We need to resurrect the attitude of unconditional surrender that America and the Allies had during World War II. The reason that our modern wars tend to drag on without progress until an inevitably temporary and highly problematic “peace” treaty is arranged is because neither America nor other Western nations fight wars to win; they fight wars for power, profit, or show.
Today is the anniversary of the Allies’ World War II Potsdam Declaration, demanding the “unconditional surrender” of imperial Japan. Since World War II, we have not demanded unconditional surrender, and we have had proportionately disastrous results from most of our conflicts. Now, both America and Israel need to capture that spirit of unconditional surrender if they ever hope to defeat the Islamic terrorist machine that is working overtime to destroy both Jewish and Christian nations. As the great Texan Sam Houston said, “Do right and risk the consequences.”
The reason that Donald Trump made such short-sighted moves in regard to the Syrian jihadi government and the terror-sponsoring Islamic regime, removing sanctions and terror designations from the former and saving the latter from destruction by Israel, is that he, like so many other Westerners, is under the pleasant delusion that wars always end with treaties, and that the lack of open war is always a good in and of itself. He is wrong. Islamic jihadis are never going to stop killing Jews and Christians and their own citizens, because that is what their religious cult commands them to do. And giving terrorist regimes time to regroup simply ensures the next war, just as the Treaty of Versailles set the stage for a Second World War.
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Israel, at a certain point, is going to have to face up to the fact that it can either destroy the so-called Palestinian jihadis or spend the next century or more fighting endless jihad. Let us look again to World War II. The Allies understood two main points when America dropped the atomic bombs on Japan. First of all, they understood that they had an obligation to save their own men first, rather than the enemy’s people. For context on the estimated casualties of a land/sea invasion of Japan, we are still using the Purple Heart awards made in preparation for the bloodbath that would have occurred during that invasion. That means awardees from Vietnam, Korea, and the wars on terror have not run through the awards made in anticipation of the casualties for the invasion of Japan.
Thai-Burma Railway Museum: each spike represents 500 people killed by the imperial Japanese during WWII pic.twitter.com/3FlU0ADkz6
— Catherine Salgado (@CatSalgado32) July 26, 2025
Secondly, the Allies understood their enemy. There were not nearly enough trials of Japanese war criminals after the war ended as there should have been, but at least the Allied leaders were willing to admit the obvious fact that the Japanese really did plan to fight to the last man, woman, and child (they proved that amply on the islands America took the hard way, and the military leaders did not want to surrender even after the atom bombs). The imperial Japanese massacred more people during the war, including Koreans, Chinese, Thais, Filipinos, Americans, and Indochinese, than the Nazis did in the Holocaust.
The ideology of Japan at that time was so genocidal and so much of a death cult that we could only destroy them and rebuild them not only physically, but ideologically. Yet now, as we face Islamic terrorists who believe fanatically that their demon-god will reward them eternally for raping and murdering as many Jews and Christians as possible, we refuse to admit the reality of our enemy’s beliefs. We are willfully determined, whether conservatives or leftists, to pretend that “making peace” with murderous Islamic regimes will save lives. The opposite is true. As I write this, Druze and Christians are being massacred by the Syrian government, from which Trump removed sanctions, and the Islamic regime of Iran is handing out death sentences to Iranians who protested the regime. Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers are still regularly killed by Hamas in Gaza. What exactly are we missing about this situation?
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Israel has been under attack from Muslims ever since its modern rebirth, and it will continue to be so. This is why Israel needs to take decisive action.
Death or unconditional surrender are the only options that should be allowed to a genocidal enemy with a murderous and thoroughly demonic ideology.