Posted on 02/18/2003 12:50:41 PM PST by Lando Lincoln
This was in my inbox this morning, with a .NL tag, which I believe makes it of Dutch origin. There was also a blog URL, which I did not visit.
Hi,
I am sure you get lotsa e-mails about this.
Your essay on war made me sick. This attitude is going to generate
conflict. You are going to actually create more and more enemies. Not only
in the middle east, but in europe and all the intelligent parts of the
world. War on Saddam will bring more war. Not peace or anything.
Extremists will get more likely to plan terrorist attacks. The family of
murderdered people will get more extreme.
Everything you say i 'should face' and everything you call a 'fact' is
highly doubtable. To end the story with a statement that you are a mere
essayist and that this only reflects your opinion should make you remove
all the 'facts' from the story. Furthermore this statement disqualifies
anyone that disagrees with you, so it isn't really possible to discuss it
with you. This completely disqualifies your own argument. Which is a
shame.
Your cowboy mentality can only end with the decimation or utter detruction
of one 'side' in the conflict that is not yet there. To willingly take
that course is exactly as evil as making a terrorist attack. You are
levelling yourself down to the state of a terrorist.
I had hoped the US had learned something from their wars. Europe has
learnt it's lesson in ww2. The US could have learned it in Vietnam.
Apparently they are still as stupid and irrational as before. Go on,
create more suffering, more pain. You can end the problem, but you choose
to perpetuate it. Why?
It makes me sick.
Marius.
Dear Marius.
A few notes for you to consider.
We heard precisely this argument, in the same bleating tone, from people opposed to the action in Afghanistan. We heard claims stating that 10 million Afghans would be killed. We heard of the Arab Street rising in a sea of fire. We heard of a Vietnam-style quagmire. I am convinced that had I written this essay before the Afghan conflict was resolved, I would have received an identical letter from you and people like you.
The FACT of that engagement is that Afghans cheered US troops in Kabul. The FACT is that women are no longer executed in football stadiums. The FACT is that people can dance and listen to music and watch television without fear of beatings, arrest and torture. The FACT is that Afghan women, many of them doctors and lawyers, are no longer prisoners of their house, requiring male escorts so that they can glimpse daylight from the confines of their mobile shrouds of shame and isolation. The FACT is that the vaunted Arab Street, the legions of enraged Holy Warriors that would arise in the millions and bring ruin to us all, decided not to show up for the party. The FACT is that in a domination-based culture, strength is respected and conciliation seen as weakness. Those are the undeniable FACTS of Afghanistan.
I am not going to debate any further the reasons for this Iraqi action with the likes of people like you. You are sickened? Well, I and many of my countrymen are sickened also. We are sickened by your moral corruption, your ethical cowardice, your intellectual dishonesty, and your smug, fawning, diseased inability to judge right from wrong, or even make ANY decision of any weight or consequence whatsoever.
You talk about Europeans learning the lessons of WWII. Your have learned precisely NOTHING from World War II, a conflict that cost many, many AMERICAN lives in the liberation of the Netherlands, Belgium and France, more American gravestones than you could visit in the rest of your miserable, ungrateful, simpering life.
Every argument you make about us not taking action in Iraq was PRECISELY the same fearful rationalization and a craven, subservient appeasement that we watched during Hitler's ten years of taunting, intimidation and ever-growing confidence that he faced a continent of whimpering fools and cowards who did not have the sense to get out of a burning building.
Furthermore, I should add that we did INDEED learn a lesson in Vietnam, and that lesson is this: When we next commit American troops to action overseas, we had better damn well go there to WIN, and win decisively. The sooner this is accomplished, the sooner the rebuilding can begin. You may look at Japan, Germany and Afghanistan as examples of the overall benefit of this violent, horrible but necessary action, and you may look to impoverished, desperate, modern-day Vietnam as an example of the failure to do so.
A final helpful note to you gutless, whiny European crybabies: Calling us "Cowboys" is a COMPLIMENT to us, understand Marius? That icon of the American frontier represents courage, strength, self-confidence, hard work, sacrifice and ingenuity. I have yet to see legions of the world's people flocking to film after film after film glorifying the noble and magnificent lives of Dutch intellectuals discussing Marxist dogma in their dim, damp basements. Your further reference to us being "idiots" may be statistically challenged by comparing the number of American vs. Dutch Nobel-winning scientists, or patents of invention. I DARE you to do so.
Let me tell you something about life, Marius. Some people do unkind things. We sit in front of computers while people are being tortured to death all around the world. The freedom you have to throw such slander and insults at us was paid for by the blood and treasure of the US, which was the force of liberation of your country during WWII and which paid for its continuing freedom through the hard and cruel shadow conflict of the Cold War. We have come to accept your ingratitude and revisionist lies. We will NOT continue to accept your moral bankruptcy, hypocritical fatuity and self-aggrandizing posturing from preventing us from doing what is right.
Please pass that on to your readers. I'm certain they will understand not a word of it.
Bill Whittle
Yes, the fact that I state that I am an essayist means that it is impossible to disagree with me, therefor the entire argument for invasion, all sixteen pages of it, is invalid.
This is what the pro-appeasement, pro-Saddam, pro-status quo crowd calls an argument. It is the best argument they seem to be able to make. There are armies of people ready to criticize any plan, and ACTION to stop this never-ending agony of deceit, sanctions, inspections, etc. I have heard from quite a few of them. But not one, NOT ONE dares present ANYTHING LIKE a reasonable plan for what to DO about it.
And I am coming to understand why. It takes courage to advocate an unpleasant but necessary action. It takes none at all to come out strongly in favor of flowers, bunnies and kids playing in the sunshine. It shocks our opponents to think that we actually value these things too, that we want the same results of peace and freedom but have seen from hard experience that they cannot simply be WISHED into existence.
The left will rabidly attack the idea that we are going to Iraq for a moral purpose as well as a practical one. For them, for their what is left of their continuing sanity, it HAS to be about oil, money, revenge and whatever other base motivations they can hurl at us.
There is a simple, but obscure reason for this, and my experience over the last few days is leading me to see it more clearly...
We have fact, history, logic and reason on our side. We also have great power, great wealth, great ingenuity and great courage. They have none of these things. All they have is 'compassion.' They see this as trumping all else.
If an argument is made that we ALSO have compassion, that the end result of this violence will be a huge gain in freedom and happiness for the targets of their 'compassion,' then they have nothing. Nothing. All they have is the ruins of Marxism in an ever-more free and prosperous world.
And that scares the living hell out of them.
Right On!!
Beautifully said.....hit the center of the target.
If anyone wants on or off the Bill Whittle ping list, let me know!
Lando
Apparently, Mr. Whittle believes that we went to Afghanistan so that the Afghan women (some of them doctors) have a better selection in apparel and their hubbies can watch Hindu dancers on television.
Is he right? My impression was that we went there to get Usama and his buddies. In fact, we asked the Taliban to please give us Usama and his buddies and we only went in after Mr. Omar refused to do so.
And if he isn't a FReeper, he SHOULD be.
Thanks for the "pings".
Lando
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.