Posted on 08/17/2006 8:32:22 AM PDT by steel_resolve
For half a century, the Cold War and the fight against communism had us in its grip. But despite the persistent threat of nuclear war with the Soviet bloc, the sense of fear wasn't nearly as pervasive and relentless as it is now with the war on terrorism.
Even as children performed "duck and cover" drills at school and the world was catching its breath after the Cuban Missile Crisis, people sat in movie theatres laughing at actor Slim Pickens' character riding the H-bomb down to global destruction in Stanley Kubrick's movie, Dr. Strangelove.
Our enemy today isn't big on comedy, and can be as hypersensitive as an Oprah show audience. Some Danish cartoonists tried to lighten things up, but now they're in hiding and fearing for their lives.
Here are some other reasons the war on terrorism is scarier than the Cold War:
* During the communist threat, we could take comfort in the fact that authorities had a pretty good idea where the communists were: Russia (and Hollywood). In this new war, the threat comes from Muslim extremists. So naturally, our authorities are focused on confiscating prune juice from little old ladies at airport security. That would be great if there was any evidence the Golden Girls were plotting to blow up planes.
* We knew we won the Cold War when Russia's economy collapsed along with the Berlin Wall. Today, we can't measure success because the media only gives us two numbers in the daily play-by-play: Western "military" deaths and Mideastern "civilian" deaths. One has to assume "civilians," includes "terrorist scumbags" because I don't see that team anywhere else on the media scoreboard.
* During the Cold War, you didn't have to take the guy wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt on the subway seriously. The people worth worrying about typically wore uniforms and at least had some sense of decorum. In the terror war, it's tough to distinguish a flake from a threat.
* Consider British terror suspect Donald Stewart-Whyte, a 21-year old Muslim convert described by his ex-girlfriend as someone who "used to smoke 20 a day, usually roll-ups. And he liked a bit of weed and loved drinking Stella." In the Cold War era, brain cells are about the only things a kid like this would have destroyed. Now a Daily Telegraph report describes British universities as prime recruiting grounds for terrorists. I guess being a communist at university isn't original enough anymore.
* U.S. President John F. Kennedy wasn't contemplating the communist threat in Cuba and thinking, "It's hot down there. I wonder if it's hotter in Havana than it was a thousand years ago?" Today's liberals say there's no connection between 9/11 and Iraq, but they have no problem connecting global annihilation to the guy who drives his SUV to work every day. If liberals were in a plane blown up by Muslim radicals, I wonder if their last thought would be, "Oh no! All this burning jet fuel is releasing an excess of aromatic hydrocarbons into the earth's atmosphere!"
Despite all the reasons for white-knuckling this war, for our sanity's sake, we can always make like the erratic driver who was recently pulled over by my police officer friend. Pointing to the steering wheel, he shrugged, "I can't control that thing!" -- then got right back on the road and kept on going.
Let's not forget another scary aspect to this war. THE LEFT-WING APPEASERS!
First thought...
We faced (and still face) a larger number of domestic Communists and sympathizers than we do domestic militant Islamic supremacists.
However we have been told that this political movement is only a smaller percent of all muslims worldwide (10% of 1.2 billion is 120,000,000 violent extremists) so while domestically we may not have a large fifth column as we did in the Cold War, we face an endless horde of suicidal soldiers who have no qualms about striking at civilian rather than military or political targets.
We also faced less of a threat of direct violent action from the Communists than we did of internal institutional takeover by brainpoisoned useful idiots.
The only limitations on the use of force by our enemies are the limitations of the force that they can employ. They are limited by their abilities to bring force to bear, but they have no limitations as to how much force they'd be willing to use.
We, on the other hand, have many limitations on the level of force we're willing to use. Most of these limitations are arbitrary and senseless, and some are wise and necessary.
In short, the enemy would destroy the world and consider it a victory. We not only fight to preserve the world, but to preserve those who consider us their enemy. For us, victory is much harder to define, except that our enemies be suppressed and reduced to the least measures of force available to carry on their war with us.
In the late 1960s and mid 1970s you did because there were bomb throwing radicals as there were in the 1920s.
Kerry's "antiVietnam War" group plotted the assassination of elected members of Congress who did not vote the right way.
But terrorism was the exception, not the norm, among communists in the US.
There was no connection between Germany and Pearl Harbor either but that didn't stop us from entering the war with the Allies.
A syndicated columnist appearing in my local paper tried to argue this morning that the "war on terrorism" wasn't nearly as scary as the cold war, nor were the terrorists anywhere NEAR as bad as Hitler.
This article is a good refutation of his column. I wish I could remember his name....
My reason for it being scarier is it's happening now.
They're arrogant enough to believe that once democracy is defeated their day'll come. Of course they were wrong before but that won't stop them. With over 100 million deaths attributed to their socialist system what's a few more billion in their quest?
Negotiations are impossible. There is no negotiation with anybody who is determined to kill you, even if he has to die in the attempt.
Rabid dogs are shot. There is no cure for rabies.
Communists are at least semi-rational. Dead is no way to impose your ideals upon the world.
What I can say about this war is it is scary for the lunacy of the enemy and because of our fear of what they will force us to become in order to win. It won't be pretty if they get any nukes and use them. We don't want to do the things that we did in WW2 to win--destroy entire countries from the air, subjugate their countries, bring them to the point of complete surrender to our will. But it may come to that.
Oh, I know this one....um, because we are going to lose this time?
Here's a quiz: if one group of people wants to fight to the death for their beliefs, and another doesn't even know what it believes, what will happen?
It _must_ "come to that", for there is almost certainly no other possible way to defeat them.
Insofar as The West is concerned, Islam is like the comment made to the protagonist in the original "Terminator" film. She is told by someone who has come (from the future) to protect her, "He won't stop! He doesn't care! He just keeps coming at you! He doesn't let up!"
And so, Islam will keep attacking The West (and ALL infidels) until it reaches its only goal: world conquest, with Islam triumphant über alles.
There can be no compromise with Islam. There are no compromises _within_ Islam, how can one expect them to accept the same outside their faith?
There can be no truce with Islam. They will use the "truce" to rearm, and then attack.
There can be no negotiations with Islam. Islamics only "negotiate" when they are weak, to buy time to become stronger. Then they will attack you again.
There can be no peace with Islam. Their only "peace" is the entire world under their thumb.
Insofar as The West is concerned, there can be only one of two possible outcomes with Islam:
1. They win, and we (and our way of life) perish.
2. We win, and Islam no longer exists on the Earth.
(I should say there might be a _third_ course, but that would involve the invasion, conquest, and containment of all Islamic nations - which may in fact be required ANYway in order to achieve outcome #2).
Frankly, as The West stands today, it is not prepared either militarily or morally for the conflict ahead. This may change, but it will almost certainly require an attack upon our soil of catastrophic dimensions.
If anyone of Free Republic doubts what I have just written, witness what is happening in Western Europe today. The Euro-Christians are crumbling, morally and demographically, against a burgeoning and militant Islamic surge. Without a conflagration of blood, "Western Europe" will be gone by the end of the century, replaced by Eurabia.
Could it happen here? Well, not in my time (I'm getting older), but yes, I do believe it _could_ happen. I hope that it doesn't.
Scarier than the Cold War? Indeed.
- John
Hugh Hewitt often plays the audio of the last line of this dialogue
from Die Hard 3...when discussing why it's insane to let Democrats/liberals
run national security:
John McClane: I'll tell you what your problem is, you don't like me because you're a racist!
Zeus: What?
John McClane: You're a racist! You don't like me because I'm white!
Zeus: I don't like you because you're going to get me *killed*!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112864/quotes
Lets not forget the New York Times. There's almost as many communists there than in the entire township of Hollywierd.
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