Yesterday we looked back with an article, “9-11, We Remember” as many readers shared their memories of that day of unbelievable shock.

Today is September 12^th 2011. From the day after until today, what have we learned in the 10 year span? What have we REALLY learned?

10 years ago today, we still stared at the TV and listened to radio reports. We were still in shock. The twin towers were gone, the Pentagon had been hit, there was a hole in the ground in PA where another plane had crashed and we watched and listened.

Across the country, airplanes sat on runways, most of them were not anywhere near their point of origin or destination. Tens of thousands of passengers were stranded.

10 years ago today, Americans wanted to help and thinking surely there would be hundreds if not thousands of injured survivors, we donated blood. Fire and rescue crews from cities towns and rural areas found a way to get to New York and help in the ground zero efforts.

10 years ago today…we hadn’t yet started using the phrase “ground zero.”

So what HAVE we learned?

We learned who did it. It was al Quaeda. It was bin Laden. We learned they were responsible for other attacks against us and others from around the world. We learned they held the responsibility for what happened at the twin towers back in 1993 too.

We learned al Quaeda was based in Afghanistan and that bin Laden was probably there too. We learned bin Laden was a Saudi, that his own country, when he still had one, had tried to hand him over to us but we refused to take him. We learned that he had kidney problems. We learned he was very tall.

In fact what we learned wasn’t really that much in the days and weeks, even months after the 9-11 attacks and to be honest, we haven’t really “learned” much at all in the last 10 years.

We took what we knew and started trying to apply it to make us safer but when you don’t really know much, the safety measures become tedious at best.

No longer could we meet people at the gate in the airport when they came to visit or for business. If we were flying, we couldn’t carry certain things any more, like box cutters or nail clippers. We had to get to the airport hours ahead of our flight time to go through security but trains and other transportation was considered completely safe.

It was just airplanes because that’s what they used on 9-11. IF we HAD learned something, we would have, for the last 10 years, been treating ALL transportation as a possible weapon rather than just airplanes.

That’s the problem really. We learned who but not why.

The “why” is something very few people understand and even fewer will share and even fewer yet will accept.

What IS most accepted is that we were attacked that day, 10 years ago, by radical Islam…Muslim fundamentalists, a sect of a religion. Moderate Muslims are not the people who attacked us and they are not the people who attack others around the world.  What is most accepted is often not what is really true.

What IS true is that we are NOT at war with a religion – but too many simply don’t understand the reality of that statement. They just don’t understand the deep reality of it.

Islam is no more a religion than is communism or, for that matter, democracy. Islam is an ideology. Sharia law is not a religious doctrine but a brutal set of punishments meant to intimidate. Sharia law IS an ideological doctrine.

Maybe it’s not a matter of learning but understanding.

Too many people just don’t want to be viewed as being against a religion to allow themselves to understand that it’s not a religion at all that we’re up against. It’s a product of our very values from the founding of our nation. Here, in this country, we have freedom of religion and all religions are welcomed here. Good for us as – that is one of the very things which sets our nation apart from others. To exclude any religion would be against our most basic tenants. That is how it should be and we CAN maintain that fundamental value even if we do NOT accept Islam.

How?  Simple. Islam is NOT a religion.

Liberals accept Islam as a religion more readily than conservatives – but both sides of the aisle are culpable, make no mistake. Liberals seem to only stick up for a “religion” if conservatives are against it; and let’s face the fact that liberals are so over the top politically correct that excluding anybody for any reason in their minds is abhorable. As for conservatives, too many are afraid of being considered politically incorrect enough as to offend liberals OR they simply don’t understand the true nature of Islam being an ideology believing it to be a religion and will not act against it based on core principles.

While there are those who can and do go into great detail on this subject, perhaps the best place to start is the nutshell approach. To begin to understand the ideology of Islam one needs to look at how or why it achieves a foothold and or success and what the end goal of Islam really is.

The end goal is domination. Islam exists to gain control of the world. This is NOT the sort of world domination one thinks of in a James Bond villain sense. This is world domination in a real sense. To accomplish this, Islam must first gain a foothold in a local sense then expand to a region. Once a region has been assimilated, the next step is to take a nation and eventually, spread it from nation to nation on a global scale.

Back when Islam first came into being as an ideology, the method was simply to go to war and conquer. Now, the method is somewhat different. Locally, Islam utilizes the lawlessness of drug suppliers and is employed by tribal lords to control their populous. It expands from small village to village regionally. To take a nation state, Islam now uses that nations own system of either elections to gain seats of political power or it overthrows a nation’s leadership and fills the vacuum. We see this happening in Egypt and in Libya right now. Do you really think the Muslim Brotherhood is a bunch of religious door to door Mohammad salesmen trying to spread the word?

To gain these local and regional footholds, Islam employs deadly intimidation and those whom they assimilate are too fearful of retaliation to stand up to it. If there is such a thing as  “moderate Muslims,” it would be those who live under the ideology and “follow” it’s brutal ideological laws only to survive.

Since Americans are among the least intimidatable people on the planet, other means must be employed here.

There are, in a nutshell, 2 other afflictions which will allow Islam to gain a foothold.

Complacency and Political Correctness.

Those who are complacent, the, “it can’t happen here” crowd or the “to each their own” crowd are ripe for the Islamic picking. Places where these attitudes are pervasive are at risk of having the ideology of Islam move right in and set up shop. By the time those groups realize something isn’t right, it’s too late.

Those who adhere to political correctness are also a great risk and their insistence that everybody else be politically correct puts everyone at risk.

In our country, while not faced with being easily intimidated, we do exhibit both the other risk traits. 9-11 should have been the ultimate wake up call. Actually, the first WTC bombing in 1993, the barracks bombings, the nightclub bombings even the Iranian hostage crisis should have all been wake up calls – but complacency ruled the day. The bombings overseas, against our troops and those of our allies happened in faraway places we would never travel to so…whatever. The USS Cole attack was a bunch of lone wolf pirates, right? The 1993 WTC bombing was just an isolated event headed up by some crazy nut.

It either couldn’t happen here or…it happened somewhere else so…to each their own. But 9-11 DID happen HERE and it WAS Islam. WE were attacked.

Unfortunately, it was political correctness which cause us to hit the snooze button when the 9-11 wake up call sounded. We rolled over and went back to sleep.

Political correctness was forced into the equation. Not all Muslims are terrorists…right? Islam is the religion of peace, and those responsible for 9-11 warped an otherwise peaceful religion…right? Moderate Muslims are against such acts of violence…right? We cannot single out a religion and vilify them, can we? We are not at war with Islam.

All of this political correctness is pushed by liberals – – and please take note that the only time you find liberals sticking up FOR a religion it’s Islam. They tell us that to NOT build a ground zero mosque is a violation of church and state. It excludes one religion while allowing others. We CAN’T have clergy offering a prayer at the 9-11 commemoration because that wouldn’t be fair to ISLAM. Political correctness dictates that we must accept the “religion” of Islam and that we must entertain their customs in the name of MULTICULTURALISM. We MUST be inclusive, we MUST be tolerant…after all…it’s a religion…right?

No.

We can and we SHOULD exclude Islam. We MUST NOT allow Islam the foothold they seek. We must NOT be complacent and allow each to their own and to stop the incursion of Islam is anything BUT anti American.

In our country, Islam is working it’s way into society and to a great extent, they are using our own principles against us. Both they, and liberals, are doing everything they can to make of accept Islam as a religion rather than as the political ideology – which it truly is. If we view Islam as a religion, then we, by our principles, MUST accept it and allow it as we do other religions. We’re the great melting pot after all. We MUST remain open minded.

Open minded is one thing – but if we open our minds to the point that our brains fall out, it ceases to be an attribute.

Another thing we need to understand about Islam is that it is patient. Those who perpetrate it are not interested in total domination this week, this year or this decade. In fact, they’re patient enough to work toward their end goal for centuries if that’s what it takes. Good grief, they’ve been at it for over a thousand years as it is.

The nutshell example is England. England’s complacency and political correctness has them in trouble regarding the ideology of Islam. Islam has invaded the British society to the point where they have a nationwide foothold and are now nearly holding hostage the principles of that great country. Some countries in Europe are now starting to take measures against Islam, but find themselves at risk of reprisal for it because they allowed Islam a foothold.

In our country, take a look at where, geographically, Islam is establishing itself and you find it has it’s local footholds in areas rife with liberals. Look at Dearborn, Michigan. Dearborn is nearly a Midwest Mecca.

The liberal combination of political correctness and toleration is working in concert with the aspirations of the ideology of Islam. This is not to say liberals are deliberately aiding the enemy – rather they act against the core conservatism by tolerating the incursion of Islam and justify it thusly. In doing so, they place everyone at risk. According to far too many liberals, Islam should be allowed because it is a religion and those Islamists who reside here who perpetrate violence are just nut cases not being driven by the ideology.

The nutshell example for this would be the Fort Hood shooting.  A guy wearing OUR uniform starts yelling Allah Akbar and opens fire killing more than a dozen – but to liberals and the liberal press, it has nothing to do with Islam…he was just an isolated nut case.

While Americans have risen to the occasion against nations and their armies, we are reluctant to recognize an enemy cloaked in an ideology rather than a uniform. We are more apt, in the name of liberal political correctness, to teach our children tolerance of that ideology rather than the difference between an ideology and a religion. Perhaps that’s because, again in the name of political correctness, we have all but completely removed any mention of religion from our schools.

Our leaders are reluctant to speak out against an ideology for fear of losing a voting block or of not gaining one which traditionally votes against them. Be inclusive, do not confront and maybe, just maybe, you’ll get a vote or two.

This is a dangerously false premise and one that has been driven by charges of racism and bigotry, labels which scare politicians into complacency or false tolerance.

Some elected officials see the ideology of Islam for what it really is and they do speak out against it but those on the left continue to castigate them for it. For examples, one needs look no farther than Allen West or Peter King.

Those who look to the vast majority of our current elected officials at any level to guide us through the mine field of Islamic ideology are more a part of the problem than the solution. Government does not lead the people in this nation, the people lead the government, and that is precisely one of the reasons Islamists see us as the enemy. We, as the people, must understand the difference between an ideology and a religion and then choose elected officials who also recognize the truth if we are to ever defeat this enemy.

Here, in a final nutshell is the deal: Islam is not a religion guided by the scriptures of the Koran. Islam is an ideology of domination driven by a manifesto called the Koran. Those who profess a belief in that manifesto cannot be in any way considered moderate and those who do not ascribe to the manifesto cannot be Islamists lest they be killed by those who DO ascribe to it.

9-11 should have been the wake up that jolted us into a united action against the Islamist ideology, but didn’t, and what have we learned in the 10 years since?

Not nearly enough.