And yet that is effectively what we ended up doing, because our leaders underestimated the threat from the "militant, radical" Japanese who led the rest.
As Jefferson noted, mankind are more disposed to suffer (tolerate) evils than to correct matters.
So what are we to expect from the one billion muslims who are not in charge of anything, and who are prepared to go along with militant and radical muslims, at the very least? How will we deal with them later? Will we bomb their cities without mercy, because we prefer to feel fair and merciful today?
Unfortunately, there are more of them than there were of Japanese, and our weapons are far more powerful. Our leaders are inferior. Our people are less educated and more indoctrinated. The day will come when we'll have to incinerate hundreds of millions of non-militant muslims, but it will be too little and too late.
Let it also be stipulated that we as a people have something else in common with the billion or so who are not in charge of anything, and who are prepared to go along with militant and radical leaders. The terrible difference is that we know exactly where our leaders sit. In fact, we send them money in a regular and timely fashion. Oh, they usually allow us to say whatever we please, but that's only because they are certain we are all talk. I'm certain of it too. When has a crowd of Americans gathered outside Congress and demanded the surrender of a legislator? Or outside the White House? The IRS? The Pentagon? Imagine if those places had been as well stocked with Japanese in 1941, as our government is today with muslims. (Can't imagine it? No, because it never would have been tolerated in the first place. Now, that tolerance the sweetest of virtues, and we can never stuff enough Trojans in the transparent horse.)
Talk won't fix this, it'll just delay the inevitable and add a few hundred million to the death toll. Or as many as seven billion.
Your post really got to me. You are playing chess with this whole idea.
Peaceful, good Muslims right now are either lazy or scared to speak up about what is all around them. Muslims who agree with the jihadis. They are in every mosque.* The good ones are educating their kids, working (as your coworkers), caring for their elderly, living their normal American lives. And when they see the pro ISIS discussions going on in their mosque, they stay away. They ignore the nephew at the family table who espouses this stuff. They think they won’t make waves, they think they won’t get into trouble this way.
But the longer they stay quiet, the worse their fellow Muslims who seek this violence-born caliphate become.
And you nailed it: in the end, when civilization (and I hope the USA is still civilized when this happens) is hit just hard enough, MILLIONS OF THESE QUIET, INNOCENT MUSLIMS AND THEIR BABIES WILL BE KILLED.
Therefore, it behooves good Muslims RIGHT NOW to stand up and denounce their violent brethren. NOW. There isn’t going to be another chance. Islam is winning now, but we do have better weapons and one day we will need to use them.
Thank you for your post.
*after 9/11 I used to ask Muslim cabbies about their mosques, pleasant conversations, and always wove delicately in there a half question about “...but there are some people in your mosque who do support al Qaeda, right?” 100% of the time, every last guy, said that yes, of course there were people like that at his mosque, but HE didn’t agree with them or have anything to do with them. SYMPATHIZERS ARE IN EVERY MOSQUE.