Posted on 01/22/2010 8:01:12 AM PST by nuconvert
Into the ninth year since the menace of Islamism spilled out well beyond the borders of the Arab-Muslim world, the West and the U.S. in particular continue to be incoherent about how to respond.
To get a sense of this incoherence in dealing with Islamism effectively, we need to recall how the west, led by the U.S., dealt with a far greater existential challenge from the Bolshevik-Communist threat of the Soviet Union armed with nuclear might.
Continent in ruins
At the end of the war against Hitler’s Germany, Europe lay in smouldering ruins, its population terrorized, broken and displaced. The war against Japan in Asia and the Pacific ended with A-bombs and complemented the devastation in Europe. The human toll of the war is estimated to have been more than 70 million dead.
The war that began with Hitler’s army invading Poland ended with Stalin’s army taking Berlin and dividing Europe in half. The spectre of Bolshevik-Communism that had loomed over Europe since 1917 became real in 1945 as the eastern half of the continent traded one form of totalitarian tyranny for another.
But for the generation of Americans, Canadians, Brits and others — now remembered rightly as the greatest generation — and their leaders, however exhausted by the ordeal of 1939-45, the task of holding the line against tyranny had to be met in defence of freedom, and it was met.
(Excerpt) Read more at torontosun.com ...
The most important lesson of history is that people never learn from history.
We are now cursed with “leaders” who consider history to be mostly irrelevant.
"Nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
The author seems to think containment of Communism was adopted quickly and without dissent by Western nations.
I disagree. It was vehemently opposed by liberals, who thought it was being mean to the commies, and by conservatives who thought we should counter-attack and free the enslaved countries. Also by isolationists who thought if we ignored the communist threat it would go away.
In hindsight, it appears difficult to argue that containment, allowing communism to eventually collapse from its own internal contradictions, was the best way to deal with a nuclear-armed enemy.
But it certainly wasn’t a unanimous opinion at the time.
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