By TOM KNOTT

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 23 — Our nation’s political leaders should be discussing one overriding issue during this presidential campaign season.

They should be discussing heads: Paul Johnson’s head, Kim Sun-il’s head, Nicholas Berg’s head and Daniel Pearl’s head.

The severed heads of the victims reflect the grim reality of the subhuman monsters who inhabit the planet and mean us grave harm. There really is nothing to discuss in great detail after the heads.

Oh, we can talk about the economy if you insist. We can talk about health care. Or Social Security reform. Or even the price of a gallon of gas.

But all of it is a distant concern compared to the war on terror.

These two-legged cockroaches are not going to go away until each one is eliminated with extreme prejudice.

They are doing Allah’s work, in their sick, twisted brains, and their mission is to kill all the infidels of the U.S. and the decadent West.

Sometimes the prospect of a nation being in peril seems lost in the scatterbrained hustle of the 24/7 cable news shows and the partisan rants of the gas bags on Capitol Hill.

We always have the reliability of Scott Peterson and Kobe Bryant, and now we have a woman missing in Utah and a suspicious husband who was a scholar in only his mind, and now we have the 9/11 Commission Report.

What we don’t have is a unified America that speaks as one to the danger in the years ahead. What we don’t have is the unyielding national resolve to destroy the enemy before the enemy is able to destroy one of our great cities with a dirty bomb.

This is not a playful time in national politics, as Michael Moore and the Hollywood crowd fail to grasp. This is a serious time in our nation’s history, and we do not have the luxury to think in terms of a “War is not the Answer” T-shirt.

You want to ask the person wearing the “War is not the Answer” T-shirt this: How do you think Osama bin Laden’s virgin-seeking nut cases would have responded to the message on your T-shirt on September 11?

Right. Let’s give the “War is not the Answer” person a parachute and safe passage out of the commercial jet before we reach our final destination.

In an earlier time, September 11 would have been the searing event that brought everyone together under the umbrella of self-preservation. In an earlier time, September 11, measured with all the previous terrorist attacks against U.S. interests, would have showed us, once and for all, the primitive clarity of our enemies and how this was a fight to the death.

But September 11 did not achieve that. We are not there. Our sense of unity and purpose lasted perhaps a couple of months, and now with the presidential election before us in November, it is partisan business as usual.

We are swimming upstream in a flotsam of spin doctors and polls and party hacks and political correctness and cultural relativism and multiculturalism and a whole lot of nonsense.