Posted on 08/01/2005 3:49:08 PM PDT by doctorhugo
All of us have much stuff pass through our inboxes. As we have a common interest in making our opinions known we are active bloggers.
When I get a 'forward' I read it closely unless its some inane drivel and then I simply 'delete' it immediately.
This is a long read and it's a letter attributed to the individual named in the thread title. As I read it I was struck by how many assertions were being made that, from MY point of view, were incorrect and I forwarded on MY altered version (which included my comments). For this reason I thought to post it here and encourage an interchange as the facts discussed are quite significant and of great inport in uberstanding this War on Terror in all it's implications.
My comments are all parenthesized and have some asterisks noted. None of the text content has been; otherwise, altered or modified in any way. Aside from my comments it is as I received it.
With what happened in London recently, consider this, when you have the time to really read it: ----- Major General Vernon Chong, USAF ret
This WAR is for REAL
To get out of a difficulty, one usually must go through it. Our country is now facing the most serious threat to its existence, as we know it, that we have faced in your lifetime and mine, which includes WWII.
The deadly seriousness is greatly compounded by the fact that there are very few of us who think we can possibly lose this war and even fewer who realize what losing really means.
First, let's examine a few basics:
1. When did the threat to us start?
Many will say September 11th, 2001. The answer as far as the United States is concerned is 1979, 22 years prior to September 2001, with the following attacks on us:
• Iran Embassy Hostages, 1979; • Beirut, Lebanon Embassy 1983; • Beirut, Lebanon Marine Barracks 1983; • Lockerbie, Scotland Pan-Am flight to New York 1988; • First New York World Trade Center attack 1993; • Dhahran, Saudi Arabia Khobar Towers Military complex 1996; • Nairobi, Kenya US Embassy 1998; • Dares Salaam, Tanzania US Embassy 1998; • Aden, Yemen USS Cole 2000; • New York World Trade Center 2001; • Pentagon 2001.
(Note that during the period from 1981 to 2001 there were 7,581 terrorist attacks worldwide).
2. Why were we attacked?
Envy of our position, our success, and our freedoms. The attacks happened during the administrations of Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton and Bush 2. We cannot fault either the Republicans or Democrats as there were no provocations by any of the presidents or their immediate predecessors, Presidents Ford or Carter. ( Wrong General! We were attacked because of our consistent support for the state of Israel coupled with our influence in the Middle East in furthering an atmosphere of freedom and tolerance in our personal and economic relationships with various states in the area. These states, none of which were democratic in nature, existed for eons in an atmosphere of no freedom and intolerance perpetuated by fundamentalist Muslim leaders throughout the area known as the Persian Crescent who reigned with an iron hand. Oil became the economic tool to fuel the hatred of these malevolents and to fund their cause. Politicians in the area supported them lest they see themselves usurped by the hate-mongers. A pragmatic pandering to the now acceptable politics of terrorism; therefore, came into being.)
3. Who were the attackers?
In each case, the attacks on the US were carried out by Muslims..
4. What is the Muslim population of the World? 25%.
5. Isn't the Muslim Religion peaceful?
Hopefully, (Hopefully? GET REAL...Get out your Middle East History 101 book General and go back to the Ottoman Empire and work forward from there. That should GIVE YOU A CLUE!) but that is really not material. ("not material"...Way to go General. I wouldn't be too dismissive of 25% of the World's population...., by your OWN figures, if I were you.) There is no doubt that the predominately Christian population of Germany was peaceful, but under the dictatorial leadership of Hitler (who was also Christian), that made no difference. You either went along with the administration or you were eliminated. There were 5 to 6 million Christians killed by the Nazis for political reasons (including 7,000 Polish priests).
Thus, almost the same number of Christians were killed by the Nazis, as the six million holocaust Jews who were killed by them, and we seldom heard of anything other than the Jewish atrocities. Although Hitler kept the world focused on the Jews, he had no hesitancy about killing anyone who got in his way of exterminating the Jews or of taking over the world - German, Christian or any others.
Same with the Muslim terrorists. They focus the world on the US, but kill all in the way -- their own people or the Spanish, French or anyone else. The point here is that just like the peaceful Germans were of no protection to anyone from the Nazis, no matter how many peaceful Muslims there may be, they are no protection for us from the terrorist Muslim leaders and what they are fanatically bent on doing -- by their own pronouncements -- killing all of us "infidels." I don't blame the peaceful Muslims. (If you're NOT part of the solution..., you're part of the problem) What would you do if the choice was shut up or die? (I'd take the middleground option and organize an underground movement and snipe away at them constantly. Since when are the choices limited to "shut up or die"? It ain't so just , because YOU say it is!)
6. So who are we at war with?
There is no way we can honestly respond that it is anyone other than the Muslim terrorists. Trying to be politically correct and avoid verbalizing this conclusion can well be fatal. There is no way to win if you don't clearly recognize and articulate who you are fighting.
So with that background, now to the two major questions:
1. Can we lose this war?
2. What does losing really mean?
If we are to win, we must clearly answer these two pivotal questions.
We can definitely lose this war, and as anomalous as it may sound, the major reason we can lose is that so many of us simply do not fathom the answer to the second question - What does losing mean?
It would appear that a great many of us think that losing the war means hanging our heads, bringing the troops home and going on about our business, like post Vietnam. This is as far from the truth as one can get. What losing really means is:
We would no longer be the premier country in the world. The attacks will not subside, but rather will steadily increase. Remember, they want us dead, not just quiet. If they had just wanted us quiet, they would not have produced an increasing series of attacks against us, over the past 18 years. The plan was clearly, for terrorist to attack us, until we were neutered and submissive to them.
We would of course have no future support from other nations, for fear of reprisals and for the reason that they would see, we are impotent and cannot help them.
They will pick off the other non-Muslim nations, one at a time. It will be increasingly easier for them. They already hold Spain hostage. It doesn't matter whether it was right or wrong for Spain to withdraw its troops from Iraq. Spain did it because the Muslim terrorists bombed their train and told them to withdraw the troops. Anything else they want Spain to do will be done. Spain is finished.
The next will probably be France. Our one hope on France (Not to hold your breath for France,.. General. France is a nation used to having others pull their butts out of the fire, so they tread on the edge until it's almost too late. They're a near-bankrupt, socialist state with no industrial base, wherein the people look to the GOVERNMENT to solve all their problems. They have NO united political resolve and little true national pride. They are a nation that eschews responsibility in all forms and is content to prance about in a fantasyland. They have never had a real leader who held his country's interest above his own, though a case could be made for de Gaulle. They are, in essence, the sheep waiting for the slaughter.) is that they might see the light and realize that if we don't win, they are finished too, in that they can't resist the Muslim terrorists without us. However, it may already be too late for France. France is already 20% Muslim and fading fast!
If we lose the war, our production, income, exports and way of life will all vanish as we know it. After losing, who would trade or deal with us, if they were threatened by the Muslims.
(If we lose the war...there won't be anyone left to worry about trading with, except the Chinese, as we'll be the last ones still standing along with them. The rest of the world would have gone by the boards already.)
If we can't stop the Muslims, how could anyone else?
The Muslims fully know what is riding on this war, and therefore are completely committed to winning, at any cost. We better know it too and be likewise committed to winning at any cost.
Why do I go on at such lengths about the results of losing? Simple. Until we recognize the costs of losing, we cannot unite and really put 100% of our thoughts and efforts into winning. And it is going to take that 100% effort to win.
So, how can we lose the war?
Again, the answer is simple. We can lose the war by "imploding." That is, defeating ourselves by refusing to recognize the enemy and their purpose, and really digging in and lending full support to the war effort. If we are united, there is no way that we can lose. If we continue to be divided, there is no way that we can win! (We can still win, although divided, as long as those who "DON'T GET IT" are not allowed to ascend to the seats of power and control and their influence is with a small minority. It was true in WWII and it can be true again.)
Let me give you a few examples of how we simply don't comprehend the life and death seriousness of this situation.
President Bush selects Norman Mineta as Secretary of Transportation.
Although all of the terrorist attacks were committed by Muslim men between 17 and 40 years of age, Secretary Mineta refuses to allow profiling. Does that sound like we are taking this thing seriously? This is war! For the duration, we are going to have to give up some of the civil* rights we have become accustomed to. We had better be prepared to lose some of our civil* rights temporarily or we will most certainly lose all of them permanently.
*(This word should, more appropriately read "individual" rights. In any time of national emergency, there will come a point at which individuals MUST be willing to set aside some degree of individual right/s for the collective rights of the citizenry as a whole. In this instance, we are engaged in a war unlike any before and anyone who thinks that we can make this Nation secure without temporarily abridging certain rights by utilizing more aggressive 'search and seizure', 'profiling' and other measures is either a FOOL or an anarchist bent on destroying this country from within. In this there is NO room for compromise. There was some abuse of the Patriot Act but in spite of this is was a necessity that it be renewed, lest we tie the hands of those we EXPECT to protect us. The abuses can be addressed, but you don't throw out the baby with the bath water. This constitutional public was built on all manner of sacrifice and it will be maintained similarly. To all the lefties who don't get it... I just say, ...TAKE A HIKE!)
And don't worry that it is a slippery slope. We gave up plenty of civil rights during WWII, and immediately restored them after the victory and in fact added many more since then.
Do I blame President Bush or President Clinton before him?
No, I blame us for blithely assuming we can maintain all of our Political Correctness, and all of our civil rights during this conflict and have a clean, lawful, honorable war. None of those words apply to war. Get them out of your head.
Some have gone so far in their criticism of the war and/or the Administration that it almost seems they would literally like to see us lose*.. I hasten to add that this isn't because they are disloyal. It is because they just don't recognize what losing means. Nevertheless, that conduct gives the impression to the enemy that we are divided and weakening. It concerns our friends, and it does great damage to our cause. *(Make no mistake about it. There are those America haters amongst us who would LIKE to see us lose. They're on our campuses engendering our youth with omnifarious, odious values and besmirching every traditional value that this once great Nation was built on. I say once, because we have a long way to come back to shed that descriptive. They're in the "pop culture" using their celebrity to influence those of limited intelligence and belief. They corupt meaning and intent using emotion to overcome logic. The idealistic young are ripe fodder for their tactics. They succeed by using the freedoms won by the sacrifices of others as a tool to break down tradition and rewrite history as they would like it to have been. They are the slovenly burden we all must bear to assure that the rest of us will endure and triumph...in spite of their burdensome load.)
Of more recent vintage, the uproar fueled by the politicians and media regarding the treatment of some prisoners of war, perhaps exemplifies best what I am saying.
We have recently had an issue, involving the treatment of a few Muslim prisoners of war, by a small group of our military police.
These are the type prisoners who just a few months ago were throwing their own people off buildings, cutting off their hands, cutting out their tongues and otherwise murdering their own people just for disagreeing with Saddam Hussein.
And just a few years ago these same type prisoners chemically killed 400,000 of their own people for the same reason. They are also the same type enemy fighters, who recently were burning Americans, and dragging their charred corpses through the streets of Iraq.
And still more recently, the same type enemy that was and is providing videos to all news sources internationally, of the beheading of American prisoners they held.
Compare this with some of our press and politicians, who for several days have thought and talked about nothing else but the "humiliating" of some Muslim prisoners -- not burning them, not dragging their charred corpses through the streets, not beheading them, but "humiliating" them.
Can this be for real? (YES! The America haters, as personified by groups like MoveOn.org, the ACLU, People for the American Way, the CPA, et al, are unrelenting and will utilize every incident to pursue their agenda.)
The politicians and pundits have even talked of impeachment of the Secretary of Defense. (Surprised? Why so? They despise the military and only pay lip service to it when absolutely necessary as a tool of political correctness. What better target?)
If this doesn't show the complete lack of comprehension and understanding of the seriousness of the enemy we are fighting, the life and death struggle we are in and the disastrous results of losing this war, nothing can.
To bring our country to a virtual political standstill over this prisoner issue makes us look like Nero playing his fiddle as Rome burned -- totally oblivious to what is going on in the real world. (To not recognize this as a definitive strategy of the America haters is to be naive.)
Neither we, nor any other country, can survive this internal strife.
Again I say, this does not mean that some of our politicians or media people are disloyal. (Huh! Of course "some of our politicians or media people are disloyal". It's simple reality!) It simply means that they are absolutely oblivious to the magnitude, of the situation we are in and into which the Muslim terrorists have been pushing us, for many years. (OH NO THEY'RE NOT. They are an amalgam of America and Bush haters....no more, no less, who know EXACTLY what they're doing..., just like Dan Rather did.)
Remember, the Muslim terrorists stated goal is to kill all infidels! That translates into all non-Muslims -- not just in the United States, but throughout the world.
We are the last bastion of defense.
We have been criticized for many years as being 'arrogant.' That charge is valid in at least one respect. We are arrogant in that we believe that we are so good, powerful and smart, that we can win the hearts and minds of all those who attack us, and that with both hands tied behind our back, we can defeat anything bad in the world!
We can't!
If we don't recognize this, our nation as we know it will not survive, and no other free country in the World will survive if we are defeated.
And finally, name any Muslim countries throughout the world that allow freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, equal rights for anyone -- let alone everyone, equal status or any status for women, or that have been productive in one single way that contributes to the good of the world. (You can't, because the last thing they want is a free and secular society. They want a totalitarian religious dogmatized state rooted in hatred and intolerance.)
This has been a long way of saying that we must be united on this war or we will be equated in the history books to the self-inflicted fall of the Roman Empire. If, that is, the Muslim leaders will allow history books to be written or read.
If we don't win this war right now, keep a close eye on how the Muslims take over France in the next 5 years or less. They will continue to increase the Muslim population of France and continue to encroach little by little, on the established French traditions. The French will be fighting among themselves (I think not. They'll probably do what they've always done and look to US to save their butts), over what should or should not be done, which will continue to weaken them and keep them from any united resolve. Doesn't that sound eerily familiar?
Democracies don't have their freedoms taken away from them by some external military force. Instead, they give their freedoms away, politically correct piece by politically correct piece. (By yielding to and condoning the tyranny of the minority using the courts to impose their will, based on "individual" rights, on the majority of us.)
And they are giving those freedoms away to those who have shown, worldwide, that they abhor freedom and will not apply it to you or even to themselves, once they are in power.
They have universally shown that when they have taken over, they then start brutally killing each other over who will be the few who control the masses. Will we ever stop hearing from the politically correct, about the "peaceful Muslims"? (The peaceful Muslims have been most notable by their collective silence until recently, when out of concern for intrusions into their communities, they have come out with mere tepid declarations against the terrorists. Out and out rejection and damnation of terrorism by their own has been the all too rare exception and not the rule.)
I close on a hopeful note, by repeating what I said above. If we are united, there is no way that we can lose. I hope now after the election, the factions in our country will begin to focus on the critical situation we are in, and will unite to save our country. (The elections ARE over General and it didn't happen. The lefties will never... GET IT.) It is your future we are talking about! Do whatever you can to preserve it.
After reading the above, we all must do this not only for ourselves, but our children, our grandchildren, our country and the world.
Whether Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal and that includes the Politicians and media of our country and the free world!
There are those who find fault with our country, but it is obvious to anyone who truly thinks through this, that we must UNITE!
bump
I didn't really see very much in the way of disagreement between you and the general, and some of you comments seems a bit nitpicky. I think the discussion would have been better served by relegating your comments to the end of the e-mail as it interferes with the flow of the letter, and makes it different to distinguish between your comments and the General's.
It seems the General engages in PCisms even as he damns political correctness. I grew up around USAF Generals, and I wonder just how good the product is that the current "inner sanctum" promotes. If this guy was a two star, I am not impressed.
Then again, it could be worse... beats reading Merrill "Tony" McPeak.
DrHugo,
What initiated Gen. Chong's response? Was it a public response/article he wrote or a discussion that the two of you were having via e-mail? Just curious.... On a side note, I served under Gen. Chong when he commanded Wilford Hall Medical Center at LAFB in San Antonio (I actually have a few pictures of him with me during a couple of my award ceremonies in 1987).
Understood, as to the difficulty with the inserted remarks.
However, there is much of SIGNIFICANCE in the differences I pointed out that are far from being nitpicky. If he really wants everyone to come to understand the enemy and reasons for the significance he's got to do his historical homework and not make sweeping generalities and side remarks based on erroneous assumptions. For a quick example...the terrorists, by no stretch of the imagination, "envy" us. They HATE us, because to them we are NOT THEM and we represent the one thing they cannot deal with>>>CHANGE!
To think that is is envy is to NOT understand your enemy.
This is NOT a personal criticism of the General, just one of how he states his position,,,somewhat inaccurately based.
It was, as I described it, a 'forward' that came to me. I did check into it and it seemed to be an open letter he released to the press, but I can't verify that as accurate.
FOLLOW-Up to my reply above:
I wish I had an email address for him as I would have loved to sent him my response and started an intechange.
If anyone has it feel free to send it to me as a "private" reply and thanks.
Ah...here it is again. Bump for a great understanding of why we must win!
The thing is, Gen. Chong didn't write it.
Good snoop'n Dighton!
A better detective — take a bow, COEXERJ145 — would have noticed that this is an old thread, bumped today, and that doctorhugo, to whom I replied, is not presently among us.
We knew that already from a thread that was just pulled ---we were just discussing it...someone else pointed it out already and because the fact is....Dr. Chong did not write it. Dr. Chong only forwarded the email. But he exists and was involved. Exiting huh? The substance is real and factual...and should be read by everyone.
The correction was posted by someone not in this thread......post #2 of the last thread. But Dighton called the moderator to get the thread pulled because of a technicality for some reason.....I don't know why he doesn't like the post....other people loved it. It's factual and pro-American.
Bump
PING
And again I say, some of our politicians or media are absolutely disloyal!
"I hope now after the election, the factions in our country will begin to focus on the critical situation we are in, and will unite to save our country."
And again I say, the liberals/Democrats/liberal media whores don't give a flying **** about the war on terror. Their goal is consistent: "Power, power, power."
Their path to power? "By any means necessary."
And once in power, what do they do? Legislate, confiscate, and intimidate. And if people resist - incarcerate!
War on terror? They can't bothered as long as they do not dominate politically.
We can easily lose the war on terror because of two dangerous groups: islamofascists and liberalofascists.
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