One day after John Kerry declared that the US is “not at war…that is the wrong term” with Islamic State, the White House and the Pentagon announced, “We are at war with Islamic State.” It is reassuring to see that the power with the greatest ability to defend the western world from barbarism has such a clear and unambiguous foreign policy. Two weeks ago President Blabbermouth said, concerning IS, “We do not have a strategy.” This week he set out what the strategy is and, in doing so, kindly let IS know precisely what the terms of his new-found strategy amount to: “America will do everything necessary to defeat IS, but we will not put boots on the ground in iraq or Syria.”

This announcement followed in a great tradition of such announcements –  for example, the earlier announcement that the US was about to withdraw its military presence from Iraq; and the even earlier announcement which so considerately informed the Taliban of the exact date on which US troops would leave Iran. I suspect this crazy way of *waging war…*not waging war (delete as the whim takes you) is just the flip side of the west’s policy of appeasement and pre-emptive self-abasement. In the matter of prosecuting war, the west restricts itself to self-excoriation according to the canons of political correctness. We must not be Islamophobic which, being translated, means: first fail to see what the existential threat to the west is and then do nothing about it.

Yesterday a correspondent  described US policy as “cowardly.” I agree and suppose that we should now re-phrase Clausewitz’s doctrine to read: “Cowardice is politics pursued by other means.”

President B’mouth merely contradicts himself when he says that the US will do all it takes to destroy IS but in the same breath declares, “But of course we’re not going to send in the infantry.” The truth is that the destruction of IS will most probably require a considerable ground force.

This stupidity will have dire consequences – indeed is entailing dire consequences already. Why else do you suppose most of North Africa, the Middle East, much of Saharan Africa, Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria have become places where Islamic terrorist uprisings have created hell on earth? It is simply because that policy of appeasement and pre-emptive self-abasement, coupled with starry-eyed wishful thinking, supported the so called Arab Spring and deposed the unlovely but useful dictators who were indeed bastards – but they were our bastards.

The scale of terror and the intensity of our present war will increase until the west faces up to the brute fact that we are suffering again one of the periodic eruptions of militant and barbarous Islamic imperialism which have occurred for the last fourteen hundred years. In the past the western world had the intelligence to understand this and the courage to to defeat the uprisings.

Our enemies understand very well that we are the first generation of westerners lacking both the intelligence and the courage required. And it will be the death of us.