MILNET Opinion
  An Impassioned Plea, 10/21/2006
With crystal clarity, I sometimes see the problems we face in new perspective and with, sadly, a little anger fueling a need to write about it.

Saturday, October 21, 2006, 05:37 AM - The Hawk
An Impassioned Plea for Sanity from the Left
and Courage from the Right

by Michael G. Crawford

The case in point is appeasement. It jangles my nerves and wreaks havoc on what otherwise tends to be rather focused thinking.

Look at it this way. There is this cycle of appeasement. It is generational. It repeats far too often to be coincidence.

One generation makes huge mistakes by appeasing the denizens pretending to be civilized and then that generation reaps the "benefits".

Then after several cycles of children begatting more children, we wind up with peoples who don't have the institutional memory to see how appeasing not only didn't work before, but it created larger dangers than would have been thought possible.

Example...waiting as long as the U.S. did before entering World War II and killing off the German march across the world, nearly cost us all dearly -- more dearly than we could imagine back then.

Teh Germans were only months away from THEIR nuclear weapon. The Japanese may also have had their own weapon close to testing. Teh Germans had 500 mph fighters ready to fly and soon would have had production capability ramped up to a state that would have given them pure and unadultrated air superiority -- a magnitude greater firepower and that all important speed advantage. Given a few more months and the entire war would have turned out so much more different.

Chamberlain let Germany fool him, and Britain paid the price dearly. That was the beginning. France capitulated so quick it was stunning. Italy jumped in with both feet and became a staunch German ally.

The war in Europe ended only months before a much wider and more frightening catastrophe occured. And the war with Japan also ended just in the nick of time.


Today the Cycle Continues

Two generations later, we have all but forgotten about the lessons of World War II, and it has become politically incorrect to even mention any of this.

Today, France believes they are successfully meeting the needs of the Jihadists. So, too did Spain. They have paid and will continue to pay the modern debt they have incurred.

The problem today is that my father's generation has all but died off. 20 something officers and enlisted from World War II, and their families back home are no longer with us. What they saw and the history that led up to it are forgotten. And my generation, baby boomers plus a few years, are not vocal enough to make the history known.

We can't let that happen. The cycle must be broken. 9-11 was perhaps our generation's wakeup call, yet five years later, we are already well into self delusion. The cycle appears to be getting shorter and the evil has never been more visible.

If you doubt there are people out there still who want us dead and gone, risk your life and travel to Baghdad. It's not because you are an American, it is because you are NOT a Jihadist. It doesn't have to be Iraq, your life isn't worth much in Damascus either. I also don't recommend Tehran for your fall vacation, friend.

And if you are a woman...forget it. Yet the Left becries how we both deserve what we get and that if we could just be a kinder, gentler nation, the Jihadists would leave us alone. Oh my God!

There are Jihadists living and skulking about in even the smallest cities in our nation. Yet the Left wants you to believe they are simply misunderstood victims of an over zealous government. They want you to give the terrorists all the benefits of a legal system designed for common criminals, not world and society destroyers.


What is this Cycle of Appeasement

This cycle of appeasement is based upon more than just bad guys trying to manipulate our politicians. It is also about the denizens coming at us in ways we never thought of before. Like posting statements on the Internet. If they had to depend on a paper document to get read by the citizens of the world, it would never happen. But if they publish a little fantasy monologue on the Internet, it gets read within 24 hours by half the world.

And the hand wringers start in. "Gee, that has an element of truth to it..." Of course it does, fool, it's propaganda. Best lies are told with a little truth to them. Every con man knows how it works. I recommend the Hollywood cure. Watch the Matchstick Man -- it's available in your video store. In the movie it is all too clear...It only takes a little truth to make the big con work.

And in our current appeasement cycle, we are moving fast. Faster than ever before. Five years instead of multi-generational forgetfulness.

The P.M. of Iran says Israel will be erased. The Jihadists PUBLISH -- yes PUBLISH -- a document that proports to be their reasonable rational for killing everything around them that doesn't buy into their insane interpretation of Islam. And the Left clucks their tongues and shakes their head in misery, buying into it as if it were truth.

Slide your reference back to the 70s. India called their nuclear tests, peaceful nuclear tests. Peaceful? Oh sure.

Today North Korea says it's all the fault of the U.S. and the Left agrees whole heartedly. Kim starves his people people to create enough nuclear material to build a weapon, steals oil from the world while promising to NOT do this thing, and it is all our fault because we simply stated the truth -- They are doing evil and we will not let htme threaten the world with their nukes and missiles. And Jimmie Carter says it's all Bush's fault when the real history clearly shows the framework was coming apart. The facts were admited by the Clinton adminstration -- an admission made by the White House to Congress.

What is the threat to N. Korea? There is no carrier task force off the coast, no legions of tanks and soldiers panting at the border. Hell we are very involved in the Middle East. The North Korean isolation is the threat, and of course that is our fault, sure. Never mind they keep bringing it on themselves despite EVERY nation's caution to the contrary. Well except maybe the other less than a handful rogue nations like Iran and Syria.

Hell, if the U.S. was preparing to go to war with Korea, we all know what that looks like. No, the threat is paranoia at best and fiction at worst. It is the fiction that leads to appeasement.


Easily Fooled

Gulliable comes to mind. If you are so gulliable to believe that Hitler was just arming for self defense and would not move outside his country, then you really and truly are an idiot.

If you believe that any western policy creates the rationale for the Jihadist's mass murder, you are insane.

If you believe evil, insane leaders will honor a piece of paper that promises oil for conformance yet offers little if you do secretly cheat on that agreement, how can we trust you to negotiate for the security for our children and our future? Yet is this not the case for the so called "framework" that the Left says was such a great triumph...a triumph that in truth has shown to be nothing more than childish, wishful thinking.


Predictable Attempts at Manipulation

On the day the U.S. led the attack on Saddam's forces, MILNET predicted that it would not take but a few years for the Left to show its true colors and be demanding we bring our troops home.

Now as the call is trumpeted, the Iraqi government -- a freely elected government for the first time in decades there -- must be worried sick. The U.S. promised to stand by them and help them through the violence. Sure, it's worse then we all wanted it to be.


Promises and Courage Mean Nothing

However, the promise is nothing to the appeasers. The Iraqi people mean as little to them as their politician's integrity. It is far more important to show the cowards of Europe (U.K. excepted) that we too can appease at every level. It is far more important for us to demonstrate our fickle nature and go back on our word. Why? Because it is a nice gambit during an election cycle that has synchronized with a foreshortened appeasement cycle. Anything to get elected. That is the hidden evil of our generation. Peace at all costs, especially if it sounds good to the electorate.

I'd like nothing better than to have my son home. God make it so. But not at the expense of democracy in the Middle East, and not at the expense of the Iraqi nation. And certainly not at the expense of our own National Security.


Time to Stand Up

Stand up to the cowards that would have us leave the Iraqis now. Show them that the American people are not capricious. Let them know we have the courage and the strength to keep our men and women in uniform there until the job is done. Show the Iraqi in the street that we are there to help them until our help is no longer needed.

I see two worlds stretching out in our future, one forking left and one forking right. It frightens me.

There is no middle ground here. To the left I see further appeasement, joining together with Central Europe in apathy. Let Iraq fall and watch the hope of democracy crumble. Give up and show the world how America can't ever keep its word, how America shows a pale cowardice.

Or take the fork to the right. Stand firm. Show the Iraqi people and their government how America helps free nations. Show the Jihadists that any weakness they percieve is a false impression. Shoot their weak propaganda down and tear apart their fiction. In other words, be world leaders, not whiners.

These Jihadists, they are not Muslims. They are simply killers hiding behind that religion. Their ideology is centuries old and refuted by 90% of their brethren. They are driven by madman in Iran and Syria, not by American or Israeli threats.

The Jihadists have no case before world opinion, they are empty shells of human beings. They aren't concerned with converting you to their way of thinking, they really don't care. Dead is how they want you. Oh, perhaps you can be a slave, if you are subservient enough.


Woman and The Jihadists

And if you just happen to be a woman, you are literally furniture. To be owned and hidden away, not just behind veils but out of polite society. Not to be seen, not to be heard.

What surprises me...and truly I don't get this...why haven't the women in the western world called for the extinction of the Jihadists? I have two words for them...genital mutilation. That alone should have 50% of the civilized world out to cleanse the earth of every nutcase Jihadist. Yes, that's what the cleric Al-Sadr in Baghdad wants you to practice. And Osama Bin Laden. And the P.M of Iran. The list goes on. These people are not lady friendly, get it?


A Call to Insanity

Yet, the Left roars on. Get out! It's all a big mistake. We have failed. There is a better way. But do we hear what that so called better way is? Other than "get out!"? Of course not. I can guarantee, if the Left gets control of this nation again that left fork I envision will become real. It will lead us to hell and gone. A truly Sadr-ized Iraq with radical Islamists ruling with appalling similarity to Saddam, only targeted at the other religious ideology instead of just Saddam's dissenters. And Iran and Syria will be stronger, emboldened, and in control of the center of the Middle East. And the danger to Israel is palatable. And that, my friends is the true danger. Israel will not sit idly by. No, this is not the way the left fork runs. Israel will turn the whole situation into a blood bath of previously unheard of dimension.

God, it cannot be said enough. These Jihadists are NOT nice people, America. The wake up call came, and have we forgotten already? These people are the fringe! They don't represent Islam, they are not the character of the Middle East! They are not worthy of respect or our concern! This is not religion, this is ideology! They are the evil that walks with bombs strapped to the bodies of those they have brainwashed into thinking they will go to Allah who awaits them as glorius martyrs. How can anyone forget that? Compare what they want with what we want. Can you not see the difference?

Will it take a suicide bomber in Chicago to wake us up again? Will a nuclear weapon have to be set off just outside some U.S. military base somewhere in the world do it? Just how far will the Jihadists have to go before we GET IT again?


What We Have to Do

And how do you shut up these politicians who pretend to be concerned with our security yet preach a course of action that will surely take us down a road to even worse deaths and destroy any hope of security in our future? Listen to these voices. Shrill, paniced, manipulative. Listen for real answers. Try to differentiate between "Its all wrong" and "This is how it works better". Listen for solutions not complaints. Listen for sincerity not posturing.

Don't listen to "anything is better than this" diatrides. Don't be fooled by revisionist history or political B.S. from people who hate America. Don't fall for "I can do better" without hearing EXACTLY what is better and how it will actually work. And please don't be led along that left fork that is paved by pacifists and appeasers.

I refute the President...I have no problem calling these people who call for withdrawl a bunch of cowards and disloyal. That is exactly what they are. They aren't simply asking the question, they try to set these ideas into concrete as if they are self-evident truths, well known and established by years of experience. The opposite is true. Years of experience show that this appeasement, this giving up on action is not about ideals.

It is all about power and control, and they want it. They have little desire to protect Iraq, the Middle East or America for that matter. They simply want the power and will do and say anything to get it. Do not let them have it. Force the issue. If the Left cannot come up with real answers and truly courageous and sincere leaders for our country, force them to sweep out the disengenuine maniuplators. Listen for history being rewritten even as they speak. Do not give them an inch. You know how that turns out.

My generation learned these truths from our parents and their times. It is up to my generation and our children to keep up the courage -- to lead the world and keep our civilization alive. Do not let it die at the hands of these disgusting cowards who claim they have all the answers. No one has the all the answers...it is a matter of taking action, fine tuning it, mulling it over and offering helpful ideas, not tearing it down in the throes of hand wringing and bed wetting.

We can make this idea of democracy in the Middle East work. We can keep the battle going over there in the heart of the Jihadist's home territory. Watch how they kill Arabs at horrible rates, yet claim they are doing it all for their great Islamic cause. See the lie as it really exists. Don't listen to apologies for the poor militants who supposedly are just fighting for their just cause. There is nothing just about it and they are not deserving of any pity or honor. If anyone deserves their deaths, it is the Jihadists trying to topple our civilization, not the other way around.

Don't let the Left make you an ally of the darkness that is Islamic Jihadism, this Salifiyya that was rejected by nearly every Muslim since the seventh century. It is time to tell them to shut up and go away, these appeasers. It is time we, the courageous, stood up to them and let them know we will not let them take us along that left fork in the road that leads to our own deaths. We will not stand by and die at the hands of the killers who claim they are simply fighting a battle for Allah. Damn them and damn their secret supporters.

© Copyright 2006, Michael G. Crawford, for MILNET