A new kid on the block joining The Diplomad and The Daily Demarche is the New Sisyphus among the underground world of the Dept. of State foreign service officers in the blogoshere. They have a very good essay comparing the two schools of thought in the West about what the root cause of terrorism is and what type of war we should be fighting. The Muslim Rage School vs The Clash of Civilization School and compares what the terrorists themselves and Zarqawi in particular are saying. If we do not learn from them what they stand for and continue to follow in the footsteps of Neville Chamberlain and remain in denial, the price we have to pay will be so much more in the future.
“Visit any museum of tolerance or Holocaust memorial and you'll find amble proseRead the whole thing.
lamenting the fact that Western leaders failed to heed the clear warnings,
failed to understand that these apparently crazy people meant exactly what they
said and said exactly what they meant. Exactly because they were reasonable,
honorable men, people like Prime Minister Chamberlain were unable to comprehend
that buffoons with dangerous ideas could actually be serious about what they
intended.The result was a wholly preventable war that took the lives of tens of
millions of people. Today, a similar bunch of madmen are stating clearly what
they intend. And, sadly, except for the President of the United States, most
Western leaders are again pretending that barbarism does not exist.Now, as then,
their lack of imagination, empathy and understanding will end up costing us a
price in blood we could well avoid…”
Among those of one school are the likes of Senators Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, Carl Levin and a host of other Legislators who were, at the time, behind the invasion of Afghanistan and the fall of the Taliban because that country and its regime were harboring terrorists that were responsible for numerous acts of terrorism against us and our allies. We did not go in to that campaign for one man, Bin Laden, we mounted that campaign to hunt down the Al Qaeda. Afghanistan is no longer a haven for them and has since held an election and has a democratically elected government. So where is the Al Qaeda concentrated today? Iraq.
And what do the nattering nabobs of negativity want to do? Cut and run. Senator Kennedy’s latest rant at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies he said "The US military presence has become part of the problem, not part of the solution," He then went on to say "We thought that victory on the battlefield would lead to victory in the war, and peace and democracy for the people of Vietnam," Kennedy said. "We did not understand that our very presence was creating new enemies and defeating the very goals we set out to achieve. We cannot allow that history to repeat itself."
A day before Kennedy's address, a group of 23 House Democrats introduced a resolution calling on President Bush to begin the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq."Our very presence in Iraq is the cause of much of the violence," said Rep. Lynn C. Woolsey (D-Petaluma), one of the sponsors. "We have a moral responsibility to leave in order to stem the violence." But several prominent Democratic critics of the administration's Iraq policies stopped short of endorsing Kennedy's pullout proposal."To announce we're going to draw down now in the face of the election, I think, is counterproductive," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.(D-Del.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Iraq is where the enemy is, and where our enemies are is where we should be, fighting an offensive war not retreating in the face of our enemy, wringing our hands and saying ‘can’t we all just get along’. Sen. Kennedy is fond of talking about Viet Nam so let me hark back a tad farther in time to Germany, post WWII. How long was it after the war did we cede Germany its sovereignty? Ten years, 1955. In this current campaign we did it in less than two years. We might also take a look at Japan and in another light remember the Kamikazi of that war and the propaganda of the enemy then and the role our media played in that war and how it compares to todays conflicts. Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail has an excellent summary of that conflict and comparison to today. I made some of the same points here.
UPDATE: Great minds think alike. Here is Preston at Junkyardblog. Heh.
|