Confronting Radical Jihad

Jihadism – violent, radical, fundamental Islam – is this century’s nightmare. It follows the same dark path as last century’s nightmares: fascism and Soviet communism. Many still fail to comprehend the extent of the threat posed by radical Islam, specifically by those extremists who promote violent Jihad against the United States and the universal values Americans espouse. Yet, the consequences of ignoring this threat – such as a radicalized Islamic actor possessing nuclear weapons – are simply unacceptable.

CHALLENGE: Jihadism – violent, radical, fundamental Islam – is this century's nightmare. It follows the same dark path as last century’s nightmares: fascism and Soviet communism. Many still fail to comprehend the extent of the threat posed by radical Islam, specifically by those extremists who promote violent Jihad against the United States and the universal values Americans espouse. Yet the Jihad has been with us for some time.

Radical Islam has one goal: to replace all modern Islamic states with a worldwide caliphate while destroying the United States and converting all nonbelievers, forcibly if necessary, to a fundamentalist form of Islam.

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: "Today, we face a new generation of challenges, globally and here at home.We will do as Americans have always done: we will rise to the occasion.We have all that we need.We have technology, technology that would have been beyond the imagination of our grandparents.We have national wealth. And most important, we have the heart and passion of the American people - always the greatest source of our strength as a nation." (Governor Mitt Romney, Remarks At The George Herbert Walker Bush Presidential Library, 4/10/07)

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To meet today's challenges, we must mobilize and integrate all elements of national power in unstable areas where traditional civilian agencies cannot operate effectively and traditional military power alone cannot succeed.

Create A Special Partnership Force (SPF). The SPF will integrate all elements of national power under a new force with leadership drawn from a core group of our Army Special Forces trained to work with civilian governments and intelligence personnel to form a new capability that is:

* Focused on locally-targeted efforts to win support in the community while identifying, isolating and eliminating terrorist elements.
* Highly integrated and able to mobilize all elements of national power, including humanitarian and development assistance and rule of law capacity building.
* Closely coordinated in partnership with local governments.
* Intelligence driven.
* Agile and flexible in its operations.
* A sustainable effort in contested areas and sanctuaries of Jihadist groups.

Launch A New Type Of Marshall Plan Unifying Nonmilitary Sources Of Power To Support Moderate Muslims. As President, Governor Romney will call together our Middle East allies and the major nations of the developed world to establish a "Partnership for Progress and Prosperity."

This Partnership will assemble the resources of all developed nations to assure that threatened Islamic states have public schools, micro-credit and banking, the rule of law, human rights, basic health care, and competitive economic policies. Resources would be drawn from public and private institutions, and from volunteers and NGOs.

Strengthen Global Alliances. The failure of efforts such as the United Nations Human Rights Council has given multilateralism a bad name. America’s strength is amplified when it is combined with the strength of other nations.