By MONROE ROARK
mroark@thecitizennews.com

This is a day unlike any that my generation has ever faced.

I've grown up knowing what D-Day and Pearl Harbor meant to America, at least as much as anyone who was not alive on those fateful days could understand it. When seeing and hearing a televised account of some historic battle or reading about it in a newspaper, I've often tried to picture what it must have actually looked like.

Sept. 11 is different. Like most of you, I remember exactly where I was when I heard the first reports of what happened in New York and Washington, and when we first learned who and what was behind it. I saw the televised images time and time again over the course of the days and weeks that followed. What makes Sept. 11 different from Pearl Harbor or D-Day for my generation is that we lived it.

If you ask 100 people about the various issues relating to Sept. 11, from the war in Afghanistan to the likely future attack on Iraq and the ongoing fighting between Israel and the Palestinians, you could get 100 different answers and opinions. While emphasizing that I do not in any way claim to have all of the answers (not even close), I respectfully offer these thoughts to the public discourse.

The enemy in this "War on Terror," or whatever name you might like to give it, is clearly defined, in my view. The men who took control of those airliners last fall, and those who supported them, made it crystal clear what their motivation was. The hijackers were not Buddhists, or Hindus, or even atheists. They claimed to receive their inspiration from Islam.

We must emphasize that, obviously, not all followers of Islam are murderers and terrorists. At the same time, we must note that no one has recently killed 3,000 innocent civilians in the name of Christianity or any other religion. Nor has any other religion sanctioned the rape of a woman in retaliation for her brother's affair, as a Pakistani court did this summer, or sentenced a woman to be stoned to death for adultery, as has happened in Nigeria in the past two weeks. Both of those rulings were in the name of Islam.

Common sense will tell you that, if you read the most basic writings of nearly any major religion, it will proclaim what it says is the ultimate truth, and since many of them contradict one another, everybody's religion cannot be ultimately true.

The United States of America was founded specifically on Christian principles. This is a historical fact not in dispute. In doing so, the founders paved the way for a nation where people of all faiths - Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Wiccan, Satanic, atheistic, whatever - can live together in peace.

Consider, for instance, the gentleman in California who would have the courts make the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional. How would a similar protest been received in, say, Saudi Arabia? He probably does not want to speculate about that too much.

So you have an entire region of the world founded upon Islam, and every nation in that region has a Third World standard of living, ruled oppressively by near-dictators who would deny women the most basic human rights. (Compared to this, one could argue that Jesus Christ is the best friend a feminist could have, but that's for another column.)

Indeed, the only democracy in this part of the world is - guess where? - Israel. Coincidentally, the highest standard of living in the Middle East is - right again! - in Israel, a country that has fought for its very survival for more than 50 years, surrounded by people who want nothing less than the total annihilation of the Jewish race.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, a nation that was founded on Christianity and has been Israel's best friend is the lone undisputed superpower on the face of the earth. One could also suggest that the United States is the most tolerant nation on earth, since its fastest-growing religion is Islam, whose practitioners in the Middle East want us all dead.

So while you enjoy the religion of your choice in this country, do not forget that we are in the midst of a religious war, and you are ultimately choosing sides in that as well.

[Monroe Roark can be reached at mroark@TheCitizenNews.com.]

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