Sen. Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) released a video statement from San Bernardino, California on Monday, in which he said the country owed it to the 14 people killed there by Islamic extremists and any Americans who would bleed in the future to tell the truth about the nature of the conflict the United States faces.
"We will win this battle, but we will not win it without reaffirming our core values," Sasse said. "We will win it because of who we are and because of the ways we continue to fight for a free society for all Americans."
We are an open society, Sasse said, and our enemies hate freedom.
"We are not at war with terrorism, which is just a tactic," he said. "We are not at war with some empty sociological label called extremism. We are not even just at war with ISIS, though we're obviously at war with ISIS. But there will be other entities that will lift the black flag of death in the future, even after ISIS has been routed in Syria and Iraq. This is not about workplace violence. This is not about global warming or gun shows ... This is not about anything that we have done wrong. This is about who we are. This is about the nature of freedom."
We are a people, he said, who unite around the Constitution, the First Amendment and believe in the freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.
"I am not a Muslim, but as an American, I stand and defend the rights of American Muslims to freely worship, even though we differ about important theological matters," Sasse said. "In America, we are free to believe different things and to argue about those beliefs."
President Obama has stated repeatedly that the U.S. is not at war with all of Islam, and Sasse addressed that straw man argument in his remarks. Sasse said he shared Obama's fear of a backlash against American Muslims in the present climate, and the best anecdote was the truth.
"We are most certainly, though, at war with militant Islam," Sasse said. "We are at war with violent Islam. We are at war with jihadi Islam. We are not at war with all Muslims. We’re not at war with Muslim families in Dearborn, Michigan, who want the American dream for their kids. But we are at war with those who believe that they will kill in the name of religion ... We are at war with militant or jihadi Islam, but we are not at war with people who believe in the American creed, which includes the right of everybody of every religion to freely worship and to freely speak and to freely assemble and argue."