The free world's dilemma
February 24, 2006
The civilized world's situation is not improving lately. We are prominently fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and after 3 odd years and the expenditure of precious life and treasure the whole western venture in that part of the world may yet blow up in our faces.
Ever since 9/11 we have been doing the right thing! We have, under President Bush's leadership, gone after those who want to destroy us, in their home territory. With some success. But we have been doing it with one hand tied behind our back. And as a consequence we have been, and still are, losing our credibility in the realm of stamina and determination to get this job done. And done properly.
Unfortunately, the enemy within our own country, to wit: most of the Democratic Party's senior political leaders and their many naive followers, together with most of the media, have been singularly destructive of this overall effort to eliminate the cancer of terrorism.
Instead, their irrational hatred of President Bush, because he became our President in January 2001, rather than the unattractive Mr. Gore, has blinded them to do the responsible things for which they were elected. This condition has become the most debilitating political dynamic in our national political life so far in this new century.
To me, from a broader perspective, the really scary thing about this situation suggests that our educational chickens are finally coming home to roost. If, during the past 50 years, we would have been diligent in comprehensively and thoroughly teaching our children the painful lessons of mankind's history, with an emphasis on the past 250 years, we might today have a more responsible political leadership and general public than we are in fact saddled with.
In stead, we have Senators blowing off intemperate spite, every day practically, about whatever our Administration proposes or does, just to get their faces on TV to obstruct the reasonable and necessary activities of our Government.
The jungle drums of those in favor of bailing out of the Middle East betray a complete lack of understanding of why we are there in the first place, namely that being there is our best opportunity to keep our own country as safe as humanly possible while slowly but surely squeezing the life out of the radical islamic terrorists.
But understanding our options requires a minimum amount of knowledge about human nature, about its history and its costly yet essential lessons of developing civilized societies and a realization that we all live in a real world and not some utopian fantasy land where one must quickly forgive every poor terrorist for murdering innocent people and blaming onself for his irrational anger.
It is the many of our own wel-meaning but completely misguided politicians and citizens who are the irrational ones.
Admittedly, if one considers onself to be a "civilized" rational person then it makes no sense at all to settle perceived disputes with force of arms. And they are right to think that way because that is considered barbaric in their world view and consequently deserving of constant vituperation, character assasination and obstruction of the President's efforts to fight our international enemy, modern terrorism. Unfortunately they are also living on another planet, but they don't know it.
Sadly, it betrays a total disconnect between those who feel that way, and the real world outside in which we all have to live and try to survive. They do not (yet?), realize that we are engaged in a real war, to the finish, a war which only one of us may survive. It's either them or us.
What our misguided fellow citizens do not see, is that our western world has had absolutely no say in the fact that radical islam has declared this war on us. Unprovoked by us, in the conventional sense that is. Radical, Waihabi islam, declared this war on Christianity and the western world for reasons of their own.
During the last 175 years or so, the Waihabi sect of Islam, subsequently funded royally by the Saudis (the first king of Saudi Arabia, Ibn Saud, was a Waihabi) has developed their irrational hatred of Christianity as evil and in need of total destruction in complete accord with what the Koran teaches Muslims to do about infidels. As I understand it, this is all nothing new to those in the west who have been studying and following developments in the Middle East since the early 1930-ies.
But it is still "terra incognita" for most Americans and many Europeans who continue to believe that appeasement, throwing some more money at the problem (as if the Arabs don't already have more money than we do, so to speak) is the sensible thing to do. It is not. Those days are over.
With Iran now sliding into a terror mode, although many Iranians are appalled by what is happening in their own country, those Iranians may not be able to stop this slide into disaster anymore than the good Germans were able to stop Hitler or the good Russians the coming of communism. At least the last ones tried while unsuccessfully aided by the western powers. The consequences are there for everyone to see and yet it is happening again. Don't we ever learn??
To sum up, the western world's dilemma is indeed very straight forward, in my opinion. We must learn from our own history that to save our precious, tolerant and enviable way of life needs the temporary suspension of some of our civil rights and protections to allow our Government and military to fight this real war. Because that's what we are engaged in. Real war. With fighting, killing, torture, murder and many innocent victims as well as the loss of life of many of our own soldier citizens who have committed themselves, as the professionals they are, to put their lives on the line for our country's defense in faraway places.
That attitude on the part of our military, of being willing to die for their country, which they so deeply believe in, should inspire all of us and deserves our unflagging support for our soldiers. It also proves once more that without a code of honor among military professionals and submitting themselves nevertheless to their fractured civilian and political leadership is a societal condition without which no true civilization is possible. It shows once again how precious our civilized way of life is, still surrounded as we are by many malevolent dictatorships of secular as well as religious character.
But the military arm of our government is not the only institution that needs to live by a clear code of honor. This is equally neccessary for our politicians, government personnel, business people and every one else who believes in this great country of ours. Unfortunately, talk of honor makes most politicians squirm while few have any sense of shame about what in fact they are doing to put our country at greater risk than necessary. Without naming names, there is no shame among those people who constantly obstruct the right and necessary activities of government and who, in a time of war, demonstrate no allegiance to the office of the President of the United States, if not to the individual who occupies the Oval Office.
That is indeed shameful and dishonorable conduct. So, let us UN-ELECT them in the fall and put real Americans in their places. The country and the world deserve no less.
The civilized world's situation is not improving lately. We are prominently fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and after 3 odd years and the expenditure of precious life and treasure the whole western venture in that part of the world may yet blow up in our faces.
Ever since 9/11 we have been doing the right thing! We have, under President Bush's leadership, gone after those who want to destroy us, in their home territory. With some success. But we have been doing it with one hand tied behind our back. And as a consequence we have been, and still are, losing our credibility in the realm of stamina and determination to get this job done. And done properly.
Unfortunately, the enemy within our own country, to wit: most of the Democratic Party's senior political leaders and their many naive followers, together with most of the media, have been singularly destructive of this overall effort to eliminate the cancer of terrorism.
Instead, their irrational hatred of President Bush, because he became our President in January 2001, rather than the unattractive Mr. Gore, has blinded them to do the responsible things for which they were elected. This condition has become the most debilitating political dynamic in our national political life so far in this new century.
To me, from a broader perspective, the really scary thing about this situation suggests that our educational chickens are finally coming home to roost. If, during the past 50 years, we would have been diligent in comprehensively and thoroughly teaching our children the painful lessons of mankind's history, with an emphasis on the past 250 years, we might today have a more responsible political leadership and general public than we are in fact saddled with.
In stead, we have Senators blowing off intemperate spite, every day practically, about whatever our Administration proposes or does, just to get their faces on TV to obstruct the reasonable and necessary activities of our Government.
The jungle drums of those in favor of bailing out of the Middle East betray a complete lack of understanding of why we are there in the first place, namely that being there is our best opportunity to keep our own country as safe as humanly possible while slowly but surely squeezing the life out of the radical islamic terrorists.
But understanding our options requires a minimum amount of knowledge about human nature, about its history and its costly yet essential lessons of developing civilized societies and a realization that we all live in a real world and not some utopian fantasy land where one must quickly forgive every poor terrorist for murdering innocent people and blaming onself for his irrational anger.
It is the many of our own wel-meaning but completely misguided politicians and citizens who are the irrational ones.
Admittedly, if one considers onself to be a "civilized" rational person then it makes no sense at all to settle perceived disputes with force of arms. And they are right to think that way because that is considered barbaric in their world view and consequently deserving of constant vituperation, character assasination and obstruction of the President's efforts to fight our international enemy, modern terrorism. Unfortunately they are also living on another planet, but they don't know it.
Sadly, it betrays a total disconnect between those who feel that way, and the real world outside in which we all have to live and try to survive. They do not (yet?), realize that we are engaged in a real war, to the finish, a war which only one of us may survive. It's either them or us.
What our misguided fellow citizens do not see, is that our western world has had absolutely no say in the fact that radical islam has declared this war on us. Unprovoked by us, in the conventional sense that is. Radical, Waihabi islam, declared this war on Christianity and the western world for reasons of their own.
During the last 175 years or so, the Waihabi sect of Islam, subsequently funded royally by the Saudis (the first king of Saudi Arabia, Ibn Saud, was a Waihabi) has developed their irrational hatred of Christianity as evil and in need of total destruction in complete accord with what the Koran teaches Muslims to do about infidels. As I understand it, this is all nothing new to those in the west who have been studying and following developments in the Middle East since the early 1930-ies.
But it is still "terra incognita" for most Americans and many Europeans who continue to believe that appeasement, throwing some more money at the problem (as if the Arabs don't already have more money than we do, so to speak) is the sensible thing to do. It is not. Those days are over.
With Iran now sliding into a terror mode, although many Iranians are appalled by what is happening in their own country, those Iranians may not be able to stop this slide into disaster anymore than the good Germans were able to stop Hitler or the good Russians the coming of communism. At least the last ones tried while unsuccessfully aided by the western powers. The consequences are there for everyone to see and yet it is happening again. Don't we ever learn??
To sum up, the western world's dilemma is indeed very straight forward, in my opinion. We must learn from our own history that to save our precious, tolerant and enviable way of life needs the temporary suspension of some of our civil rights and protections to allow our Government and military to fight this real war. Because that's what we are engaged in. Real war. With fighting, killing, torture, murder and many innocent victims as well as the loss of life of many of our own soldier citizens who have committed themselves, as the professionals they are, to put their lives on the line for our country's defense in faraway places.
That attitude on the part of our military, of being willing to die for their country, which they so deeply believe in, should inspire all of us and deserves our unflagging support for our soldiers. It also proves once more that without a code of honor among military professionals and submitting themselves nevertheless to their fractured civilian and political leadership is a societal condition without which no true civilization is possible. It shows once again how precious our civilized way of life is, still surrounded as we are by many malevolent dictatorships of secular as well as religious character.
But the military arm of our government is not the only institution that needs to live by a clear code of honor. This is equally neccessary for our politicians, government personnel, business people and every one else who believes in this great country of ours. Unfortunately, talk of honor makes most politicians squirm while few have any sense of shame about what in fact they are doing to put our country at greater risk than necessary. Without naming names, there is no shame among those people who constantly obstruct the right and necessary activities of government and who, in a time of war, demonstrate no allegiance to the office of the President of the United States, if not to the individual who occupies the Oval Office.
That is indeed shameful and dishonorable conduct. So, let us UN-ELECT them in the fall and put real Americans in their places. The country and the world deserve no less.
posted by Schaesberg at 2:58 AM
