| To quote Mel Brooks in "History of the World. Part 1"..."It's good to be the King!"
It is probably true that we are at a moment in history when every single nation on this planet could gang up on us, and although they would deliver some mighty blows, in the end they would all be dead, and we would not. I don't say that to be boastful, I'm merely pointing out the same piece of realpolitik that the author did. There has been a pleasant fiction in Europe for several decades now, which we have indulged so as not to seem arrogant, that what they think matters. What this author is facing, and we might even say 'admitting to,' is that Europe's importance in these matters is a pleasant fiction, and that at the end of the day, the now almost single-minded focus of the United States to rid the world of people who would come over here and kill thousands of our people, is what will decide what happens next. It is the only thing that will decide what happens next. The long snouts at the New York Times will surely join with their European brethren in expressing horror that we would use our vast military might to go anywhere, to break anything, to bomb aside all opposition if necessary, to rid the Earth of these terrorists. But that is what we are going to do. And the author is right that there's not one damned thing that anybody else can do about it. Those who wish may come along as allies. If at some point they get cold feet and don't want to be allies anymore, that's fine; we didn't need them anyway. We were giving them an opportunity to make their loyalties known. We'll happily move the drop-outs to the 'no' pile, and move on. What we won't do is let them tell us what we're going to do about people coming over here and blowing things up. At this point, with us, it's "lead, follow, or get out of the way." The author is to be applauded for facing that reality. Too many of them over there are still in Fantasyland on this subject. |
It's obvious that this author is appalled by what he sees, but I give him credit for understanding it, and for understanding its implications.