History courtesy of Paul Kraft...a California based writer

[Steve Wood]

Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk more than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England and America for food and war materials. At that time the US was in an isolationist, pacifist mood, and most Americans wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian war. Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and 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 W.W.I and throughout 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. And 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 over run 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, and 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, and first turning his attention to Russia, at a time when England was on the verge of collapse, in the late summer of 1940.



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 and Moscow 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. And now, we 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 will 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, and 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, and a moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.



We have to help the Reformation win, and 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. And 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. W.W.II 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 3,000 American lives, which is roughly 100% of the 3,000 lives that the Jihad snuffed on 9/11. But the cost of not fighting and winning W.W.II would have been unimaginably greater -- a world dominated by German and Japanese Nazism.



This is not 60 minute TV shows, and 2 hour movies 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 civilization, 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.



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 this 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 and Germany 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 always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.



Remember, perspective is every thing, 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 3,000 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 the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In W.W.II the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week -- for four years. Most of the individual battles o f W.W.II 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.

[turbofabricator]

GREAT, and I mean GREAT wording. I wonder what a few of the board members will have to say about this? Probably won't read it, because it wasn't aired on Air America or CNN (Communist News Network)

[jdodman]

Good Post. Very thought provoking...

Here is a clip also worth watching, along the same lines. This guy clearly 'gets it'....and does a great job of summarizing the situation. Oh yeah and he speaks from experience..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Yc3wYJOtI

[Steve Wood]

Lots to be learned from history...especially that which continually repeats itself.

[Zap]

Interesting that many conservative groups favor isolationist foreign policy, as do many liberals, despite the lessons of history. You'd have "thunk" that two World wars would have made an impression.

[Zap]

I also think a deep impression may have to be made in Iran in the not too distant future.

[Steve Wood]

It should have been made back in the '70s.

[87bigcut]

Good read.

Joe

[TexasT]

Originally Posted by Steve Wood

It should have been made back in the '70s.

And why didn't that happen(Retorical)? Oh, that's right, we had a 'spineless' leader(Carter, for those not old enough to remember) that thought sending a secret rescue mission in was the solution.

This lead to a early eighties ecomomic 'depression'.

Great article, I hope all read all the way through and don't 'miss' any of the facts.

[turbofabricator]

Originally Posted by Steve Wood

Lots to be learned from history...especially that which continually repeats itself.

Lots to be learned from history...especially that which continually repeats itself.

Lots to be learned from history...especially that which continually repeats itself.

Lots to be learned from history...especially that which continually repeats itself.

Need I say more? Ask any kid, that has gone through US history classes in public school, WHY we were attacked by Japan in 1941? Most will tell you becasuse we forced them to attack us, because we cut off their oil supply. But most do not know WHY we cut off their oil supply. (because Bush, super senior, wanted all the oil for himself. ) See, ALL wars are Bush's fault.

[stevemon]

Some of the below is from a source on a maili list with some of my words thrown in:


The Cold War, which we fought from the Korean War era through the fall of the Soviet Union was actually WWIII and from what I was told 20 years ago, the next threat on the horizon was supposed to be China.

Well, S**t Happens and in this case, the Radical Islamists threat jumped in ahead of the Chinese to become WWIV. I guess China will have to wait to be WWV in some 20-30 more years.

Anyway, the threat for now is Islamicism including all of those who assist, aid, and abet it. And by "all", I mean all[u].

The battle zones don't have neat borders this time around.

Sometimes they're drawn around country, sometimes a region, sometimes a neighborhood, sometimes a mosque in the U.S., sometimes around an author, sometimes around a media outlet, sometimes around sleeper cells, sometimes around certain member nations of the UN, sometimes around Al Quaida entities, sometimes around a U.S. political party, and sometimes around the "useful idiots".

Iraq has a a number of things you can draw battle borders around. There are
an assortment of internally produced skirmishes (including payback by some
upon others that would almost certainly had occurred at some point in its
history anyway) and externally aided skirmishes which seem to be largely
centered in certain areas. Those are some of the most important because
those are the ones that the leadership of the enemy feels are most
important. I think this is a fine place to be fighting WWIV right now
compared to other places.

The U.S. has led (note that word: "led") some really bad places in the
world to freedom in the last century as a goal to turn those that would war
against us (and each other) into peaceful nations. (Europe and some of Asia
come to mind. The former Soviet Union is struggling, but now far more
peaceful than not.) And if the U.S. doesn't again lead when it is so
clearly needed again, who will? Or what will happen? Surrender? I'm not
much of a believer in that. This is why the Europe will rue the day they
denigrated the U.S. It is only a matter of time when they will once again
need to be saved, this time from radical Islam.

Of course, with enough people in the U.S. thinking like Gothmog, the U.S. could possibly, perhaps probably, be so weakened that it will eventually fall to
tyranny. That is certainly the goal of the enemy and they don't care if it
takes centuries. They don't have any phony "withdrawl timeline".

[jasonlachapelle]

What are Kraft's credentials ? His summary of the 2nd world war is much to simplified... I am usually weary of articles that contain lines like "Russia lost something like 24 million people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow alone." To his credit Kraft does make some valid arguments.

Granted I didn't study political science, and I certainly can't make any claims to know the true reason behind the occupation of Iraq. The situation is too close ye to have a clear perspective, to paraphrase the author. The creation of an operating base as Kraft claims is certainly plausible, but I think it is wrong of Kraft to imply that the presence of troops is done for the greater good of the middle-eastern nations, and naive of his readers to believe it.

Personally, I am afraid we are very close to the "disastrous rise of misplaced power" foretold by Eisenhower when he talked about the military-industrial complex in his farewell speech. Even though he died before I was born (coincidentally, on this day in 69), I think he was a great president.

As an active member of the military, I do support the troops. I also believe we need a more stable middle-east and that pulling out of Iraq isn't a viable option (is it ever ?). Iran is definitely a threat. I just don't think the author of this particular text is 100% right.

[Steve Wood]

so give us some examples of what he wrote that is incorrect

[jasonlachapelle]

I don't want to get into a big typewritten debate on this. It would definately be more fun to just talk about it over a nice beer. The guy has some valid points and I am in no position to disprove his figures. I just think he draws the wrong conclusions from them

What I don't agree with;
the oversimplification of the 2nd world war...for exampel: Ireland being an ally. Although many Irish volunteered for the war, Ireland was neutral.

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).

(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.

his assessment of Hussein isn't pertinent.

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.

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.

true, but his list of options are not viable, and mildly entertaining. The middle-east is a mess. You guys know it's not conventional warfare out there. There are warring tribes that almost make a passtime of fighting each other. The fact that the enemy isn't easily identifiable makes things more difficult that this text leads to believe. I would really like to ask the guy what his vision is to end this. I certainly don't know how... but you could send all the troops you wanted, and there would still be problems.

[stevemon]

or you could do nothing and then what?
I figure for every day our troops are over there facing these Wahibis in the streets is one more days delay before a city or three in the United States is taken out by a nuclear device of some kind.