Trent Franks: “today, as we embrace the grave responsibility of debating an issue that will have profound impact on future American…”

“today, as we embrace the grave responsibility of debating an issue that will have profound impact on future American generations, it seems very appropriate to remind ourselves of the ideal that gave birth to this Nation in the first place. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 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 expressively dangerous ideology that is the antithesis of those words and everything that is the American ideal. What concerns me most is that this war between an ideology committed to the absolute death to destroy freedom and subjugate the entire world, and 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 called now, jihad. Thomas Jefferson was the first American President to send U.S. military force to war against Islamist jihad.”