The last time I published a book from the perspective of a sympathetic Islamic Character, I sold one copy. Hence, I have let Under the Crescent languish. In that novel I predict an Islamic Eastern Unites States 100 years from now, an outcome I see as highly likely.

I know that I’m just a nut-job crackpot horror writer masquerading as a sci-fi writer, and that all of the military talking heads seem to think that the U.S will forever have its way in the Middle East and that there is no Islamic threat to Europe or the U.S. on a military level. But, when I first saw news of ISIS, a chill went up my spine and I thought, this is it, these guys are the reignited Flame of Islam. I quickly ran a scenario through my mind, and came to the conclusion that the Oil Sheiks will go the way of the Sassanid Persians, the current soulless Europe would fare about as well as the Visigoths did, and that the U.S. would get incompletely digested on the order of the Byzantine clusterfuck that still called itself Rome.

But alas, some expert confirmation that Militant Islam might still be able to pull a military horseshoe out of its ages old ass would have been nice. What do I really know, anyhow? As it turns out, the only modern military to impose its will in the Middle East for longer than a news cycle was silent on the subject.

The Israeli Defense Force has the best record of any currently active military on the planet. They also have the best commandos. I watched a science channel documentary where these geeks were testing spec ops soldiers. For their hardest test they took this IDF vet, ran him in a rubber suit until he was supposed to be ready to collapse, and then had him test against the tactical pistol trial he did prior to the fatigue session to see how degraded his performance was—and he did better, a lot better, when he was clinically incapacitated!

So, if you are the baby killer running the IDF, and you are tasked with protecting what amounts to Delaware against what amounts to Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland, what could possibly get you to risk some of these studs on rescuing some rabid towel-heads from a pack of zombie towel-heads?

Just for the record, in my Global Islamic sci-fi setting, I gave the IDF credit, and had them nuke the Holy Land as the Islamist hordes rolled over their homeland in the Second Yom Kipper War, with American Jewry setting up a new Israeli state in Manhattan—which I didn’t think was too much of a stretch, really.

Well, since the IDF seems to have weighed in on the side of taking ISIS seriously, I might decide to write this thing after all—and maybe sell two copies!

From a present day perspective, I could understand Israel allying with one group of Muslims against the others. The Crusader States did it. So, although this makes uncomfortable sense, why have I read numerous front page articles over the past two months extolling the need for the Peoples Republic of Maryland to import Islamic terrorists and their little brothers in training into my already hyper-violent habitat?

Thanks to Dominic for the heads up.