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Gingrich: Crucial radical Islamist battlefield is U.S.

**FILE** Newt Gingrich (Associated Press)**FILE** Newt Gingrich (Associated Press)
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Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Thursday said the greatest threat to national security is radical Islam, but the greatest battlefront for that threat is at home.

"This is not a war on terrorism ... this is a struggle with radical Islamists," Mr. Gingrich told a group of about 200 people at the American Enterprise Institute.

In his "America at Risk" speech, he drew comparisons to the U.S.' situation in World War II and the Cold War, calling for today's leaders to use some of the same strategies from those earlier conflicts.

The problem is that many leaders are "sleepwalking" and don't face the Islamic threat, said Mr. Gingrich, who is widely thought to be a possible contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

He did not limit the war to the fighting in the Middle East, saying there are two additional, more important fronts: the United States and Europe. He noted that 54 jihadists have been arrested in the U.S. on terrorism charges since President Obama took office.

"Every one of these instances constitutes a breakdown in national security," Mr. Gingrich said.

He emphasized that such talk does not demonize all Muslims.

"Let me draw a sharp distinction between those Muslims who live in the modern world and those Muslims who would radically change the modern world," he said. "The people who want to worship God in their own way and live under American law - we're not in the fight with them," Mr. Gingrich said in an interview after the speech.

© Copyright 2010 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

About the Author
Michelle Phillips

Michelle Phillips

Michelle Phillips is a student intern with the Washington Times through the National Journalism Center covering international affairs.

After growing up overseas, Ms. Phillips returned to the U.S. to attend Rice University for her bachelor's degree, and is entering her junior year there. She discovered her love of journalism in college while working for the school newspaper, the Rice Thresher, ...

Comments

New User 06f24 says:

1 month, 1 week ago

Mark as offensive

You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, that you might go and bear fruit and keep on bearing, and that your fruit might be lasting, so that whatever you ask the Father in My name, He will give it to you. This is what I command you: to love one another. -john 15:16,17

tlwinslow says:

1 month, 1 week ago

Mark as offensive

Islam is the only major world religion that takes commands from its god to conquer territory in order to set up a sociopoltical system that makes Muslims superior to non-Muslims and men to women, hence it's subject to drastic legal controls no different than the Ghost Dance religion, Mormonism or Scientology. Too bad, the fact that a quarter of the world's pop. claims to be Muslim scares the U.S. govt. into bowing to it as if it weren't really political, and try splitting hairs to separate good from bad Muslims, when all Muslims get their religion straight from the Quran, which is where the commands to set up Sharia come from. Hence the U.S. must either wake up now and stop the Trojan Horse at the gates by stopping and reversing Muslim immigration, or accept increasing anarchy and subversion of the Constitution by the growing Muslim pop., there's no crystal ball needed here. Too bad too many people won't or can't take the time to study Islam's little known history and strange terminology to understand how deep the supremacy goes, but it's free anytime to all with the Historyscoper at http://go.to/islamhistory

JDD says:

1 month, 1 week ago

Mark as offensive

"We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is
the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to
live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is
entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better,
and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatic rampaging across the
globe in the name of Islam.

The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is
the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting
wars worldwide.

It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups
throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an
Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor-kill. It
is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque.

It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape
victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill
and to become suicide bombers.

The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the 'silent
majority,' is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace,
yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20
million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant.

China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed
to kill a staggering 70 million people.

The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering
sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia
in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million
Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.

And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be
said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our
powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:

Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.

Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up because
they will awaken one day and find that the
fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese,

Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians,
Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not
speak up until it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold, we must
pay attention to the only group that counts--the fanatics who threaten our
way of life.

Let us hope that thousands, world-wide, read this and think about it, and
send it on - before it's too late.

The point is, as history has demonstrated....though you keep quiet,
silent....you will not save yourself!"

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