Why they hate us, in their own thinking

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IN THE WORDS OF OUR ENEMIES

By Jed Babbin

Regnery, $24.95, 274 pages

REVIEWED BY LARRY THORNBERRY

Yes, Virginia, there is Evil in the world. Americans — and many other Westerners — don't do well with evil. We don't understand it. We often don't recognize it when it stares us in the face, or even when it kicks us in the ribs.

Affluent, congenial, welcoming America — a country flush with soccer moms with "Just be Nice" bumper strips on their SUVs — has trouble even accepting that evil exists. Many of us try to live as though it doesn't. We've paid, and are paying, a terrible price for this failure to face reality.

Jed Babbin's new book is about that price. And it's an attempted wake-up call. He shows us evil as a growing concern, chapter and verse, in evil's own words. We should read and heed. Our future depends on how well we deal with the threats that face us.

Mr. Babbin, and others of his cast of mind, can't help but be surprised that Americans are surprised by what our current enemies, Islamo-fascist jihadists, are capable of doing. It's not like they haven't told us over and over what they are about and what they are bound and determined to do. Yes, these people want to kill us, unless we bow to Allah, and they are willing to give up their own lives and their children's lives to accomplish this. They believe God has given them every right to do this.

In a forward to "Words," Newt Gingrich says those who think we don't face a crisis need to read what our enemies are saying. "Jed Babbin has compiled an invaluable record of what America's enemies, from Osama bin Laden to Hugo Chavez to the radical regimes of North Korea and Iran, are saying about their intentions toward us. We've been warned."

These warnings came before and after September 11. Most had to be translated from other languages, but the messages in "Words" are clear, and the speakers have made no attempt to conceal what they were saying from us.