Despite Your Position on War: A Must Read

bhelmLSU · May 3, 2007

I got this in an email from a friend today. Really puts history into perspective and the significance it plays today. It is long so bear with me. Tell me what you think. It was written by Raymond S. Kraft a writer living in Northern California who studies Middle Eastern Culture and Religion.

This is a must read all the way through slowly & carefully.

SOME OF YOU ARE NOT OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER THAT NEARLY EVERY FAMILY IN
AMERICA WAS GROSSLY AFFECTED BY WW II . 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. The Nazis had sunk
more than 400 British ships in their convoys between England and America
taking 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 , who
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

The US was certainly not prepared for war. The US had drastically
downgraded most of its military forces after WW I because of the depression,
so that at the outbreak of WW II, 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 Royal 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. Hitler, first turned his attention to Russia, in
the late summer of 1940 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 24,000,000 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. If that had happened, the Nazis
could possibly have won the war ..

All of this has been brought out to illustrate that turning points in
history are often dicey things. 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. To
them, 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 . (goal)

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 yet known which side 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. Do you want gas in your car? Do you want heating oil next
winter? Do you want the dollar to be worth anything? You had 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, 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. 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 the 9/11 terrorist attack 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, responsible
for the deaths of probably more than a 1,000,000 Iraqis and 2,000,000
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 .

WW II, the war with the Japanese and German 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 the US
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 a gain . . a 27 year war.

WW II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year's
GDP -- adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars. WW II
cost America more than 400,000 soldiers killed in action, and nearly 100,000
still missing in action.

The Iraq war has, so far, cost the United States about $160,000,000,000,
which is roughly what the 9/11 terrorist attack cost New York. It has also
cost about 3,000 American lives, which is roughly equivilant to lives that
the Jihad killed (within the United States) in the 9/11 terrorist attack .

The cost of not fighting and winning WW II would have been unimaginably
greater -- a world dominated by Japanese Imperialism and German Nazism .

This is not a 60-Minutes TV show, 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. It 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 ally, like 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 to conquer the world.

The Iraq War is merely another battle in this ancient and never ending war.
Now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear
weapons. Unless some body prevents them from getting 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 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.

OR

4 . 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 possibly 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 civilization 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 50,000,000 people, maybe more than 100,000,000 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 WW II the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week -- for four years. Most of the
individual battles of WW II lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has
done so far

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 average American 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? I'll
tell you why! They would be killed!

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!

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.

Click to expand...

Bengal Buddy · May 4, 2007

While Islamic terrorism is certainly the greatest danger to international security today, I don't know of any conclusive evidence that the terrorists wish to take over the world. Not that they would be opposed to the idea. I am sure they would love to see a fundamental Islamic Europe and North America. But they don't have the resources to accomplish that. They are guerrilla fighters, and while a guerilla army is very tough to beat, by its very nature it has limitations. An Islamic America? That could never occur without a conventional or nuclear war, and the terrorists simply could not stand up against the United States in a conventional or nuclear war. That is why they avoid direct confrontation with American troops at all costs.

As a side note: WWII started in September of 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. Not 1928. Events that eventually led to WWII may be dated back that far, but there is a difference between contributing factors and the event they led up to. If we don't make that distinction, then I guess we could trace WWII back to the fall of Constantinople.

red55 · May 4, 2007

Sorry, it is a poor and one-sided essay. i could pick it to pieces.

The "Jihad" exists only in the rhetoric of islamists who have little else to throw at us and also in the minds of those of us who have bought into their propaganda. The few thousand muslim terrorists that commit international crimes are the enemy, not "Islam".

houtiger · May 4, 2007

Comparing the jihadists desire to spread Islam to the world with Hitler's desire to rule the world is absurd. Hitler actually built an air force, army and navy and set out to do it, and he did a good job for a while, controlling most of mainland Europe through military victory.

What nations have the jihadists taken over lately? They had Ahghanistan but lost it. They have no air force, no navy and no standing army to speak of. There is a huge gulf between what their objective is and their ability to achieve it, that it is not creditable to compare their threat to Hitler.

We should keep an eye on them, and fight fire with fire. Do electronic surveilance and human intelligence, try to find them and kill them with spot strikes by Predators or special forces. The type effort we expended in WWII is not called for right now.

bhelmLSU · May 4, 2007

No need tp be sorry, that is why I asked for opinions. I am by no means have the political science knowledge to know what is true and what is not. It was very obvious that it was one sided. However, I did enjoy getting a view of the lives and resources used for the past U.S. wars. I do watch the O'Reily Factor and Fox News but I lack knowledge on history.:thumb:

red55 · May 4, 2007

bhelmLSU said: ↑

I did enjoy getting a view of the lives and resources used for the past U.S. wars. I do watch the O'Reily Factor and Fox News but I lack knowledge on history.:thumb:
Click to expand...

Then watch the Military Channel and the History Channel when you can. No substitute for a good library, of course, but they have some great documentaries. I've become a documentary fan.

martin · May 4, 2007

this is one of those sort of articles that is written in such a way that you can tell you cant trust it.

houtiger · May 4, 2007

martin said: ↑

this is one of those sort of articles that is written in such a way that you can tell you cant trust it.
Click to expand...

:rofl: :rofl: Good one!!!

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Despite Your Position on War: A Must Read

bhelmLSU Founding Member Staff Member

Bengal Buddy Founding Member

red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

houtiger Founding Member

bhelmLSU Founding Member Staff Member

red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

martin Banned Forever

houtiger Founding Member

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