Let me be blunt: We beneficiaries of Western civilization have got to take our own side in today’s most pressing argument, and unless France and the U.S. do this together, openly and deliberately, I am greatly afraid that the result will be further massacre and abject disaster. Either the U.S. will continue to lash out alone, trapped in a grasping and anxious present, or we, like most of Europe, will opt to play dead rather than be dead.

The Franco-American mission we must carry out is not to wage war against Islam, or to kick off a new Christian crusade. At the same time, and under the circumstances, it is equally plain that the particularity and universality of the French and American creeds is a license to hunt and destroy the perverse and barbaric Muslim extremist groups waging war against us and our civilization. This we must do at times and places of our choosing, and without forfeiting our own cherished principles, but with a sharp awareness that time is of the essence.

It is also essential that France and the U.S. stand together against fatuous and self-indulgent anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish sentiment, especially but not exclusively prevalent in parts of Europe. It is one thing to discourage Israel from pursuing its settlement policy to a cruel and bitter end; it is another to side with the European Union’s absurd and malicious new policy mandating special labels for goods imported from parts of Israel that can’t date back to 1966. This is just one example. The West’s founding political principles oblige Europe and America to mount a determined and friendly defense of Jews in Israel and in our own countries, through good times and bad, full stop.