Interesting Reading

Here's a nice essay I got in an email. I'm sure plenty of people here will find ways to needlessly pick it apart, but it gets the point across, I think.

By: Raymond S. Kraft

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.

Americas 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 in 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 behind 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 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 would 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 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
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 again . . . 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 billion,
which is roughly what the 9/11 terrorist attack cost New York. It has
also cost about 3,000 American lives, which is roughly equivalent 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 somebody 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 do minated
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 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 50,000,000 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?

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 that has
studied the Middle Eastern culture and religion

 

i stopped where it said france was not an ally. of course they werent. the french had german guns to their heads and were opposed to what their german captors told them to be opposed to. are we supposed to believe the french actually opposed us and liked being occupied by germany? get the **** out of here.

credibility lost.


edit: i read more, i wish i hadnt.

"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."

our children, in an islamic america? it cannot get stupider than that. what a raging idiot this dude is. there is a reason you get stuff via email nd not published in a real newspaper. because it is nonsense. forwarded emails deserve a quick trip to the trash 99.9% of the time.

 

I admit that there were parts of that essay that seemed a bit far-fetched and extreme to me, but I agree with the general point of the essay, that we are fighting the war on terrorism in Iraq so that we don't have to fight it here at home. You can't deny that, Iraq war or not, these radical Muslims hate America and our way of life and will do anything to end it.

 

I disagree with a few points. The United States had quite a few allies. Also, it was the German air force that was destroyed in the Battle of Britain - not the British Air Force. But most of the remainder I agree with.

 

The basis for this article, trying to equate Iraq to Nazi Germany, is contrived to begin with. The whole Muslim-Christian-Jewish thing in the middle east has been going on for thousands of years. People act like this is a new conflict that popped up during the Bush administration. I have no problem with going over to kick their a$$. It doesn't matter if they had WMDs or not. They didn't comply to what the UN mandated and needed to be held accountable. The problem with this war is that we are still there trying to be Iraq's police force. I don't care it those idiots blow themselves up. That's what they do...it's their thing. I just don't want any more Americans to die for it.

I know what your thinking, "but pharpe, if we leave now then another fanatic Muslim dictator will just come to power and we will be back in the same place in 10 years."

That may very well be true but we cannot occupy the entire globe to insure that things work out they way we want them to. Our military campaigns need to have a goal. Like in WWII. We recognized a threat, neutralized it and when home. We either have to declare Iraq a US territory and setup our own government or get the hell out. I don't see the point in sacrificing another American life on a country that hates us and doesn't appreciate what we've done for them.

This message was paid for by the pharpe for president campaign.

 

i think to some extent the whole world is at war with islam, and i dunno what we are gonna do about it. as i have mentioned before, i think part of the long-term solution is for us to stop having such an irrational tolerance for faith.

but otherwise red is right on about the article. it is propaganda, and none of it should be trusted.

 

TigerFan23...did you receive the email two weeks ago quoting the Commandant of the Marine Corps speech on Iraq? If so, post it. If not, let me know and I'll scan it. It pretty much sums up the whole thing. An Army two star gave me a copy up in Chicago. It's a great read.

 

What is silly is the writer's contention that the Iraq debacle is taking al Queda's focus off attacks on the mainland. They are still planning, and seeking to carry out attacks. Several have been thrwarted in the past 2 years.

Intelligence reports say al Queda is as strong as it was before 9/11. We are not creating a battle ground in Iraq to wage the war on terror. We are helping facilitate the spread of radical Islam, and allowing our real enemy to build its strength.

 

Was it this one? It's rather long, but I would consider it much more credible than the essay I originally posted in this thread (even though there are some parts of that essay I still agree with). This one is straight from the horse's mouth, if you ask me.