Leadership Quote by Kit Bond

Bond’s line is less a description of a threat than a preemptive strike against a policy impulse: retrenchment. He frames “fortress mentality” as not merely mistaken but naive, a childlike fantasy that geography and borders can substitute for strategy. The repetition and staccato pivot at the end - “They do” - is classic floor-speech emphasis: compress a complicated argument into a gut-level certainty that sounds like common sense. It’s meant to close debate, not open it.

The key move is the compound label “Islamofascist terrorists,” a post-9/11 term engineered to do double duty. “Terrorists” designates a tactic; “fascist” imports the moral clarity of World War II; “Islamo-” makes the enemy legible to an American public primed to see civilizational conflict. That fusion isn’t accidental. It collapses distinctions between militant groups, states, and a global faith, widening the mandate for action while narrowing the space for skepticism. If the enemy is both religious and totalitarian, negotiation looks like appeasement.

Contextually, this sits squarely in the early-2000s security rhetoric that justified forward engagement abroad and expansive measures at home. The subtext is directed as much at domestic critics as at foreign adversaries: if you argue for restraint, you’re indulging “fortress” isolationism and ignoring “progress” the terrorists have supposedly made. Bond’s intent is to make fear sound responsible, and to make dissent sound dangerously unserious.