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Conflicted About Conflict
One of the great divides in our country, and in the West in general, is between those people who believe that as bad as Islamic terrorism can be on a local scale, there is no way it can threaten our civilization, versus those who believe that our civilization is actually more fragile than people realize and that it could indeed be changed in irreversible and unfortunate ways; in other words, we could in fact lose this Long War.Europe may well be lost in the next 5-10-20 years, but ultimately, if the Islamic world refuses to join the Core and insists on maintaining their failed culture, we can just wall them off, develop new modes of energy production and basically ignore them. I suspect most Americans would be just fine with such a prescription. However, there is a catch. Actually there are two catches. One would be the failure of the West to stand up for itself and for America to go the way of Europe and submit. This failure from within is addressed by Dr. Sanity in ALICE IN WONDERLAND or DEMOCRATS IN DENIAL (the references are to Victor Davis Hanson, whose grasp of history can be challenged only by those too ignorant to know what they don't know, and Jonah Goldberg): As Hanson and Goldberg both clearly state, the all-encompassing hatred of the West that lies at the core of the Islamic totalitarian ideology is what we are fighting against; and one of the crucial fronts in this war is in Iraq. But, Iraq is also a key front on a philosophical war with today's postmodern political left, who seem to share with the Islamists that same all-encompassing hatred of the West and its values. Indeed, they share it with anyone who hates freedom and democracy (check out their attitudes toward Hugo, Fidel or Kim for validation of this, if you like). For both of those reasons, we must develop a strategy that will "finish the job and not leave a mess"--in other words, to defeat both the barbarians from without who violently threaten Western Civilization and seek a physical return to the Dark Ages; as well as the barbarians from within who seek to undermine and destroy Western Civilization with their smarmy politically correct ideology, whose words and dogmatically righteous platitudes effectively enable and encourage the evil that threatens us. My position is unequivocally that both ideologies must be defeated by the forces of good in Iraq and everywhere they have taken root. The second caveat is, if anything, more difficult to quantify and, at the same time, more troubling. Raymond S. Kraft offers a chilling "future history" of DECEMBER 7, 2008 in which our enemies are able to detonate a relatively small number of nuclear weapons over a small number of crucial nodes and essentially destroy America as we know it. [HT: Lt Col P at OpFor] His final comment: The failure of many Americans, including many of the leading Democrats in Congress, and some Republicans, to fully appreciate the persistent, long-term threat posed to America's liberties and survival, and to the future of Liberal Democracies everywhere, by an Islamic Resistance Movement that envisions a world dominated and defined by an Islamic Caliphate of religious totalitarianism, and which will fight any war, make any sacrifice, suffer any hardship, and pay any price to achieve it, may prove to be the kind of blunder upon which the fate of America turns, and falls. Posted by: SR-71 2006-10-28 |
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