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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Prelude to War (2006 = 1941) |
| 2006-08-10 |
| Via Instapundit: Why is America waiting to be attacked by Iran? Why do we sit on the sidelines while Tehran makes war on our ally Israel in order to provoke America to join the fighting, first against Syria and then against Tehran itself? Why do we listen to the European appeasers as they pretend the Lebanon front is a regional conflict, a national liberation contest, when it is demonstrably the prelude to the wider war — the Spain 1936 to the continental war of 1939? What is the explanation for America's willful fiction that the United Nations Security Council can engineer an accommodation in Lebanon, when it is vivid to every member state that this is a replay of September 1938, when Europe fed Hitler the Sudetenland as the U.N. now wants to feed the jihadists the sovereignty of Israel? The most threatening answer is that America waits to be bloodied because it has lost its will to defend itself after five years of chasing rogue-state-sponsored gangsters and after three years of occupation in failed-state Iraq against Tehran- and Damascus-backed agents. A grave possibility is that America is now drained, bowed, ready to surrender to the tyrants of Tehran. Then again, perhaps America has been here before, and it is part of America's destiny as the New Jerusalem that we rarely start wars but that we are unusually good at finishing them. At least so far - though the MSM bitched about the end of WW II as well. My treasured evidence that America knew what was coming is Life Magazine, Volume 11, No. 23, dated December 8, 1941, which means it was printed and distributed a week before Pearl Harbor. The astonishing 13-page cover photo essay by Clare Boothe on Commander of the Far East General Douglas MacArthur is complete with maps showing America's strategic challenges at Manila, including the daunting air and sea mileage from San Francisco to Manila and from "Tokio" to Manila. "Will the Island of Luzon then become the great theater of war, and General MacArthur the outstanding khaki-clad figure in it?" asks Boothe. "Or will peace descend upon the Pacific while the U.S. plunges into the war across the Atlantic?" Interesting - I did not know that. ----- What this all means to me today is that America was expectant of the crisis that fell on December 7, 1941; and yet America remained reluctant to say out loud that war was unavoidable, inevitable, already under way — the nation holding back as if the obvious war plans in Berlin and Tokyo were going to vanish like a lightning storm. When the Japanese fleet did maul our Pacific fleet, the Roosevelt administration was rattled and the public was grim. It will be the same for us when this premonitory waiting lifts and the main action begins, both frightful and logical. The Lebanese Front, the Iraqi Front, the Afghan and Kashmir Fronts, or the Haifa blitz will no more solve themselves than did the China-Burma Front, the North African Front, the Atlantic Front, the London blitz of 65 years ago. Who will publish the last magazine before the day of infamy comes again? Doesn't matter. Unlike that 1941 Life, the present-day one will be lying its ass off right up to the fateful day - and making excuses for the enemy thereafter. (Assuming anyone at the magazine survives the attack, which I quite frankly hope they don't.) |
| Posted by:Barbara Skolaut |
| #20 My 10-year old is watching the BoB marathon. His grandfather was at St. Vith during the Ardennes offensive, and I've told him that the Bastogne episodes are a pretty good representation of what his grandfather saw. |
| Posted by: Mike 2006-08-10 23:51 |
| #19 #18: "I'm no sociologist" To your eternal credit, fly. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2006-08-10 22:55 |
| #18 The Band of Brothers "marathon" is about to continue on the History Channel - at which point I go AWOL, heh. This is the sort of honest re-telling, with the brave souls who survived to provide commentary and guidance, which could help. If the education system wasn't thoroughly infiltrated by the losers, perhaps this would be included in the curriculum. I think we have socially isolated our older, wiser, generations to the point that they have minimal, if any, impact on the young in many (most?) of our households. I sat at my grandfather's feet and watched him like a hawk. He embodied all of the good traits. It was scary - only those nasty damned cigars marred his record, otherwise he was almost a perfect role model. I guess I was lucky to have grown up then, when 3 generations (at least) were commonly or frequently present. I'm no sociologist - just an observer. I leave to those with the tools and training to analyze. |
| Posted by: flyover 2006-08-10 22:42 |
| #17 A good point Flyover, and one I've posted about (at the TCP). I wonder, do things improve as our lifespans increase? Or do gaps form with older and younger that become increasingly wide? Will a point come when it is not just one generation removed but two? Hmmm, interesting topics. |
| Posted by: bombay 2006-08-10 22:27 |
| #16 Our schools no longer teach history to save our lives. |
| Posted by: ed 2006-08-10 22:12 |
| #15 Seems to me to be a generational memory flaw in humans. As soon as those who experienced the true close calls of history, who beat back the [insert foe here], are too old to be heard and seen for the examples they are by the children and young adults, the memory and meaning of the evils they faced and the means that had to be employed to defeat them vanish from the memory pool. Then. We. Repeat. |
| Posted by: flyover 2006-08-10 21:51 |
| #14 I'm with Mouse on this. Though I have to add, I think at some point it is really going to come to all or nothing solution. The major mistake on the enemy part being they don't believe we will do it. When pushed, we will do it. Period. Here's were TU6878's got a point. After said and done, after we really go unrestrained, will the repeat guilt (lefty, PC, BS) cycle etc go on? Or will we remember why and get on with things. |
| Posted by: bombay 2006-08-10 21:36 |
| #13 Does the MSM really want to write what the islamofacists tell them to write after the prophesized takeover (according to the Koran)? Do they want to be a mouthpiece for Al Jazeera? Just think...the precious freedom of the first amendment will no longer be available for protection. The Bill of Rights and constitution will no longer be available in the scheme of the islamofacists. There will be no forum for the arrogance of the MSM. I saw Marvin (?) Kalb, Harvard professor defending the rights of the press to write a story that was a spin article. A young 22 year-old soldier who had fought in Iraq and as a result lost a limb was interviewed (if you can really call it that) by the Boston Globe. The Boston Globe did a hatchet job on him. Kalb defended the reporter and had little to say in defense of the soldier who had been set up. Basically, the writer injected his or her opinions in the article so it made this young man appear to be against the war which he was not. The story became about the reporter and his or her opinions and not the reporting of this fine soldier's experiences and opinions based on his experiences. The press is a very perverse--somewhere close to child molestation in the hierarchy of ethical behavior. What the hell crap are they getting pumped into their skulls in the journalism schools. The MSM is an arrogant bunch of elitest that try to become the story rather than just report the story. They think they should tell the rest of us what to do, think, and feel. Is there no objective reporting anymore. Do they really want to see the U.S. and the Western democracies fail? They are a party to this and are complicit. That makes them traitors in my book. Look at the pro-Hezzballah stance the MSM takes. What as*holes. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2006-08-10 16:42 |
| #12 In WWII, the press supported the US forces because the American forces were fighting the Nazis and were allied with Stalin. When we started fighting the Communists in Korea, the bring the boys home drumbeat started. |
| Posted by: RWV 2006-08-10 14:33 |
| #11 #6 TU6878 - You must not have seen the scans of the NYT et al. in the years immediately after WW II with their headlines about how we were "losing the peace." I think they've always been a bunch of anti-American tools - they just used to hide it better. Nowaways, they don't even bother to try to hide it. Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose. :-( |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2006-08-10 12:22 |
| #10 TU6878, Were you unaware that U. S. Newspapers told the Japanese that they were setting their torpedoes too deep or that we were reading their secret codes? The MSM has not changed, only our remembrance of it. This book should give you a start on why nothing you will ever read about a war in real time may be relied upon. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-08-10 10:37 |
| #9 Unless the Iranians decide to play an apocalyptic version of Suicide By Cop as we discussed yesterday, there is no reason for them to attack anyone directly when they can operate through proxies like Hezbollah and transnational terrorism. That way, when a container ship blows up in the Houston Ship Channel, everyone can make big innocent eyes while simultaneously gloating and denying any involvement. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2006-08-10 10:31 |
| #8 Will August 22, 2006 = December 7, 1941? The Muslims love their mumerology. And that date is significant. |
| Posted by: TomAnon 2006-08-10 10:30 |
| #7 Diplomatically, the decks will be cleared for the US if the Iranians commit a major act of war first. No other nation, by Cold War rules, can even object if they launch a nuclear missile in an aggressive manner at us. But the US and perhaps Israel, are the only two countries that plan far enough ahead so that they don't *have* to respond with nukes themselves. This is done by setting up the resources to shoot down any nuclear capable missile or missiles that Iran can launch, with layered defense, for extra security. Ideally, the Iranians will attack first, but in such an ineffective manner that they will be our bitch, as it were. Then we will have carte blanche to respond as we see fit. And boy, howdy. Will we. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-08-10 10:02 |
| #6 At least so far - though the MSM bitched about the end of WW II as well. Well, not in 1945 it didn't. And it didn't for the 50s and most of the 60s till late in the decade when the radical left started to indoctrinate 'hate America' in the universities and their 'true believers' infiltrated MSM. As amply demonstrated by the nut case leading Iran today, someone is going to do something stupid. All restraints will be removed and the problem solved. We'll get around to agonizing about it twenty years later in a more civil world. Hopefully, by then we’ll treat the ‘guilt’ salesmen with the contempt they deserve. |
| Posted by: Tholunter Ulonter6878 2006-08-10 09:45 |
| #5 Pre-emption is central to US Military Strategy. There is no scenario in which Iran is not attacked in some form. The US played "doble cara" - military-diplomacy - with success in the Central America conflict. History repeats. |
| Posted by: Snease Shaiting3550 2006-08-10 05:38 |
| #4 MARY MATALIN > the Dems as taken over by [post-Lieberman] MOVEON.org and the FAR/RADICAL LEFT only plan is to run away from everything. We can prob add "Iff we pretend or delude we are = are not, it is". Maybe after a few Amer Hiroshimas, or the Motherly Commie Airborne Peacekeeping = Occupation Army starts rafting across the Colorado River-Mississippi towards Washington DC, the future CPUSA-Amerikan Politburo-United Socialist Republics "MIGHT" DECIDE, "MAYBE", "COULD" DECIDE TO FIGHT. They swear, they tell ya, LIFE WILL BE BETTER, OR AT LEAST UNCHANGED, ONCE 200 MILYUHN OR MORE DESPICABLE NAZI = WELL-MEANING BUT INCORRECT LIMITED COMMUNIST-STALINIST-TOTALITARIAN, AMERICANS = AMERIKANS ARE PUT TO DEATH, POLITELY-VOLUNTARILY = FORCIBLY-NECESSARY. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2006-08-10 02:22 |
| #3 We noticed ;-) |
| Posted by: Steve White 2006-08-10 00:20 |
| #2 But at least I included the link! ;-p |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2006-08-10 00:02 |
| #1 Thanks for moving this to the correct category, Fred - got caught up in pasting the story & forgot. Until just after I'd hit the "Post" button. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2006-08-10 00:01 |