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#1
09-19-2006, 09:33 AM
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Important History...
I had to post this article. It was sent to me in an email and I think it's worth reading (even for those who don't agree.)
Please read this with an open mind. Folks, Please read this. We must get our head out of the sand. Realize this is OUR FREEDOM being discussed. This is a very serious look at history and an accurate presentation of the agenda of those we loosely call terrorists, insurgents, Jehadis, militant Muslims, etc. Subject: History you probably know but your kids don't 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. They had sunk more than four hundred British ships in their convoys carrying food and war materials between America and England. At that time the US was in an isolationist, pacifist mood, and most Americans wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian wars. Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. 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 WWI and 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. 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. England 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. He turned his attention to Russia, at a time when England was on the verge of collapse. 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 andMoscow 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. We now 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 way 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, 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. A moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge. We have to help the Reformation win. 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. But 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. WWII 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 WWII would have been unimaginably greater -- a world dominated by German and Japanese Nazism. This is not 60 minute TV shows or a 2 hour movie 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 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.
__________________
http://www.facebook.com/cajungator26 
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#2
09-19-2006, 09:34 AM
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cont...
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 andGermany 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 usually win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them. Remember, perspective is everything, 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, 1944, the first day of theNormandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In WWII the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week -- for four years. Most of the individual battles of WWII 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. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~ Raymond S. Kraft is a writer living in Northern California. Please consider passing along copies of this article to students in high school, college and university as it contains information about the American past that is very meaningful today -- history about America that very likely is completely unknown by them (and their instructors, too). By being denied the facts of our history, they are at a decided disadvantage when it comes to reasoning and thinking through the issues of today. They are prime targets for misinformation campaigns beamed at enlisting them in causes and beliefs that are special interest agenda driven. ==============================================
__________________
http://www.facebook.com/cajungator26
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#3
09-19-2006, 12:45 PM
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Cajun,
I read the article with an open mind. Thank you for posting it. I do not agree with the author. Many of the "facts" presented, casualties, and "fear mongering" don't have resonance. Some will agree wholeheartedly with the article. They are entitled to their views. As far as Dixie Porter's statement regarding those that offer a different voice, his words deny "freedom of speech" and "freedom of thought" to any that do not agree with his. That sounds very extreme and runs counter to the very premise of the foundation that the United States was founded on. I will not be intimidated by Dixie Porter's threats. DTS
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#4
09-19-2006, 01:12 PM
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 ) I agree with most points to that article, but that doesn't mean that I am happy for our country to be at war. (Because I'm not.) I DO believe that it is a necessary evil at this point and time and we can either face it or turn around and run. It's just unfortunate that lives have to be lost, but such is life. (And it is a cruel cruel world that we live in.  )
__________________
http://www.facebook.com/cajungator26
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#5
09-19-2006, 01:42 PM
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I also agree that war is not something that brings happiness. In my view, framing the choices as a "good vs evil" scenario creates conditions where meaningful discourse doesn't occur. It becomes an "I'm right, you're wrong" stalemate, with all of the consequences. Though I don't agree with Bush, expecially his choice to invade Iraq and the resulting quagmire, he made some good points during his speech to the UN today. I agree with him that "freedom can not be imposed." His call for reform and moderation also has merit. I'm guessing that those he addressed today wish he'd have heeded his own words three and a half years ago. If you didn't hear his speech, here it is: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...091900720.html DTS
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#6
09-19-2006, 02:22 PM
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Quote:
__________________
http://www.facebook.com/cajungator26
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#7
09-20-2006, 11:04 PM
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Hey, Cajun!
I read the entire article, but I have trouble wrapping my head around the assertion (did I use that right?) that we went into Iraq to make a stand against Islamic terrorism. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the story the Bush Administration sold to us was A) Saddam was connected to 9/11, then B) Saddam was connected to Al Qaida then C) Saddam had WMD then D) we needed to bring democracy to Iraq. In that order, with B, C, and D following each other as A and then B and C turned out not to be true. At least, that's how I remember it (and I haven't forgiven Colin Powell for going along with the WMD thing. Though I appreciate the letter he wrote to McCain protesting the US's use of torture). The real reason? I'm cynical enough to think it's E) read below. This is an excerpt from a review of a new book by Frank Rich, "The Greatest Story Ever Sold." Then read after, because I do think the article you pasted in has one very valid point-- <<Of course, Rich is hardly the first to anatomize the decline of America's news culture. Far more compelling -- and originally argued -- is his insight into the real reason Bush went to war in Iraq. His answer to this endlessly debated question, and his related excursus on the personality of Bush himself, may be the single most lucid and convincing one I've ever read. Although it is almost painfully obvious, and wins the Occam's Razor test of being the simplest, it is put forward considerably less often than more ideological theories -- whether about controlling oil, supporting Israel, establishing American hegemony, or one-upping his father. Perhaps this is because Americans, in their innocence, cannot accept that any president would deliberately launch a major war simply to win the midterm elections. Yet Rich makes a powerful argument that that is the case. Playing the key role, not surprisingly, is Karl Rove. "To track down Rove's role, it's necessary to flash back to January 2002," Rich writes. The Afghanistan war had been a success. "In a triumphalist speech to the Republican National Committee, Rove for the first time openly advanced the idea that the war on terror was the path to victory for that November's midterm elections." Rove decided Bush needed to be a "war president." The problem, however, was that Afghanistan was fading from American minds, Osama bin Laden had escaped, and the secret, unglamorous -- and actually effective -- approach America was taking to fighting terror wasn't a political winner. "How do you run as a vainglorious 'war president' if the war looks as if it's winding down and the number one evildoer has escaped?" The answer: Wag the dog. Attack Iraq. Now ideology comes in, along with the peculiar alliance of neocons and Cold War hawks that had been waiting for their chance. "Enter Scooter Libby, stage right." As Rich explains, Libby, Cheney and Wolfowitz had wanted to attack Iraq for a long time, not to stop terrorism but for the familiar neocon reasons of remaking the Middle East and the familiar Cold War hawk reasons of trumpeting America's might. "Here, ready and waiting on the shelf in-house, were the grounds for a grand new battle that would be showy, not secret, in its success -- just the political Viagra that Rove needed for an election year." Of course, there was one little problem. What reason could team Bush come up with for attacking Iraq? "[A]bstract and highly debatable theories on how to assert superpower machismo and alter the political balance in the Middle East would never fly with American voters as a trigger for war or convince them that such a war was relevant to the fight against the enemy of 9/11 ... For Rove and Bush to get what they wanted most, slam-dunk midterm election victories, and for Libby and Cheney to get what they wanted most, a war in Iraq for ideological reasons predating 9/11, their real whys for going to war had to be replaced by more saleable fictional ones. We'd go to war instead because there was a direct connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda and because Saddam was on the verge of attacking America with nuclear weapons." Of course, once the war in Iraq turned into a disaster and no WMD were found, the Bush administration had to do everything in its power to prevent the American people from learning that these reasons were lies. This is why Bush and his henchmen went after Joe Wilson. This quick 'n' easy war was perfectly designed to appeal to George W. Bush. Rich draws a quick but brilliant sketch of Bush as a lazy, entitled boor, lacking in any real ideology beyond crony-capitalist Republicanism, who above all wanted to win and was accustomed to winning -- because he had always played with a rigged deck. Rove, "Bush's brain," dreamed of establishing a near-permanent Republican majority in Washington ŕ la William McKinley. This was fine with Bush. "This partisan dream, not nation-building, was consistent with the president's own history and ambitions in Washington. Bush was a competitor who liked to win the game, even if he was unclear about what to do with his victory beyond catering to the economic interests of his real base, the traditional Republican business constituency ... Iraq was just the vehicle to ride to victory in the midterms, particularly if it could be folded into the proven brand of 9/11. A cakewalk in Iraq was the easy way, the lazy way, the arrogant way, the telegenic way, the Top Gun way to hold on to power. It was of a piece with every other shortcut in Bush's career, and it was a hand-me-down from Dad drenched in oil to boot." It is now widely accepted that the Iraq war is one of the greatest foreign policy blunders, if not the greatest, in U.S. history. Some have gone further: The respected Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld argues that it is "the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C. sent his legions into Germany and lost them." Not a few regard Iraq as spelling the beginning of the end of American dominance in the world. >> -- I think religious extremism is every bit as dangerous as the man who wrote that letter you posted says, and maybe more so. And yes, we have to fight it. But to think that we can make a stand and fight and defeat terrorists like we could a nation is a ridiculous statement. They don't fight for a nation; they fight for a cause. We can establish a lovely democracy in Iraq, and they'll still blow up stuff. They're fighting for God; they aren't going to have any interest in whether the country they live in has surrendered or not. Hell, we have (kind of) a lovely democracy here in the US, and we have religious extremists committing acts of terror all the time. The Murrah building, doctors murdered. Last week a guy crashed his gasoline-laden car into a women's health clinic in an attempt to blow it up. That's A) stupid, because the place didn't even perform abortions and B) freakin' scary, because when you come down to it, the only thing the Islamic terrorists have that separates them from the Christian terrorists is the suicide thing. Also when you come down to it, other than Jesus vs Mohammed, the Islamic extremists and the Christian extremists are not that far apart in what they want-- their interpretation of their religion being the source of law in their countries, women in a subservient position, and deviating from a puritanical morality being punishable, even by death (You did know gays are often executed in some Islamic countries? Kind of like Matthew Sheppard, but with the government's blessing) And unfortunately, our nation is currently in the hands of a government that is very sympathetic to Christian extremists. And it charged into one of the more secular nations in the Middle East, opened it to Islamic extremists taking power and now claims it was all about sowing freedom. Freedom to what? Cozy up to Iran? Thanks; I feel a lot safer now. Not. And I don't know what the answer is, either. I do know I think it is essential for those of us who love and believe in freedom to stand up to extremism, in whatever form it has. But "making a stand" in Iraq, or however the man put it, did not and will not make a dent in the "war on terror." I don't see how it can. Terrorism isn't a nation; it's a tactic. How do we fight a tactic? BTW-- I am not in any way suggesting that the average Christian is an extremist (that would make me as dumb as that guy who drove his car into the women's health clinic). Anymore than the average Muslim is. I'm saying extremism leads to violence. So, how do we fight the extremism? What do you all think? My first thought is, stop letting religions tell anyone that sex is bad. I think if half the young violent Muslim men were getting laid, they would stop being violent because their focus would be on how to get laid some more, not on whether the US is being immoral. It's funny, but I do believe it. China is very concerned about the shortage of women, thanks to selective abortions of female fetuses over the past decades. There is great concern that young men, with no prospects to find a wife, will band up and turn violent. So there's my suggestion-- get young men laid. Anyone else have any ideas? Ones more likely to be taken seriously? 
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#8
09-20-2006, 11:06 PM
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Oh my God, I'm longwinded. Sorry, everyone.
Going to bed now. (Probably to join all of you I put to sleep with my last post)
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#9
09-20-2006, 11:20 PM
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Quote:
__________________
"Always be yourself...unless you suck!"
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#10
09-20-2006, 11:36 PM
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The problem becomes we are screwed if we do, screwed if we don't. If we start carpet bombing radical islamic reigons, we prove their point that we are the "evil west" If we sit back and garner strength, we end up fighting a much greater war later on. Beyond that we let ourselves become fodder for"The west is afraid of us, we have them on the on the run, we must attack more." I really believe a 1/3 of the country is going to hate whatever we do. The other 1/3 has no clue and won't care either way.
My big problem is, it's breaking down into a party plan. Each party supports a difffrent plan and far too many people in each party are simply defending their parties plans without actually considering the impacts now and in the future. We need a bipartisian plan with give and take from both sides. We are already accomplishing what the terrorists want, dividing the country by ourselves. We to busy fighting in our own government, trying to win senate seats and congressionial seats to actually do anything about the problem. Many policies recently have been all about promoting ones own political party as opposed to promoting what is actually good for the country.
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#11
09-23-2006, 11:50 AM
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Linear Mode
