Historical Perspective very long.....

[DKW 86 7,726]

Written by Raymond S. Kraft

SOME OF YOU ARE NOT OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER THAT NEARLY EVERY FAMILY IN

AMERICA WAS GROSSLY AFFECTED BY WW II . MOST OF YOU DON'T REMEMBER THE

RATIONING OF MEAT, SHOES, GASOLINE, AND SUGAR. NO TIRES FOR OUR AUTOMOBILES,

AND A SPEED LIMIT OF 35 MILES AN HOUR ON THE ROAD, NOT TO MENTION, NO NEW

AUTOMOBILES. READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT HOW WE WOULD REACT TO BEING TAKEN

OVER BY FOREIGN POWERS IN 2008.

Historical Significance for today's world:

Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and

hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat. The Nazis had sunk

more than 400 British ships in their convoys between England and America

taking food and war materials

At that time the US was in an isolationist, pacifist mood, and most

Americans wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian war

Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 , and in outrage Congress

unanimously declared war on Japan , and the following day on Germany , who

had not yet attacked us . It was a dicey thing . We had few allies

France was not an ally, as the Vichy government of France quickly aligned

itself with its German occupiers . Germany was certainly not an ally, as

Hitler was intent on setting up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe . Japan was

not an ally, as it was well on its way to owning and controlling all of Asia.

Together, Japan and Germany had long-range plans of invading Canada and

Mexico , as launching pads to get into the United States over our northern

and southern borders, after they finished gaining control of Asia and Europe.

America 's only allies then were England , Ireland , Scotland , Canada ,

Australia, and Russia . That was about it All of Europe, from Norway to

Italy (except Russia in the East) was already under the Nazi heel .

The US was certainly not prepared for war. The US had drastically

downgraded most of its military forces after WW I because of the depression,

so that at the outbreak of WW II, Army units were training with broomsticks

because they didn't have guns, and cars with "tank" painted on the doors

because they didn't have real tanks A huge chunk of our Navy had just been

sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor.

Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600

million in gold bullion in the Bank of England (that was actually the

property of Belgium ) given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when

Belgium was overrun by Hitler (a little known fact).

Actually, Belgium surrendered on one day, because it was unable to oppose

the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next

day just to prove they could

Britain had already been holding out for two years in the face of

staggering

losses and the near decimation of its Royal Air Force in the Battle of

Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler

made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that

could be dealt with later. Hitler, first turned his attention to Russia, in

the late summer of 1940 at a time when England was on the verge of

collapse.

Ironically, Russia saved America 's butt by putting up a desperate fight for

two years, until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany.

Russia lost something like 24,000,000 people in the sieges of Stalingrad and

Moscow alone . . 90% of them from cold and starvation, mostly civilians, but

also more than a 1,000,000 soldiers.

Had Russia surrendered, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire war

effort against the Brits, then America . If that had happened, the Nazis

could possibly have won the war.

All of this has been brought out to illustrate that turning points in

history are often dicey things. Now, we find ourselves at another one of

those key moments in history.

There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants, and

may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical

weapons, almost anywhere in the world .

The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs -- they

believe that Islam, a radically conservative form of Wahhabi Islam, should

own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world. To them

all who do not bow to their will of thinking should be killed, enslaved, or

subjugated . They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel , and purge

the world of Jews . This is their mantra . (goal)

There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East -- for the most part not

a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its

Reformation, but it is not yet known which side will win -- the Inquisitors,

or the Reformationists.

If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the

Middle East, the OPEC oil, and the US , European, and Asian economies.

The techno-industrial economies will be at the mercy of OPEC -- not an OPEC

dominated by the educated, rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated

by the Jihadis. Do you want gas in your car? Do you want heating oil next

winter? Do you want the dollar to be worth anything? You had better hope

the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins.

If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe

that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, live in peace with the

rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the

troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away. A moderate and

prosperous Middle East will emerge.

We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the

Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda and the Islamic

terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. We can't do it everywhere

at once. We have created a focal point for the battle at a time and place

of our choosing . . . . . . . . in Iraq . Not in New York , not in London,

or Paris or Berlin , but in Iraq , where we are doing two important things.

(1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved

in the 9/11 terrorist attack or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been

actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades Saddam is a

terrorist! Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction, responsible

for the deaths of probably more than a 1,000,000 Iraqis and 2,000,000

Iranians .

(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic

terrorism in Iraq . We have focused the battle. We are killing bad people

and the ones we get there we won't have to get here. We also have a good

shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq , which will be a catalyst for

democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an outpost for a

stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it

is needed .

WW II, the war with the Japanese and German Nazis, really began with a

whimper" in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor . It began with the

Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for fourteen years before the US

joined it. It officially ended in 1945 -- a 17 year war -- and was followed

by another decade of US occupation in Germany and Japan to get those

countries reconstructed and running on their own a gain . . a 27 year war.

WW II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year's

GDP -- adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars. WW II

cost America more than 400,000 soldiers killed in action, and nearly 100,000

still missing in action.

The Iraq war has, so far, cost the United States about $160,000,000,000,

which is roughly what the 9/11 terrorist attack cost New York. It has also

cost about 3,000 American lives, which is roughly equivilant to lives that

the Jihad killed (within the United States ) in the 9/11 terrorist attack.

The cost of not fighting and winning WW II would have been unimaginably

greater -- a world dominated by Japanese Imperialism and German Nazism .

This is not a 60-Minutes TV show, or a 2-hour movie in which everything

comes out okay . The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain,

and sometimes bloody and ugly. It always has been, and probably always will

be.

The bottom line is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we

defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away if we ignore it.

If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq , then we have

an ally, like England , in the Middle East, a platform, from which we can

work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East . The history of the

world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization,

and the barbarians clamoring at the gates to conquer the world.

The Iraq War is merely another battle in this ancient and never ending war.

Now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear

weapons. Unless some body prevents them from getting them.

We have four options:

1 . We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.

2 . We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may

be as early as next year, if Iran 's progress on nuclear weapons is what

Iran claims it is).

3 . We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle

East now; in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in

America .

OR

4 . We can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is

more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated

France and Germany and possibly most of the rest of Europe . It will, of

course, be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier.

If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or

grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the

Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.

The history of the world is the history of civilization clashes, cultural

clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and

civilization should be like, and the most determined always win.

Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win . The pacifists

always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.

Remember, perspective is every thing, and America 's schools teach too

little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American

mind.

The Cold War lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down

in 1989; forty-two years!

Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from

1870 to 1945 fighting Germany !

World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year occupation, and

the US still has troops in Germany and Japan . World War II resulted in the

death of more than 50,000,000 people, maybe more than 100,000,000 people,

depending on which estimates you accept.

The US has taken more than 3,000 killed in action in Iraq .. The US took

more than 4,000 killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944 , the first

day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism.

In WW II the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week -- for four years. Most of the

individual battles of WW II lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has

done so far

The stakes are at least as high . . A world dominated by representative

governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms . . or a

world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under

the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law) .

It's difficult to understand why the average American does not grasp this.

They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently

not for Iraqis.

"Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate here in America , where it's

safe. Why don't we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran , Syria , Iraq , Sudan, North Korea,

in the places that really need peace activism the most? I'll tell you why! They would be killed!

The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights,

democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc . , but if the Jihad wins,

wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights,

democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc.

Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of

their own worst enemy!

Raymond S . Kraft is a writer living in Northern California that has

studied

the Middle Eastern culture and religion

Prediction Number One: Tex quotes the entire article for no particular reason then adds a one line retort that is in the form of a question that will have almost no bearing on the discussion...

[TigerHeat 9]

We have been fighting this war since about 500 B.C. This is just the latest campaign against slavery from the middle east. they changed the name of the god they serve, but oppression, slavery, and poverty are the goals. Then they had gold and spices to finance their domination....today it's oil. Nothing new, other than we are too stupid to see it coming. The modern version of the Alexander the Great campaign is underway.....hopefully this will lead to 500 years or so of relative weakness for the other side.

[TexasTiger 13,556]

We have been fighting this war since about 500 B.C. This is just the latest campaign against slavery from the middle east. they changed the name of the god they serve, but oppression, slavery, and poverty are the goals. Then they had gold and spices to finance their domination....today it's oil. Nothing new, other than we are too stupid to see it coming. The modern version of the Alexander the Great campaign is underway.....hopefully this will lead to 500 years or so of relative weakness for the other side.

Dubya the Great!!!

[TigerHeat 9]

We have been fighting this war since about 500 B.C. This is just the latest campaign against slavery from the middle east. they changed the name of the god they serve, but oppression, slavery, and poverty are the goals. Then they had gold and spices to finance their domination....today it's oil. Nothing new, other than we are too stupid to see it coming. The modern version of the Alexander the Great campaign is underway.....hopefully this will lead to 500 years or so of relative weakness for the other side.

Dubya the Great!!!

I was referring to the campaign, and not to the president. Although, I'll bet history will remember W. in a better light than your hero Slick Willie. At least W. knows whose side he should be on....

[TexasTiger 13,556]

We have been fighting this war since about 500 B.C. This is just the latest campaign against slavery from the middle east. they changed the name of the god they serve, but oppression, slavery, and poverty are the goals. Then they had gold and spices to finance their domination....today it's oil. Nothing new, other than we are too stupid to see it coming. The modern version of the Alexander the Great campaign is underway.....hopefully this will lead to 500 years or so of relative weakness for the other side.

Dubya the Great!!!

I was referring to the campaign, and not to the president. Although, I'll bet history will remember W. in a better light than your hero Slick Willie. At least W. knows whose side he should be on....

How much money you got?

[CCTAU 3,369]

You were wrong David, he changed to focus alltogether.

No sense in discussing it, this guy has definitely bought into the fear.

[TigerHeat 9]

We have been fighting this war since about 500 B.C. This is just the latest campaign against slavery from the middle east. they changed the name of the god they serve, but oppression, slavery, and poverty are the goals. Then they had gold and spices to finance their domination....today it's oil. Nothing new, other than we are too stupid to see it coming. The modern version of the Alexander the Great campaign is underway.....hopefully this will lead to 500 years or so of relative weakness for the other side.

Dubya the Great!!!

Do you actually have any argument or alternative plan? No? Oh, you must be a modern liberal. Your ideological forbears are spinning in their graves at your collective weakness and inability to act.

[TexasTiger 13,556]

We have been fighting this war since about 500 B.C. This is just the latest campaign against slavery from the middle east. they changed the name of the god they serve, but oppression, slavery, and poverty are the goals. Then they had gold and spices to finance their domination....today it's oil. Nothing new, other than we are too stupid to see it coming. The modern version of the Alexander the Great campaign is underway.....hopefully this will lead to 500 years or so of relative weakness for the other side.

Dubya the Great!!!

Do you actually have any argument or alternative plan? No? Oh, you must be a modern liberal. Your ideological forbears are spinning in their graves at your collective weakness and inability to act.

Is there a plan that mine would be an alternate to?

[DKW 86 7,726]

We have been fighting this war since about 500 B.C. This is just the latest campaign against slavery from the middle east. they changed the name of the god they serve, but oppression, slavery, and poverty are the goals. Then they had gold and spices to finance their domination....today it's oil. Nothing new, other than we are too stupid to see it coming. The modern version of the Alexander the Great campaign is underway.....hopefully this will lead to 500 years or so of relative weakness for the other side.

Dubya the Great!!!

Do you actually have any argument or alternative plan? No? Oh, you must be a modern liberal. Your ideological forbears are spinning in their graves at your collective weakness and inability to act.

Is there a plan that mine would be an alternate to?

Prediction Number One: Tex quotes the entire article for no particular reason then adds a one line retort that is in the form of a question that will have almost no bearing on the discussion...

I knew he could not last long...

Too easy...

[TexasTiger 13,556]

We have been fighting this war since about 500 B.C. This is just the latest campaign against slavery from the middle east. they changed the name of the god they serve, but oppression, slavery, and poverty are the goals. Then they had gold and spices to finance their domination....today it's oil. Nothing new, other than we are too stupid to see it coming. The modern version of the Alexander the Great campaign is underway.....hopefully this will lead to 500 years or so of relative weakness for the other side.

Dubya the Great!!!

Do you actually have any argument or alternative plan? No? Oh, you must be a modern liberal. Your ideological forbears are spinning in their graves at your collective weakness and inability to act.

Is there a plan that mine would be an alternate to?

Prediction Number One: Tex quotes the entire article for no particular reason then adds a one line retort that is in the form of a question that will have almost no bearing on the discussion...

I knew he could not last long...

Too easy...

As usual, there's not a substantive, debate provoking post on this thread to respond to.

[DKW 86 7,726]

We have been fighting this war since about 500 B.C. This is just the latest campaign against slavery from the middle east. they changed the name of the god they serve, but oppression, slavery, and poverty are the goals. Then they had gold and spices to finance their domination....today it's oil. Nothing new, other than we are too stupid to see it coming. The modern version of the Alexander the Great campaign is underway.....hopefully this will lead to 500 years or so of relative weakness for the other side.

Dubya the Great!!!

Do you actually have any argument or alternative plan? No? Oh, you must be a modern liberal. Your ideological forbears are spinning in their graves at your collective weakness and inability to act.

Is there a plan that mine would be an alternate to?

Prediction Number One: Tex quotes the entire article for no particular reason then adds a one line retort that is in the form of a question that will have almost no bearing on the discussion...

I knew he could not last long...

Too easy...

As usual, there's not a substantive, debate provoking post on this thread to respond to.

Tex, it was the first one, the one YOU ignored...