Posted on 03/26/2003 8:56:04 AM PST by Dada Orwell
Here is an editorial I wrote which I hope is of some value as a morale booster. Pass it around as you see fit.
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Gulf War Two, Week One: A Historical Perspective
Imagine the impossible.
It is the mid-1930s. France and Britain decide to make an issue of Nazi Germany's ongoing Versailles Treaty and Locarno Pact violations. Despite failing to gain much support from the League of Nations for military action they choose to decapitate Hitler's regime, recognizing the continuing threat it poses. They mass on the German border and interpose themselves between a tyrant and an as-yet ungrateful world.
An ultimatum goes forth to Hitler: Leave Germany with your top ministers or face military action. Ninety minutes after the ultimatum expires unheeded, a squadron RAF bombers - possibly tipped off by an insider - attacks one of Hitler's hideouts in Berlin. He is not seen again during that week, except in films which appear to have been shot before the attack. Intelligence reports indicate he is wounded and that various members of his top staff are also injured or killed. Among the dead is the minister responsible for terror-bombing Spanish towns a year before.
Nazi units along the Franco-German border, who have been surrendering in small numbers all week, begin to capitulate en masse during this first day of war. Entire divisions lay down their arms without firing a shot. Allied bombers and fighters roam at will across the Fatherland, executing low-level precision strikes against Nazi nerve centers. Their cautiousness and accuracy limits the number of civilian injuries.
The third day of war sees a lightning armored thrust which quickly penetrates deep into Germany. Within six days of the war's beginning, France's superior battle tanks are engaging SS units defending Berlin. Anti-Nazi Germans stage a daring revolt against the SS in Stuttgart. The Nazis' suspected arsenal of banned weapons remains unused, their resistance mostly disorganized. During this week, at least, none of the nightmare scenarios unfold.
Though each Allied casualty is a source of sorrow, the dreadful numbers are mercifully small. Their dead number in the dozens rather than the thousands. Gestapo mistreatment of the few Allied prisoners in its hands causes a backlash of measured fury and patriotism across Britain and France.
Imagine French and British commanders gaping at their theater maps, unable to believe the speed with which their divisions are advancing or the near totality of their early success. Though mindful of the many dangers ahead, they now expect the war against Hitler to end in weeks or months rather than years.
Imagine seventy-five million people going about their lives during this week. Some are inconvenienced, others unaffected by the fighting in central Europe. But almost all are spared from the hideous deaths that awaited them on the path of Allied inaction, most never knowing they were spared, many spitefully opposed to the war that spares them.
Imagine a Prime Minister standing before his Parliament and placing history's eyes upon the scene:
"You do not know," he says, "and may our *world* never know...the horrors our young men are saving it from this day."
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Such a scenario never unfolded in the '30s, as the scourge of pacifism ate through the West's immune system. But something nearly identical did happen this third week of March 2003, in a different place with different heroes and tyrants. May we never confuse the two. And may we never confuse failure with the stunning, early success of this Coalition and its unspeakably brave Free Iraqi allies.
- Dada Orwell 3/26/03
Liberty in Our Lifetime
http://freestateproject.org
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