OUR VIEW: If not we, then who will stop them?

Dear Readers:

All of the associates in our company, Observer Media Group Inc., live by a mission statement that says we are committed “to inspire our communities with extraordinary local content and to help our partners prosper.”

Week after week in our newspapers and on our websites, we focus on local news, events and people, attempting to inform and sometimes entertain you on what is happening to “you, your neighbors and your neighborhood.

We know you don’t look to us for national or international news and commentary.

But this week, we are departing from our mission, with the hope and intention to inspire you to act: To urge our nation’s elected public servants in Washington to execute overwhelming decisive force from the United States against an enemy that has proven to be as evil, if not more so, than the Nazi exterminators.

For decades, millions around the world have said, “Never Again.” Never another Holocaust. Never another diabolical, megalomaniacal Hitler. Never again the atrocities against mankind that occurred under the Nazi regime.

But they are back. Different, but just as horrific. And despite the president’s refusal to identify them, all of America and the world know who this enemy is and what its objective is: radical Islamic extremists who want to annihilate all Jews and Christians and establish a Muslim-ruled world that exterminates modernity.

Day after day, we see in newspapers and on TV, websites and social media, gruesome videos and photos, like the ones above, of the most heinous, barbaric crimes against humanity. And yet little seems to be done to stop the perpetrators. Go down the list:  Boko Haram, Al Nusra, al Qaeda, ISIS, Assad, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, Putin in Ukraine. Relentless in their determination and destruction. Retired Army Vice Chief of Staff and four-star Gen. Jack Keane told Congress last week al Qaeda has “grown fourfold in the last five years” and is “the major security challenge of our generation.”

And what is our response?

Little if anything to make a difference. There is no urgency, no determination, no convincing commitment from the president. His response is so feckless, it’s as if he is willingly letting the Islamic extremists advance their wicked cruelty and ideology.

Congress is no better — nattering politicians in their starched shirts and striped ties; disorganized, fractured; all talk no action; afraid to step out of political protocol.

Yes, we all have our reservations, misgivings and objections about sending our troops to battle and becoming entangled again in the Middle East. “We can’t be the world’s policeman,” so the line goes.

But here is what Americans should ask:

If not we, the United States, then who? 

There is no one. No other nation with the might, the ingenuity or the ability to muster the will, courage and commitment to do whatever is necessary to end this slaughtering of innocents, to destroy this mortal enemy of western values and civilization.

And there is no one else to do it now.

You talk to your neighbors. You read and watch the news. You see how terrorism is spreading. You see history repeating.

The world is worried; you are worried. You know, ultimately, it will be here.

We urge you then: Let your public servants in Washington hear from you. Their top priority is to protect you from harm and from being enslaved and slaughtered by foreign invaders.

The people of the Western World said, “Never Again.” We must show — now — we meant it.

— Matt Walsh, Editor/CEO Observer Media Group