iraqwar

History We May Have Forgotten

by Raymond Kraft

• THIS IS HISTORY THAT HAS BEEN LEFT OUT OF OUR TEXTBOOKS.

• MOST OF US ARE NOT OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER THAT NEARLY EVERY FAMILY IN

• AMERICA WAS GROSSLY AFFECTED BY WWII.

• MOST OF US 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. NOT TO MENTION, NO NEW AUTOMOBILES.

• READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT HOW WE WOULD REACT TO BEING TAKEN OVER BY

  FOREIGNERS IN 2007.

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

  hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk more

  than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England and

  America for 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,

  which 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.

  America was certainly not prepared for war. America had drastically

  downgraded most of its military forces after W.W.I and throughout the

  depression, so that at the outbreak of WW2, 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. And 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 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, and first turning his attention to Russia, at

  a time when England was on the verge of collapse, in the late summer of1940.

  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 million 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. And the Nazis could possibly have

  won the war.

All of this is to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey

  things. And 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. And that 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.

  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 known yet which 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. You want gas in your car? You want heating oil next

  winter?

  You want the dollar to be worth anything? You 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, and 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, and

  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. And 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 9/11 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, who is responsible for the deaths of

  probably more than a million Iraqis and two million 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.

  World War II, the war with the German and Japanese 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

  America 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 again ... a 27 year war.

  World War II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a

  full year's GDP -- adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion

  dollars. W.W.II cost America more than 400,000 killed in action, and nearly

  100,000 still missing in action.

  The Iraq war has, so far, cost the US about $160 billion,which is roughly

  what 9/11 cost New York. It has also cost about 2,200 American lives,

  which is roughly 2/3 of the 3,000 lives that the Jihad snuffed on 9/11. But the

  cost of not fighting and winning W.W.II would have been unimaginably

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

  This is not 60 minute TV shows, and 2 hour movies in which everything

  comes out okay.

The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain, and sometimes

  bloody and ugly. 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 "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. The Iraq war is merely another battle

  in this ancient and never ending war. And now, for the first time ever, the

  barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons. Unless somebody prevents

  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.

  4. Or, 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 maybe 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 civilizational 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 million people, maybe more than 100 million people,

depending on which estimates you accept.

  The US has taken more than 2,000 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 W.W.II the US

  averaged 2,000 KIA a week -- for four years. Most of the individual

  battles of W.W.II lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.

  But 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 American left 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?

  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. Please

consider passing along copies of this article to students in high school, college

and university as it contains information about the American past that is

very meaningful today -- history about America that very likely is completely

unknown by them (and their instructors, too). By being denied the facts

of our history, they are at a decided disadvantage when it comes to

reasoning and thinking through the issues of today. They are prime targets for

>> misinformation campaigns beamed at enlisting them in causes and bliefs

  that are special interest agenda driven.