Posted on 07/09/2006 11:51:14 AM PDT by West Coast Conservative
Last week's headlines prove the point: North Korea fires missiles, Iran talks of nukes again, Iraq carnage continues, Israel invades Gaza, England observes one-year anniversary of subway bombing. And, oh, yes, the feds stop a plot to blow up tunnels under the Hudson River.
World War III has begun.
It's not perfectly clear when it started. Perhaps it was after the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War ended. Perhaps it was the first bombing of the World Trade Center, in 1993.
What is clear is that this war has a long fuse and, while we are not in the full-scale combat phase that marked World Wars I and II, we seem to be heading there. The expanding hostilities mean it's time to give this conflict a name, one that focuses the mind and clarifies the big picture.
The war on terror, or the war of terror, has tentacles that reach much of the globe. It is a world war.
While it is often a war of loose or no affiliation, and sometimes just amateur copycats, the similar goals of destruction add up to a threat against modern society. Even the hapless wanna-bes busted in Miami ordered guns and military equipment from a man they thought was from Al Qaeda. Islamic fascists are the driving force, but anti-American hatred is a global membership card for any and all who have a grievance and a gun.
The feeling that the wheels are coming off the world has only one recent comparison, the time when America's head-butt with communism sprouted hot spots from Cuba to Vietnam. Yet ultimately the policy of mutual assured destruction worked because American and Soviet leaders didn't want their countries hit by nuclear bombs.
Such rational thinking is quaint next to the ravings of North Korean nut Kim Jong Il and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They both seem to be dying to die - and set the world on fire.
And don't forget Osama Bin Laden's declaration that it is the duty of every Muslim to acquire a "Muslim bomb." Is there any doubt he would use it if he had it?
I sound pessimistic because I am. Even worse than the problems is the fact that our political system is failing us. Democratic Party leaders want to pretend we can declare peace and everything will be fine, while President Bush is out of ideas. Witness Bush now counseling patience and diplomacy on North Korea. This from a man who scorned both for five years.
But what choice does he have now that the pillars of his post-9/11 foreign policy are crumbling? As Harvard Prof. Joseph Nye argues in Foreign Affairs magazine, Bush's strategy of "reducing Washington's reliance on permanent alliances and international institutions, expanding the traditional right of preemption into a new doctrine of preventive war and advocating coercive democratization as a solution to Middle Eastern terrorism" amounted to a bid for a "legacy of transformation."
The first two ideas have been repealed. The third brought Hamas into power and has so far failed to take root in Iraq or anywhere else.
I believed Iraq was the key, that if we prevailed there, momentum would shift in our favor. Now I'm not sure. We still must prevail there, but Iraq could mean nothing if Iran or Bin Laden get the bomb or North Korea uses one.
Meanwhile, I'm definitely not using any tunnels.
We won't be popular (we aren't anyway) BUT WE CAN BE AND WILL BE THE MOST RESPECTEDPOWER !!!
Yeah, I should live so long when they are finished with that investigation. Everything is investigated...never prosecuted. I'll sing a different tune when I actually see someone hauled off to the kalaboose.
This isn't Bush's war. If you recognize that we are at war, as you seem to, then you must also recognize that its your war too.
Its juvenile to complain that we haven't invaded North Korea yet. Its juvenile to complain that we've bypassed the United Nations, when (as a distinguished member of our journalistic class) you should know that it was on Saddam's payroll, and continues to be little more than a front for money-laundering. Bush has bypassed the fake international alliances and is engaged in building real ones, the kind that actually field troops into battle.
Two things will defeat us. The fantasy that there is no war if we don't fight it, and pessimism, the belief that we don't have the heart for a long war, and should resign now. We faced the same problems during the 45 year Cold War, half of our politicians were working for the other side or anxious to surrender, but despite everything we hung on and eventually the walls came tumbling down.
No thanks to the Dems, and no thanks to the journalists. We'll win this one too, if we just learn to hang tough, and pay little or no attention to the scribblers.
It's not the American way to attack first. As soon as Jung-Il blows up San Francisco, we'll get serious.
Where It's 9-11 All the Time...Click the picture...
...was simply an extention of this:
Islam, a Religion of Peace®? ( links, blogs, quips, quotes, aggravating pictures ) is located here- click the Pic, and scroll backwards:
...and that the barbarians are already inside the gates.
Typical how the author of this piece doesn't offer up any solutions of his own. His solution seems to run away like a coward pointing his finger at everything but his own cowardice.
Bingo.
Second--and this one is obviously exacerbated by the aforementioned PC issue--is the fact that our leaders have bought into the notion that our wonderful technology has changed the nature of war, that we can now kill only the worst of the bad guys and still attain victory. That's a lie. Should we target civilians? Of course not. It's reasonable to avoid the loss of innocent civilian life. But we take it way too far now. As a result, for example, the Iraqi population has zero fear of us. If we leveled a couple towns (after giving one notice for all to vacate) where these thugs are hanging out, things would change. The population would turn on those who brought destruction down upon them. As it is now, that factor is totally off the board.
I fear this mindset is eventually gonna directly cause the death of a staggering number of Americans, and I sadly conclude that only such a cataclysm will jolt our leaders out of the fantasy world in which they currently operate.
MM
I think you're more correct than you might have meant. I'm assuming of course that I read your last sentence with sarcasm added.
Well said.
Bush's approach to North Korea has been right all along, and is right now.
F 'em. Let 'em rattle their sabers. LET CHINA HANDLE IT. If they don't, they pay the price: A fully militarized Japan with a nuclear weapons program.
Yes they are. PC and multiculturalism is gonna get us killed.
I have to respectfully disagree with this statement. We have not done what we need to do militarily because of the pressure from our gutless, insane liberals, who even though they are the minority, are still hugely influential in setting policy in this country.
Nope. We defeated one communist power, the Soviet Union and ignored the other, China... simply declaring the end of the Cold war. Who supports, Chavez, Castro, Mugabe, Jung Il, and every enemy regime in the world with weapons, technology and economic aid? China. And of course Russia is sliding back into that mode, not that they ever really left it.
I agree- it's a neck-in-neck race.
Hahahahahahaha. It IS China doing it.
I truly believe your patience (and mine) will be rewarded.
Lord help us all. I and my family intend to keep our necks firmly attached.
Great advice, Mikey. The president should just put his head down, be a good little bitch, and give the terrorists and rogue states what they want. It sure worked well for the Klinton/Karter dynamic duo. Did you forget that THEY provided all the tools to manufacture the North Korean and terrorist problems that we have now? Jeez Kim Jong and the ragheads must be reading the papers and having the absolute time of their lives. The US media is a damn disgrace!!!
Witness the liberal NYDN criticize the president for doing EXACTLY what they believed he should be doing these past 5 years and was not.
Can these people actually be unaware of how ridiculous and hypocritical they are
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
- Edmund Burke
Yep, the liberal message is always clear: SURRENDER.
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