"The praise of Allah for all Muslims with his support and the humiliating of those who attempt to defeat Islam and who attack it and who entice the unbelievers with their cunning… He has ordered the Prophet - peace be upon Him - and He is master the merciful are with the slitting of the necks of some prisoners and their slow killing. And for us it is an example and a good example… we tell you to know that the coffins will arrive to you one coffin after another, as your people are slaughtered in this way… Then you kill the polytheists (Christians) where you find them and you take them and count them and place them where they can be seen…Allah is the greatest and the honor to Allah and to its messenger and to the militants. And our last claim is that the praise of Allah is the Lord of the Worlds…. And you see the slaughter your fighting brothers suspend the head of this unbeliever on one of Baghdad bridges so that they teach a lesson to others from the infidels and serves as a witness to the honor of the Muslims."

--- Statement read just moments before the video taped murder and beheading of Nick Berg.

Americans have yet to realize that they are now embroiled in a decade's long war with vicious Islamofascists who hail from dozens of countries and nationalities. Al-Zarqawi, the terrorist leader behind the savage deaths of hundreds of Shiite civilians and Iraqi police, the attempted Ricin attacks in the UK and chemical attacks in Jordan, and the beheading of American civilian contractor Nick Berg, spoke just months ago of "gathering the sheep" for slaughter. Nick Berg was just the first victim in the plan of a series of dramatic public atrocities that will unfold in the months to come.

An image made from a video posted on May 11 on an Islamic militant Web site affiliated with al-Qaida showing a group of five men wearing headscarves and black ski masks standing over a bound man in an orange jumpsuit, identified as Nick Berg

Watching the beheading of this idealistic young American and listening to his screams as he was butchered was revolting, sickening and maddening and yet it should be mandatory viewing. To truly understand the nature of this enemy we must digest their viciousness and use it to fuel the avenging fire that was initially kindled on September 11th 2001. War is not pretty, fun or nice but sometimes it is not only necessary but desirable when dealing with an enemy of such diabolical methods and goals.

The commitment to victory can only be solidified by free and just peoples when faced with such recent outrages as the enemy hacking and displaying bodies in Fallujah, the point blank shooting of a pregnant women and her four young daughters in Gaza, militants parading through the streets with the bloody remains of slain Israeli soldiers and the butchery of one slightly lost 26 year old American civilian.

Some commentators have made the observation that Islam has shown itself to be less of a religion than a bloody ideology similar to Nazism, Maoism, or the pesky militant Japanese cult of the emperor that caused so much trouble a few decades ago. Where is the outrage in reaction to such crime from the good peaceful Muslims we are told are the vast majority of Islam? The silence is deafening and the followers of Mohammad bear a portion of responsibility and blame due to their failure to condemn such actions and for the continued support, shelter and protection of such terror artists offered by their clerics, mosques and communities not only here in the United States but all over the world.

One of my friends put it this way:

"Never forget that many of us saw, way back on Sept. 11, 2001, that the enemy of the Americans was the same enemy that was fighting Israel, and India, and Russia, and Indonesia and the Philippines, and infiltrating Europe, and advocating in America, and throwing acid in the face of unveiled women across the world, and preaching fanaticism in Saudi Arabia, and blowing up statues in Afghanistan, and manning the madrasses in Pakistan, and pushing propaganda on al-Jazeera, and blowing up schoolchildren in Tel-Aviv, and now beheading Jewish young men from Philadelphia."

Truer words have never been spoken. The mindset of Islamofascism is one of genocidal mania; the celebration of death and butchery, and revelry in the slaughter of innocents. Americans and civilized people the world over have been shocked by such sub-human behavior but they should not be. That is the character of the enemy that they face. It is the nature of a religious ideology that seeks the death or subjugation of all infidels and the extermination of the Jew. Al-Qaida is just the latest manifestation of 7th century barbarism that has waged an endless shadow war on Western Civilization and has finally provoked the world war of ideology and religion that it has so eagerly sought.

American politicians in particular insist that this is not a war of religion or clash of civilizations. It is an endless spewing of "religion of peace" quotes, diatribes on "a nation of immigrants" and complaints about ethnic profiling at airports. I wish that someone would tell that to the enemy, for that is exactly the war that they are waging.

Whether it is the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Al-Tawhid, Abu Sayyaf, the Taliban, Al-Ansar Islam, Al-Sadr's militia, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, Beyyiat el-Imam, Jund al-Shams or the dozens of other militant terrorist groups infesting the globe, their methodology, goals, tactics, cruelty, tenacity and victims are often eerily the same. It is a strange world of martyrdom, jihad, cries of Allahu Akbar! and fantasies of a heavenly reward of 72 virgins. They may differ by sect, creed or nationality but each wages war on the innocent, the Christian and the Jew, the concepts of Liberty and Justice, and western civilization itself.

The ideology of militant Islam is not some small isolated group of malcontents as they are so often portrayed. Millions of Muslims are adherents to the ideology and religious fervor that wages war on the West. The cries of jihad echo in the bloody guerilla warfare of Algeria. It is the ideology of the Arab slavers waging war on Christians in Sudan. It is the call from hundreds of minerets in Saudi Arabia and the gospel of the mullahs of Iran. It is the creed of the border tribes of Pakistan and was the heart and soul of the Taliban. It flourishes in the jungles of the Philippines and the slums of Indonesia. It sallies forth from the green valleys of Lebanon and preaches its hate in the mosques of Europe.

There will be no easy victory and the legions of the deluded zealots who vent their rage in the blood of the vulnerable, innocent and helpless will not be quickly defeated. Civilized peoples across the globe must learn to steel themselves against the coming barbarity and prepare for the long struggle against those who would slice your throat and murder your children in their beds if given half a chance. Their fanaticism cannot be underestimated and the righteousness of the cause of those who fight against them cannot be doubted. The world must answer terrorism and those who fancy themselves the warriors of Allah with a resolve for utter and total victory.