This is a day

unlike any that my generation has ever faced.

I've grown

up knowing what D-Day and Pearl Harbor meant to America, at least as much

as anyone who was not alive on those fateful days could understand it.

When seeing and hearing a televised account of some historic battle or

reading about it in a newspaper, I've often tried to picture what it must

have actually looked like.

Sept. 11 is

different. Like most of you, I remember exactly where I was when I heard

the first reports of what happened in New York and Washington, and when

we first learned who and what was behind it. I saw the televised images

time and time again over the course of the days and weeks that followed.

What makes Sept. 11 different from Pearl Harbor or D-Day for my generation

is that we lived it.

If you ask

100 people about the various issues relating to Sept. 11, from the war

in Afghanistan to the likely future attack on Iraq and the ongoing fighting

between Israel and the Palestinians, you could get 100 different answers

and opinions. While emphasizing that I do not in any way claim to have

all of the answers (not even close), I respectfully offer these thoughts

to the public discourse.

The enemy in

this "War on Terror," or whatever name you might like to give

it, is clearly defined, in my view. The men who took control of those

airliners last fall, and those who supported them, made it crystal clear

what their motivation was. The hijackers were not Buddhists, or Hindus,

or even atheists. They claimed to receive their inspiration from Islam.

We must emphasize

that, obviously, not all followers of Islam are murderers and terrorists.

At the same time, we must note that no one has recently killed 3,000 innocent

civilians in the name of Christianity or any other religion. Nor has any

other religion sanctioned the rape of a woman in retaliation for her brother's

affair, as a Pakistani court did this summer, or sentenced a woman to

be stoned to death for adultery, as has happened in Nigeria in the past

two weeks. Both of those rulings were in the name of Islam.

Common sense

will tell you that, if you read the most basic writings of nearly any

major religion, it will proclaim what it says is the ultimate truth, and

since many of them contradict one another, everybody's religion cannot

be ultimately true.

The United

States of America was founded specifically on Christian principles. This

is a historical fact not in dispute. In doing so, the founders paved the

way for a nation where people of all faiths - Christian, Muslim, Buddhist,

Wiccan, Satanic, atheistic, whatever - can live together in peace.

Consider, for

instance, the gentleman in California who would have the courts make the

Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional. How would a similar protest been

received in, say, Saudi Arabia? He probably does not want to speculate

about that too much.

So you have

an entire region of the world founded upon Islam, and every nation in

that region has a Third World standard of living, ruled oppressively by

near-dictators who would deny women the most basic human rights. (Compared

to this, one could argue that Jesus Christ is the best friend a feminist

could have, but that's for another column.)

Indeed, the

only democracy in this part of the world is - guess where? - Israel. Coincidentally,

the highest standard of living in the Middle East is - right again! -

in Israel, a country that has fought for its very survival for more than

50 years, surrounded by people who want nothing less than the total annihilation

of the Jewish race.

Meanwhile,

across the Atlantic, a nation that was founded on Christianity and has

been Israel's best friend is the lone undisputed superpower on the face

of the earth. One could also suggest that the United States is the most

tolerant nation on earth, since its fastest-growing religion is Islam,

whose practitioners in the Middle East want us all dead.

So while you

enjoy the religion of your choice in this country, do not forget that

we are in the midst of a religious war, and you are ultimately choosing

sides in that as well.

[Monroe Roark

can be reached at [email protected].]