the other day someone pointed to an article well worth reading. Couple of excerpts:
But we Israelis have learned from our experience that matters are more complicated. One need not be racist or Islamophobic to be concerned about the mosque. For life in our region has taught us that the first necessary step to defending yourself is acknowledging that someone else is out to destroy you.
...
THE UNITED States’ future is under attack, but Americans resist admitting it. President Barack Obama has sent 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, but he has also said that he intends to pull them out by July. Can we imagine FDR declaring war on Germany, but then adding that the war had to be over in a year, or in two? It would have been laughable. And America would have lost. The US has to decide – is it committed to destroying those who wish it ill, or is it willing to be destroyed by them? Those, sadly, are its only two alternatives.
When my parents were teenagers, they watched as evil took hold of Europe. But then they saw America turn itself into an unprecedented, enormous military machine. For America’s leaders understood that if the Nazis won, the world as we knew it would be over; we could either destroy Nazism, or have no reason to go on.
But when my children were teenagers, a different evil took root across their eastern horizon. This time, though, the world has feigned impotence.
...
We, like Americans, would much prefer that our children went to college at 18, and not to years of military service. But we’ve learned that anything short of absolute clear-sightedness and honesty – coupled with extraordinary sacrifice – could destroy us.
The same is true for America. The truly important question that the “Islamophobia” accusation raises is not what will transpire with a proposed building, but what will happen with a worldview.
It still remains to be seen if America will do what it must if it is to guarantee the survival of the very values it is now debating. America can remain the “land of the free,” but only if it is also the “home of the brave.”
Made me think of a argument I got into on Facebook that started when a guy mentioned how disgusted he was by people wearing '9/11: Never Forget' shirts. "Oh yeah," I said, "Disgusting that these people won't forget a massive terror attack." Which led on to the Hamasque, which finally led to the lady who'd started the thing accusing me of bigotry and spreading conspiracy theories and 'accusing all muslims in America of being terrorists'. Bigotry because I'd pointed out a lot of people really didn't want a mosque built at that spot; conspiracy theory because I'd pointed out some very shady things in the imam's past; and apparently just doing those two things meant I was accusing all Muslims of being terrorists... Just amazing from someone I'd though of as somewhat immune to that kind of PC bullshit.
You know, an awful lot of people jost do not remember, or do not really conceive, what we can do when pushed to the wall. The stuff above reminded me of something I'd once read from Winston Churchill right after Pearl Harbor:
In two or three minutes Mr. Roosevelt came through. "Mr. President, what's this about Japan? "It's quite true," he replied. "They have attacked us at Pearl Harbor. We are all in the same boat now."
No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. I could not foretell the course of events. I do not pretend to have measured accurately the martial might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all!
Yes, after Dunkirk; after the fall of France; after the horrible episode of Oran; after the threat of invasion, when, apart from the Air and the Navy, we were an almost unarmed people; after the deadly struggle of the U-boat war - the first Battle of the Atlantic, gained by a hand's-breath; after seventeen months of lonely fighting and nineteen months of my responsibility in dire stress. We had won the war. England would live; Britain would live; the Commonwealth of Nations and the Empire would live.
How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care. Once again in our long Island history we should emerge, however mauled or mutilated, safe and victorious. We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end. We might not even have to die as individuals. Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder.
And, in the piece I originally read, he said that that night he slept soundly for the first time in months. Because he knew exactly what we were capable of doing when we decided it had to be done. One of the real risks of the PC bullshit is that it keeps pushing things back, keeps hard action from being taken when it would take something relatively small; which means when the trigger event occurs not only will much greater action be needed, but... when the time comes, just what will we do? I think we've been so restrained so long that the enemy either doesn't believe ANYTHING will make us truly go to war, or doesn't believe what we're capable of.
I'm not looking forward to the world being reminded.
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