On a good day, the world is full of political and ideological complexities and competing interests. During times of international conflict and war, those complexities and competing interests can become a deadly gamble in the game of separating friend from foe.

World history has proven repeatedly that friends and enemies are sometimes hard to identify and usually temporary at best. International alliances, ours or theirs, are seldom built upon more than temporarily aligned interests. They are seldom alliances of any real depth of respect for or commitment to each other.

When things are relatively peaceful in the world, every man (government) is acting on behalf of himself. When those actions step on someone’s toes, or threaten someone else’s agenda, things become less peaceful in a hurry and folks begin to choose sides. At this moment, any enemy of my enemy is my friend and any friend of my enemy, is also my enemy.

Many enemies means many battle fronts in any modern war

In the current international war against international Islamic jihad, separating friend from foe is often clouded by the fact that many of our friends or allies in this war were indeed enemies of ours not so long ago, and many of our enemies recently or still, call themselves our friends.

To be certain, America has many good friends around the globe who will stand beside her come hell or high water. But America also has many enemies, some who call themselves our friends publicly but work to help our enemies, some of them homegrown domestic enemies within.

As with all battles, we must know who we are fighting and why

We know that when identifying foreign enemies, our enemies are both those who act against us overtly and directly, as well as those who act indirectly, by supporting our enemies behind the scenes. Bin Laden and Al Qaeda carried out the attacks of 9/11/01. But their ability to carry out such attacks was made possible by a laundry list of other terror groups, terror sponsor states, rogue regimes and other “enablers” who shared a common hatred of the west, America in particular.

On 9/12/01, President Bush was clear and all of congress and America agreed. America was at war. Our allies were all who would stand with us and our enemies were all who stood opposed. We were after those who had acted overtly against America, and all who acted or would come to act covertly against America as well. We were after terrorists, and all those who supported, armed, funded, trained, aided or in any way abetted international terrorism. We would make no distinction between those who attacked and those who make such attacks possible.

Defining the enemy within is more complex. While we’d like to limit the definition to foreign terror sleeper cells operating on American soil, the definition must be broader if we intend to emerge victorious from this battle of ideals. Our domestic enemy must be defined by the same standards as our foreign enemies, those who supported, arm, fund, train, aid, abet, justify, promote or condone international terrorism. Those who attack us and those who hope to weaken our defenses.

While the enemy within will not like being identified as an enemy at all, domestic enemies are no less dangerous than foreign enemies, in fact, quite the contrary. There is no more dangerous enemy than the enemy which you have overlooked, especially those operating from inside the camp. The foreign enemy you can not see is very dangerous. But, the enemy operating within, which you refuse to see, is even more dangerous.

War makes strange bedfellows

Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were not friends. But, because they shared a common enemy in America, they indeed sought to work together towards the common interest of attacking America. Iran and Iraq are not friends. But, some in Iraq share a common anti-west interest with some in Iran, and they work together towards a common goal of defeating the west as a result.

Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan and the Palestinians are not friends. But, they share a common enemy in Israel, as well as any westernized nations that support Israel’s right to exist. So, they often work together towards a common interest. My enemy’s enemy is my friend.

We have only two types of enemies

At the end of the day, though our enemies have many faces, many names, many separate ideologies and even some competing interests of their own, we have only two types of enemies. Those who seek to attack America (the west) and her interests at home and abroad, and those who refuse to defend American interests, at home or abroad. In either case, their motives matter not.

The enemy that seeks to undermine America’s ability to defend itself, or undermine its ability to win abroad, is just as much an enemy as those who seek to attack America. There is little difference between a terror network who seeks to ignite a dirty bomb in a U.S. city, and a sponsor state or rogue regime which is willing to deliver to that network the materials needed to make that dirty bomb, or a European nation seeking to profit by selling such materials indiscriminately on the black market.

Likewise, those who work to make America vulnerable to such attacks are for all practical purposes, indistinguishable from those who seek to carry out the attack. My enemy’s friend is also my enemy.

The enemy within

Under the guise of “patriotic dissent”, “free speech” and a “people’s right to know,” our enemy within seeks to weaken our national resolve, and thereby, our national defense and the nation as a whole, leaving us more vulnerable to foreign attack, rather than less.

Patriotic dissent is limited to that which opposes any and all efforts to weaken the nation. Any dissent that seeks to weaken the nation can therefore not be deemed a “patriotic” act. People who act against American interests are not friends of America. They are an enemy of America, no matter what they call themselves or how they excuse their actions and they are very dangerous.

A war-time Press

A war-time press is vital to the mission of national defense. It is obligated to tell the truth about the conflict, report both the advances and the set-backs which exist in every war, or tell nothing at all. It is the eyes and ears of the people, who must support their troops once they have been committed to battle.

If those eyes are blind to the advances and report only the set-backs, they are engaged in misleading the people by omission, and by those means they are weakening the resolve of a nation that must support its troops to a successful conclusion of the mission.

If the press extends their efforts beyond blindness, into intentional spreading of propaganda, then they have become a tool of the enemy. If they engage in exposing vital secret defense operations of their own nation, then they undermine those operations and the people charged with carrying out those missions. They have become a deadly tool of our enemies. Their actions are nothing short of acts of treason and the people must hold them accountable.

A war-time congress

Congress has a sworn duty to uphold and defend. They have an obligation to advise, consent or dissent, the orders of the Commander-in-Chief. They have a duty to apprise themselves of the situations and circumstances that threaten America’s interests. They are the check and balance to the executive branch and as such, they owe it to every American to do their own homework before committing a single soldier to battle.

No decision is more critical than the decision to send American troops into harm’s way.

Congress has but one official voice and that voice is their official congressional vote, not their campaign rhetoric. If they did not do their job of knowing the facts before voting to send troops into battle, then they were derelict in their sworn duty as a member of congress and they can not be trusted with the most important decisions our nation will ever make.

Once members of congress have voted to send troops into battle, they are obligated, both morally and constitutionally - to provide those troops with all measures of support needed to carry out the mission that congress just assigned them. This includes not only financial and logistical support, but moral support as well.

From the moment troops receive their orders to deploy, they have only one thought in mind and that thought is the successful completion of the task they have been given. Nothing short of complete success is acceptable to them. Hence, nothing short of complete support for the mission they were so ordered to undertake, is acceptable either.

For a member of congress to vote to send troops into battle and fund the mission, while publicly undermining the morale of the troops and emboldening the enemy via anti-American rhetoric, is the most irresponsible act any member of congress could ever commit. The same is true for every American citizen.

A war-time electorate

The commander-in-chief ordered it, congress advised and consented to it and the troops immediately and voluntarily, place themselves at risk on our behalf. There’s no room for second guessing or armchair quarterbacking.

Domestic financial stability is not possible in a nation under ongoing attack. The stock market including your 401k, your ability to go to work and put food on your families table, retail sales which drive manufacturing of goods and services, are all in jeopardy so long as the nation, its cities and its people remain on defense against homeland strikes. It’s also not possible to support the troops while undermining their mission.

While many would like to pretend that our greatest electoral issues are domestic social concerns, none of these issues can be effectively addressed while the nation is under attack. Let one single dirty bomb get off in any major U.S. city and watch how fast your free, prosperous, socially conscious country becomes a broken, panicked nation living under marshal law in some degree of economic collapse.

The terrorists and the regimes that sponsor and support them know this very well and the American people can not afford to ignore this reality.

Cutting-n-running abroad means cutting-n-running at home

Leaving Iraq at this moment in time does not represent leaving the war. It only represents moving the central front in the war on terror to our own doorstep here. For war to end, both sides have to be willing to stop. When only one side wishes to stop, it’s called “retreat” or “surrender.”

For the record, it is not General Petraeus or our brave soldiers who have “betrayed” America. It is the Code Pink, MoveOn.org and Daily KOS type of Democratic Socialists masquerading as “anti-war liberals” who have betrayed America.

It is the American press, that is blind to any facts which support America or American interests, and is completely focused upon reporting every minor set-back or challenge and no story that the people might conclude is progress, which has betrayed the American people.

It is those who voted to send American troops into battle and then spent their every waking moment since, working to undermine public confidence, troop morale and the mission as a whole, while emboldening our enemies by constantly chopping at the legs of their domestic political enemies, who betray their most vital duty to America.

As a Christian first, American second, Conservative third and Republican last, I call upon all those who define themselves similarly to take a public and permanent stand against all enemies of the United States, both foreign and domestic. I call for all true American patriots to come together and speak with one voice against those here and abroad, who seek the end of the greatest nation in earth’s history.

Make no mistake - our enemy’s friends are also our enemies.

Even those working in our so-called press, that see no good in America today, on college campuses that refuse to hear from average Americans willing to take up arms to protect our borders, but invite known enemies of our state to speak to our young. Those who work against America from the halls of congress, or from the public policy hate groups that buy our politicians and your votes, like MoveOn.org and all other George Soros foundations.

America is under attack from without and within, like never before in history. If true American patriots hope to prevail, they will have no choice but to recognize and confront all enemies.

The place is here, the time is now. Confront these evils on your own terms or face them at a place and time of their choosing. Some enemies can be vanquished peacefully at the polls today. Soon, your vote will no longer be enough.

We will face them, one way or another. Better it be on our terms… They have no rules of engagement, as you have seen on the streets of Baghdad, on the front page of your newspapers and in the halls of congress.