the moment a new administration widely perceived as tougher took office.  The symbolism was unmistakable.  Iran had been willing to defy the United States for more than a year, but it chose to resolve the crisis the moment the balance of perceived American power shifted.

Over the following decades, this relationship between American policy and Iranian behavior has often followed a predictable cycle.  Periods when American strategy projects strength tend to restrain Iranian aggression, whereas periods of hesitation or strategic retreat encourage Tehran to expand its activities.  Each time deterrence weakens, Iran tests the limits again.  The past decade illustrates this dynamic clearly.  The 2015 nuclear agreement negotiated during the Obama administration lifted major sanctions in exchange for limits on Iran’s nuclear program.  The agreement provided Tehran with significant economic relief, which the regime used to expand its regional proxy network and military activities across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

The Trump administration withdrew from the agreement and implemented a campaign of economic pressure aimed at restricting Iran’s ability to finance those networks.  Since 2021, however, under Biden, Iranian-backed militias have again intensified attacks across the region while Tehran continues strengthening its proxy relationships and military capabilities, tragically exemplified by the October 7 massacre.

Iran’s ambitions have never been limited to the Middle East.  Tehran has become an important node in a broader anti-Western alignment linking the Iranian regime with Moscow and Beijing.  Iranian drones have been supplied to Russia for use in Ukraine, where they are routinely used to attack civilian infrastructure.  At the same time, China has continued purchasing large quantities of Iranian oil — often outside the formal sanctions system — providing the regime with critical revenue that helps sustain its military and proxy operations.

Disrupting Iran’s military and economic infrastructure, therefore, has implications far beyond Tehran.  Restricting Iran’s ability to export oil weakens a supply channel that has helped fuel China’s rise.  Preventing Iran from supplying drones limits the tools Russia uses to terrorize Ukrainian civilians.  Constraining the regime’s regional proxy networks reduces the instability that has plagued the Middle East for decades.

In that sense, confronting Iran does more than neutralize a single adversary.  It alters the strategic environment across multiple theaters, shifting the balance of power toward the United States and its allies.  It also weakens the ideological momentum of radical Islamist movements — both in the region and in the West — by demonstrating that the regime long claiming to lead that struggle can, in fact, be decisively defeated.

Trump is not starting a war.  He is ending one.

 

The Reckoning of the West

The problem is not radical Islam alone, but the convergence of radical Islamist ideology with Western institutional weakness and deliberate amplification by foreign adversaries.

 

History is filled with ignored warnings, but only rarely does it deliver a moment so clarifying that denial becomes more dangerous than confrontation. Fifteen years ago, I argued that radical Islam threatens Western civilization not through military conquest, but through “slow jihad”: demographic pressure, moral confusion, and normalization within open societies. In its early stages, this process was sustained by institutional guilt and a media culture that reflexively equated scrutiny of Islamism with bigotry. As Muslim populations grew in key regions, moral paralysis gave way to political calculation, as politicians increasingly courted Muslim votes, often at the expense of assimilation, social cohesion, and liberal norms.

Long-developing civilizational pressures rarely provoke action until a single, undeniable shock crystallizes them. That shock came on Oct. 7, 2023. It marked the moment when denial became untenable—not only for Jews, who have long understood the pattern, but for the broader West. The atrocities themselves were barbaric enough. What followed—the celebrations, justifications, and moral inversions across Western capitals—was something more: a revelation. The question is no longer whether the warnings were correct, but whether this moment represents the point at which the West finally acts while it still can.

For decades, liberals and the left stigmatized a defense of Christendom or acknowledgment of a civilizational clash with political Islam as veiled far-right bigotry. That rhetorical shield is now collapsing as global events strip away denial, expose the scale of radical Islam, and sharpen the contrast so starkly that the Judeo-Christian world is at last beginning to recover its voice.

The barbarity of Oct. 7 was neither abstract nor ambiguous. Hamas deliberately targeted civilians in their homes and at a music festival. Families were murdered together. Women were raped. Parents were forced to witness the killing of their children. These were not acts of war but acts of ideological ritual.

What followed in the West was as revealing as the attack itself. University campuses across the United States became sites of Jewish intimidation and celebration of violence. Protesters chanted slogans calling for Israel’s destruction and the “globalization of the intifada.” Campus buildings were blockaded. Jewish students were warned to avoid certain areas “for their own safety.” Student groups openly declared that Zionists were unwelcome—using “Zionist” as a newly acceptable proxy for Jew—as administrators invoked “free expression” while Jewish students were excluded from academic life.

Across Europe, the pattern was more advanced. In the United Kingdom, authorities suppressed criticism of Islamism while accommodating Islamist demonstrations. Grooming-gang rape scandals long suppressed in the media—documented in multiple investigations and involving thousands of working-class girls—continued to surface, exposing decades of institutional cowardice driven by fear of appearing “Islamophobic.” Comparable failures have unfolded in France, Germany, Norway, Belgium and Sweden. Oct. 7 did not create these realities; it forced their recognition.

In the weeks following Oct. 7, the jihad was unmistakably globalized, exported into Western cities and campuses where demonstrations crossed from protest into intimidation and celebration of violence. That legitimization emboldened escalation until violence became inevitable, and many in the West began to realize this was more than they bargained for.

What is ultimately at stake is not Israel alone. Israel is the front line, but the target is far larger: the Judeo-Christian civilization that gave rise to modernity itself—individual rights, equality before the law, secular governance, scientific inquiry and moral accountability. Oct. 7 was not merely an assault on Israel; it was an assault on the ethical foundations of the West.

The urgency is not emotional; it is structural. Civilizations rarely collapse suddenly; they erode over time. One of the clearest indicators of civilizational decline is demographic trajectory. Trends in Europe and North America cannot be ignored. Time does not favor the West. Muslim fertility rates in Europe remain well above replacement level, while native European birth rates have collapsed. In the United States, overall fertility has fallen to historic lows, even as populations carrying illiberal norms grow more rapidly. Demographics are not destiny, but they are momentum.

The problem is not radical Islam alone, but the convergence of radical Islamist ideology with Western institutional weakness—and with deliberate amplification by foreign adversaries. Islamist regimes in the Middle East, along with Russia and China, exploit social media, bots, and online propaganda to accelerate radicalization, deepen polarization, and undermine social cohesion within open societies.

For years, Western elites insisted this threat was imagined and, when it became undeniable, that it was marginal or provoked. Oct. 7 tore away the protective cloak that had long insulated radical Islamism from scrutiny. Within hours, murder was reframed as “resistance,” victims as oppressors and barbarism as grievance, revealing an ideological alignment that could no longer be denied.

Words matter because they prepare the ground for action. Western democracies already understand that words can kill; yet when eliminationist logic is voiced through Islamist language, the West suddenly discovers an absolutist devotion to free expression. The long era of debating whether a substantial faction of Islam poses a genuine danger to the West is mercifully over.

What distinguishes this moment from all prior warnings is that the balance has begun to shift. Israel’s post-Oct. 7 victories have punctured the myth of Islamist invincibility; the Chanukah mass shooting on Bondi Beach and the public backlash against Australia’s leadership exposed the cost of appeasement; and in Britain, figures once dismissed as pariahs—Nigel Farage, even Tommy Robinson—now command growing support, while Douglas Murray and other defenders of Western civilization have moved firmly into the mainstream. Across Europe, governments have moved from rhetoric to action: Hungary, under Viktor Orbán, has fortified its borders and reasserted a Christian national identity; France has tightened immigration, conditioned welfare, and dismantled Islamist organizations; Sweden has slashed asylum intakes. Germany has accelerated deportations and begun expelling radical imams, and Italy, led by Giorgia Meloni, has curtailed NGO rescues. Iran and its proxies are weakened, Saudi Arabia again edges toward peace with Israel, and the West, albeit shaken, has begun to recover its voice.

Resistance is not bigotry. Lawful self-preservation is not persecution. What’s at stake is the survival of modernity itself and the Western civilization that produced it. Cultural pluralism cannot mean the institutionalization of parallel societies governed by incompatible norms.

If this moment is to mean anything, it must translate into policy. The West need not abandon liberalism to defend itself, but it must rediscover its boundaries. Deportation of radical clerics, which is already underway in Germany, should become standard practice across Western democracies. Assimilation must be restored as a requirement of residency. Parallel societies cannot be tolerated indefinitely within nations founded on shared civic norms. None of this is racial. None of it targets faith. It is the ordinary exercise of sovereignty—long deferred, but entirely lawful—and the minimum necessary for a civilization that intends to survive.

Civilizations rarely receive infinite chances. The danger is no longer abstract; it is visible, vocal, and violent. Oct. 7 and its aftermath may prove to be the moment when the West finally stops mistaking tolerance for virtue and denial for compassion.

History will not ask whether the West was warned. It will ask whether it acted.