The following is a transcript of Western CPAC's kenote luncheon speaker, Bruce Herschensohn who is a Senior Fellow of Pepperdine University.

During this past week some absolutely marvelous things have happened: the Mine Rescue in Chile with all 33 miners and the five rescuers alive, lifted and safe; and there was the Nobel Peace Prize finally going to a worthy winner: Liu Xiabo the imprisoned Chinese dissident who advocates human rights for the people of China; and here at home the magnificent increasing aura of the Tea Party Movement; and finally, polls that forecast the likely success of many conservative candidates worthy of office.  Not bad for one week.

With it all I want to mention one concern: economic issues are way in the foreground of political dialogue.  That’s valid – particularly for these midterm elections.  But polls indicate that way down in public concern is what I’m convinced is the most important issue of our time; perhaps the most important issue of all time: the War against Radical Islamic Terrorism.  That war could well determine the survival or lack of survival of the United States and, in fact, the survival or lack of survival of all civilized societies.

    As more and more distance comes between September the 11th of 2001 and the current, more and more Americans speak and think of it as past tense - a memory.  Nothing more.  That’s dangerous because it isn’t past tense.  It’s present tense.  We are in a war with some front lines known and with future front lines unknown but with near-certainty, they’re coming.

Additionally, we do not have the luxury of retaining the outrageous current rules of engagement that demand a half-hearted war fought in political correctness.  Admittedly, every Chief of State around the world knows we have the most powerful troops and military technology in the world.  But every Chief of State also knows that our current leadership will not use the power we have.  Therefore, we are not the most powerful force in the world.  Instead, the most inhumane have become the most powerful forces in the world: those who stone women to death in front of cheering crowds in a stadium, and chop off heads of men, and delight in targeting innocents.  Even though we know all this, our President is apparently agreeing with President Karzai of Afghanistan to accommodate negotiations with the Taliban in a peace council.  Negotiate to end the war -- not win it.  Then our nation’s President could begin withdrawal in July as he indicated in his West Point speech.  Any politician who advocates ending the war – who says we should just get out – those who give timelines for getting out, ignore the fact that wars are never ended; they are won or lost.  Victory or defeat.

  President Karzai has said in justification of negotiating with the Taliban, “They are all Afghans.”  He knows he doesn’t have much choice but to negotiate with the Taliban if the United States will leave before the war is won.  But negotiations with tyrannical forces have never brought what was signed and agreed.  Never:

Not Chamberlain in Munich in 1938 -- or the Yalta Agreement with the Soviet Union in 1945 -- or the 57-year continuing negotiations with North Korea -- or the 1973 Paris Peace Accords with North Vietnam -- or the No-Fly Zones with Iraq -- or the 1993 Oslo Accords with Yasser Arafat -- or the 1994 Advanced Framework Agreement with North Korea -- or the 1995 Dayton Agreement with Serbia.  And for the purpose of brevity I’ve left some out.  But for sure, tyrannical forces do not feel any hesitancy to dishonor their signatures.  They plan on it.

However we do know how to win a war against tyrannical forces: and that is through insistence of unconditional surrender.  That’s what the other side has as its objective:  Al-Zawahiri, the #2 of Al Qaeda said, “we will defeat the United States as it was defeated in Vietnam in 1975, and Lebanon in 1983 and Somalia in 1993."  He knows his history.  And Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran said, “We shall soon experience a world without the United States.”  And every day shouted on the streets of so many Mideast nations is the three-word chant, “Death to America!”  Many Americans regard that as nothing more than talk – propaganda – “ignore it.”  Eight decades back that's the way "Mein Kampf" was regarded.  During those days, a member of the House of Commons asked Winston Churchill “Please explain why you insist on continuing to fight Hitler.”  Churchill answered, “If I stop, you’ll find out why.”

And if we stop we’ll find out why.  Get this:  In the last Fiscal Year of that war; World War II: 89 and a half percent of our federal budget was appropriated for the war effort.  89 and a half percent for the war effort, leaving only 10 and a half percent for everything else.  No one complained.  Victory was our objective.  And that objective was achieved.

Most Americans living now were born after that war and therefore have only seen wars in which any failure of ours would mean that a friendly state, an ally, could be defeated.  That’s bad enough.  But in this war, we’re fighting so that the United States will be saved.   

For nine years now we’ve heard the frequent question of pseudo-scholars ask, “What is it that makes those terrorists hate the United States?  We should search for the deep reasons.”  That is absolute nonsense.  The reasons are obvious:  our enemies are primitive and uncivilized and without conscience.  They have fallen in love with hate.  That’s it.  Analysis done.

To search for deeper reasons is to naively exalt the murderers to rank with those murdered: that they both have a case.  Those enemies attacked citizens and structures of the greatest country in the world, and that conclusion of being the greatest country in the world comes not from some blind national pride of mine, but from proof.  This is my proof, learned early:  This nation could have had the world as our taxpayer after World War II.  Easy.  But we did the opposite.  American citizens gave our taxes to them.  We gave our friends and former foes funds to rebuild their nations and for those former foes to constitute their governments into democracies so their people would be free.  What other country has ever done such a thing?  None.

But to do it we didn’t confuse winning hearts and minds while we bombed them.  First we won, and then came winning their hearts and minds.  That, in my view, is the example we should follow in any war against those who attempt to destroy liberty.  Later – hearts and minds.

    There are those who argue back that some people don’t want to be free.  Maybe.  But, as we found out during the Cold War, there is, in almost every person, a deep instinct to be free.  We found that out by witnessing a one-way avalanche of millions upon millions.  They only went in one direction, toward liberty.  And they risked their lives to make the journey.  Millions.

    From North Korea to South Korea.

    From East Berlin to West Berlin.

    From North Vietnam to South Vietnam.

    From Cambodia to Thailand.

    From Cuba to Miami.

    From the People’s Republic of China to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

    To say nothing of the millions from the Soviet Union and all its satellite governments in Eastern Europe to nations that were free.  They met no one going the other way.  Whether or when the entire population of the world will be free is beyond prophecy.

    To achieve that day, we should never accept the phrase that “9-11 has changed America forever.”  It better not.  If 9-11 changes our nation forever by Americans becoming content with living in eternal caution, with metal detectors at entrances and concrete blockades in front of federal buildings and the search of pockets and purses and being patted down and explosive-sniffing-dogs and other anti-terrorist measures, then we will be living with radical Islamist terrorism and not defeating it.  Then the war will not have been won -- but at best, a status quo will have been accepted.  To win, which is what we have to do - we shouldn’t allow America to change forever.  The next generation must feel invited into federal buildings - welcomed into them -- not having to go through an anguish of entrance.  The next generation should know the joy of travel by air, not an ordeal of airports.  The next generation should not live with less freedom than we’ve had.  The next generation should have a future even better than our past -- when the towers were still there.

    Perhaps, most important, is that our nation is the only one that consistently risks and gives lives for the liberty of strangers: for Koreans, Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, Grenadans, Nicaraguans, Kuwaitis, Somalians, Haitians, Bosnians, Kosovars, Afghans, Iraqis.  If we perish, who will pick up such a mission?  Are there any able volunteers in the world?

    Instead of allowing such a test, we have to win.  And then after we win, school children in our nation will be in their classrooms, stumbling over the words in history books: “Al Qaeda” and “Islamic Jihad” and “Hezbollah” and “Hamas” and “Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade,” and the children will likely spell them wrong, and that will be okay because those names won’t have relevance for them.  Just history.  Just history because the United States will have attained total and absolute and unconditional victory.  It is the only way.  Peace without liberty is surrender.  Always.

    To live up to what the United States has been, we have to assure that the destiny of the United States is liberty for the young generation of Americans and for all Americans yet unborn.  That is the mission of the greatest, the strongest, and the most humane nation the world has ever known.