Mr. Solzhenitsyn warned that "The Western world has lost its civil courage..." and rhetorically asked, "Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?" He lamented that "[N]o weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower."
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Solzhenitsyn actually foresaw much of our current predicament in that 1978 commencement address. He observed that "Political and intellectual bureaucrats ... get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists." Consider, for example, the UN's weak resolutions against Iran.
Solzhenitsyn also observed: "When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists' civil rights. There are many such cases."
Indeed there are! The reaction, especially in Europe, to Saddam Hussein's death sentence is a case in point.
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It's fashionable to say that legal protections distinguish America from its enemies. But Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson's dissent in a 1949 case concerning free speech is also true: "There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact."
A little practical wisdom, confidence in our cause, and more courage are sorely needed in the war against radical Islamists. Like Solzhenitsyn before, contemporary observers, such as Mark Steyn and Daniel Pipes, have condemned the weak response of the left to the terrorist threat. Mr. Pipes recently wrote that "Pacifism, self-hatred, and complacency are lengthening the war against radical Islam and causing undue casualties." He added that "left-leaning Westerners" will have to "overcome this triple affliction and confront the true scope of the threat" if the civilized world is to prevail against the Islamist terrorists.
At stake in the war on terror is nothing less than preserving Western civilization, as Solzhenitsyn sensed almost 30 years ago: "The fight, physical and spiritual for our planet, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started."
The fate of future generations depends on how we answer the enemy's challenge today. To do that, we must clearly understand the nature of the threat we face – and we must marshal the courage and character necessary to prevail.