Trent Franks: “Mr. Speaker, today, as we embrace the grave responsibility of discussing an issue that will have a profound impact on…”

“Mr. Speaker, today, as we embrace the grave responsibility of discussing an issue that will have a profound impact on future American generations, it seems very appropriate to remind ourselves of the ideal that gave birth to the United States in the very first place. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It puts us all on even ground, Mr. Speaker, but, whether we realize it or not, most of the important discussions in this Chamber, including the one in this moment, center around whether we still believe those words. In these hours, America finds herself at war with an inexpressibly dangerous ideology that is the antithesis of those words and everything that is the American ideal. What concerns me most, Mr. Speaker, is that this is a war between an ideology that is committed to the death and destruction of freedom and the subjugation of the entire world and is one waged against the world's free people who still remain primarily asleep. Mr. Speaker, this ideological war did not begin on 9/11. It began many years ago when certain Muslim extremists embraced a divergent Islamist dogma that dictates that all infidels must die. It was called then, as it should be now, Jihad.”