Every American Needs to Read This!
Historical Significance
THIS IS HISTORY THAT HAS BEEN LEFT OUT OF OUR TEXTBOOKS. MOST OF YOU ARE NOT OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER THAT NEARLY EVERY FAMILY IN AMERICA WAS GROSSLY AFFECTED BY WWII. MOST OF YOU DON'T REMEMBER THE RATIONING OF MEAT, SHOES, GASOLINE, AND SUGAR. NO TIRES FOR OUR AUTOMOBILES, AND A SPEED LIMIT OF 35 MILES AN HOUR ON THE ROAD. NOT TO MENTION, NO NEW AUTOMOBILES. READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT HOW WE WOULD REACT TO BEING TAKEN OVER BY FOREIGNERS IN 2007.
This is an EXCELLENT essay. Well thought out
and presented. Historical Significance Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany
had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of
bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk more than four hundred British ships in
their convoys between England and America for food and war materials. At
that time the US was in an isolationist, pacifist mood, and most Americans
wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian war. Then along came
Pearl Harbor on December 7, 19 41, and in outrage Congress unanimously
declared war on Japan , and the following day on Germany , which had not yet
attacked us. It was a dicey thing. We had few allies. France was not
an ally, as the Vichy government of France quickly aligned itself with its
German occupiers. Germany was certainly not an ally, as Hitler was intent on
setting up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe . Japan was not an ally, as it
was well on its way to owning and controlling all of Asia . Together, Japan
and Germany had long-range plans of invading Canada and Mexico , as
launching pads to get into the United States over our northern and southern
borders, after they finished gaining control of Asia and Europe . America 's
only allies then were England , Ireland , Scotland , Canada , Australia ,
and Russia . That was about it. All of Europe, from Norway to Italy , except
Russia in the East, was already under the Nazi heel. America was certainly
not prepared for war. America had drastically downgraded most of its
military forces after W.W.I and throughout the depression, so that at the
outbreak of WW2, army units were training with broomsticks
because they didn't have guns, and cars with "tank" painted on the doors
because they didn't have real tanks. And a huge chunk of our navy had just
been sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor . Britain had already gone bankrupt,
saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of
England, that was actually the property of Belgium , given by Belgium to
England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler (a little
known fact). Actually, Belgium surrendered on one day, because it was unable
to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble
the next day just to prove they could.
Britain had already been holding out for two years in the face of staggering
losses and the near decimation of its air force in the Battle of Britain,
and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the
mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor
threat that could be dealt with later, and first turning his attention to
Russia, at a time when England was on the verge of collapse, in the late
summer of 1940. Ironically, Russia saved America's butt by putting up a
desperate fight for two years, until the US got geared up to begin hammering
away at Germany. Russia lost something like 24 million people in the sieges
of Stalingrad and Moscow alone... 90% of them from cold and starvation,
mostly civilians, but also more than a 1,000,000 soldiers. Had Russia
surrendered, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire war effort
against the Brits, then America . And the Nazis could possibly have won the
war. All of this is to illustrate that turning points in history are often
dicey things. And
now, we find ourselves at another one of those key moments in history. There
is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants and may soon
have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons,
almost anywhere in the world. The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are
basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs -- they believe that Islam, a radically
conservative form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East
first, then Europe, then the world. And that all who do not bow to their
will of thinking should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to
finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel , and purge the world of Jews. This is
their mantra. There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East -- for the
most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition
and its Reformation, but it is not known yet which will win -- the
Inquisitors, or the Reformationists. If the Inquisition wins, then the
Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, the OPEC oil, and the
US , European, and Asian economies. The techno-industrial economies will be
at the mercy of OPEC -- not an OPEC dominated by the educated, rational
Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis. You want gas in your
car? You want heating oil next winter? You want the dollar to be worth
anything? You better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the
Islamic Reformation wins. If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the
moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other
religions, and live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the
10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will
eventually fade away, and a moderate and
prosperous Middle East will emerge. We have to help the Reformation win, and
to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the
Jihad, Al Qaeda and the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it
somewhere. And we can't do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal
point for the battle at a time and place of our choosing........in Iraq .
Not in New York , not in London , or Paris or Berlin , but in Iraq , where
we are doing two important things. (1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether
Saddam Hussein was directly involved in 9/11 or not, it is undisputed that
Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades.
Saddam is a terrorist. Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction, who
is responsible for the deaths of probably more than a million Iraqis and two
million Iranians. (2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point,
with Islamic terrorism in Iraq . We have focused the battle. We are
killing bad people, and the ones we get there we won't have to get here. We
also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq , which will
be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East,
and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle
East for as long as it is needed. World War II, the war with the German and
Japanese Nazis, really began with a "whimper" in 1928. It did not begin with
Pearl Harbor . It began with the Japanese invasion of China . It was a war
for fourteen years before America joined it. It officially ended in 1945 --
a 17 year war -- and was followed by another decade of US occupation in
Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their
own again . a 27 year war. World War II cost the United States an amount
equal to approximately a full year's GDP -- adjusted for inflation, equal to
about $12 trillion dollars. W.W.II cost America more than 400,000 killed in
action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action. The Iraq war has, so
far, cost the US about $160 billion,which is roughly
what 9/11 cost New York . It has also cost about 2,200 American lives, which
is roughly 2/3 of the 3,000 lives that the Jihad snuffed on 9/11. But the
cost of not fighting and winning W.W.II would have been
unimaginably greater -- a world dominated by German and Japanese Nazism.
This is not 60 minute TV shows, and 2 hour movies in which everything comes
out okay. The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain, and
sometimes bloody and ugly. Always has been, and probably always will be. The
bottom line is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we
defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away if we ignore it. If the US
can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq , then we have an "
England " in the Middle East, a platform, from which we can work to help
modernize and moderate the Middle East . The history of the world is the
clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the
barbarians clamoring at the gates. The Iraq war is merely another battle in
this ancient and never ending war. And now, for the first time ever, the
barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons. Unless somebody prevents them.
We have four options: 1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear
weapons. 2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons
(which may be as early as next year, if Iran 's progress on nuclear weapons
is what Iran claims it is) 3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its
dominance in the Middle East, now, in Europe in the next few years or
decades, and ultimately in America . 4. Or, we can stand down now, and pick
up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed,
perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and maybe most of
the rest of Europe . It will, of course, be more dangerous, more expensive,
and much bloodier. If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that
your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the
Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today. The history of
the
world is the history of civilizational clashes, cultural clashes. All wars
are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilization should be like,
and the most determined always win. Those who are willing to be the most
ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists
kill them. Remember, perspective is every thing, and America 's schools
teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the
young American mind. The Cold war lasted from about 1947 at least until the
Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Forty-two years. Europe spent the first half
of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting
Germany World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year
occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan . World War II
resulted in the death of more than 50 million people, maybe more than 100
million people, depending on which estimates you accept. The US has taken
more than 2,000 killed in action in Iraq . The US took more than 4,000
killed in action on the morning of June 6, 19 44, the first day of the
Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In W.W.II the US
averaged 2,000 KIA a week -- for four years. Most of the individual battles
o f W.W.II lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far. But
the stakes are at least as high ... A world dominated by representative
governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms or a
world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under
the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law). It's difficult to understand why
the American left does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil
rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis. "Peace Activists"
always seem to demonstrate here in America , where it's safe. Why don't we
see
Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran , Syria , Iraq , Sudan , North Korea ,
in the places that really need peace activism the most? The liberal
mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy,
multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad
wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy,
multiculturalism, diversity, etc. Americans who oppose the liberation of
Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy.