Is the past THAT relevant?
The new tempest in a tea cup is that "new information" has surfaced that G.W. Bush may have skipped duty in the Texas Air National Guard in the mid-1970's. The New York Times, 60 Minutes, and most of the morning talk shows have been all abuzz over this revelation, and quite frankly, they would be. After all, they have a candidate to get elected.
So far this morning, I have seen at least 8 (count 'em!) refutations of the "new information". They run the gamut from provable forgeries to pointing out that the reporters who brought them to us have taken things out of context, to other documents not mentioned that contradict what these "new documents" presume to tell us.
All of it bullshit.
The past is an issue solely because John Kerry made it so. He did this because he had nothing else to offer Americans except four months in the Mekong Delta out of his 60 or so years. Four months of RELUCTANT service do not make a resume. It has been documented that Kerry, far from his claims of having "volunteered", sought five draft deferments before he finally bowed to the inevitable. While he put his life at risk for four months, G.W. did so for FIVE YEARS, flying fighter jets that were notoriously dangerous, unstable and little more than flying gas cans.
His attempt to bring relevancy to the past was intended to deflect criticism and serve as an interesting backdrop to an otherwise very uninteresting man. Hence, his inablility to drop the subject.
What Mr. Kerry, and those who surround him, fail to grasp is this: Americans don't necessarily care who wore the uniform (after all, Bill Clinton got elected twice) when it comes to selecting their leaders. Americans dwell in the here-and-now and in the future. It's one of the hallmarks of Amerian society that while we regard the past as a useful tool to examine the present, we very often have our eyes fixed on the tomorrow. The past becomes a useful too then too --- it's called experience.
Mr. Bush may not have been anywhere near Vietnam, but that is not the point -- there were many people in the military in that era that never got close to Vietnam (in Japan, Germany, the Philipines, Thailand, here in the United States and fifty other places), and we would not automatically consider them "unpatriotic" nor would we accuse them of "shirking their duty".
We should stop arguing about Vietnam and assigning varying levels of patriotism by subdividing all of the brave men and women who put on the uniform into "those that did" and "those that didn't". It's unfair, and in the end, it's ridiculous. There were many, I'm sure, spoiling for a chance to go to Vietnam and they never got there, and there were many who wouldn't touch Vietnam with a 10 foot pole and were happy to stay away from it. It doesn't mean they have no right to be President of the United States or have a greater or lesser claim to being patriotic Americans.
The point(s), simply is (are) this: who is stepping forward to lead NOW and who do we believe would be a better leader TOMORROW? Is it someone stuck in yesterday to the point where he cannot talk about anything else, or will it be someone who thinks like the rest of us do, and who looks forward?
If you doubt me, ask yourself this question: do you care about Purple Hearts or do you care about your home, family and sanity? Do you care about the events of 35 years ago or do you care about making your next mortgage payment? Do you pine for the days of a divided country and a free-falling society, or do you believe that Americans, despite their differences, can all be on the same page when they need to be? These are the important questions in this, or any, election. Perhas if Senator Kerry paid more attention to people (other than himself), he might realize this.
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Three Years Later --- Part II...
In the last three years, the United States has been attacked on various fronts. We are attacked diplomatically by "allied" nations who "feel our pain", but who despise us nonetheless. We are attacked morally and spiritually by holier-than-thou renegades who believe that someone who watches a J-Lo on TV cannot compare, in terms of pious righteousness, with someone willing to blow up an Israeli day care center. We are attacked physically by craven cowards, who revel in their "warrior tradition" and who could never beat us in a straight-up fight, and thus, resort to the tactics of the common street mugger – lurk in the shadows, attack from behind and then run like hell. Often, when events like this occur, there is a battalion of special people who come out of the woodwork to explain the "why" to us. Usually, these are other Americans who secretly hate their own country and who often bathe in a self-created aura of guilt and pretense which causes them to actually be embarrassed to be Americans.
This battalion, which I refer to as the "Flapping Rectums", will be perfectly willing to give you a free symposium on why the rest of the world hates us. These people will always give one (and usually more) of the following excuses for mass murder, surmising that Americans are: greedy, mean, thoughtless, ignorant, arrogant, dismissive, disinterested, intrusive, imperialistic, spoiled, impious, impetuous, bumbling, crude, violent, indifferent, stubborn, selfish, lazy, wealthy, gluttonous, unchaste, uncivilized, unkempt, self-absorbed, obnoxious, disagreeable, Sneezy, Doc and Dopey. The gist of their argument is always a variation on the same theme, that Americans do not understand the rest of the world, and that if we made an effort to do so, all would be champagne and roses.
This, of course, is plain, unadulterated psychobabble-driven, horse manure. However, since most of the Flapping Rectums wouldn’t have the sense to pour piss out of a boot (with instructions on the heel) this is unsurprising. The Flapping Rectums don’t live in the same world that normal folks do, or at least, they don’t believe they do.
A Flapping Rectum will go to great lengths, and shed tears while doing it, explaining to you how the United States is still the most racist country on the planet. They forget 160 years of American history, Civil War, Civil Rights Acts, Voting Acts, affirmative action and quota systems. They forget that Jim Crow died the ghastly death it deserved in the 1960’s. They overlook the fact that blacks are not being strung up from trees and churches systematically firebombed anymore. They fail to see that when the Klan does manage to get permission to hold some sort of demonstration that the counter-demonstration is usually larger, more diverse, and generally more violent than those in the sheets. They ignore the numbers of blacks in business, academia, science and law. They believe that racism cannot be assumed to be eliminated unless it is blacks that own everything and whites that pick cotton by hand in the Southern sun. A Flapping Rectum is disconnected with reality in such a way that makes them impervious to facts or provable demonstration. They believe that a terrorist attack is just deserts for a racist past.
This same person will tell you, from the other side of their mouth, that this country is hung up on sex and gender roles, and since we aren’t as "progressive" as the rest of the world incinerated office buildings are the whirlwind we reap. I haven’t seen any women around here treated like chattel slaves, wrapped up head-to-toe in a burlap sack, beaten and denied an education. Have you? I don’t see homosexuals being stoned in the streets in any numbers, have you? I’ll bet you’ve noticed the absolutely massive piles of female clitorises laying in all the streets of American cities, the result of the astronomical numbers of female circumcisions practiced here daily. You haven’t? Well, I’ll be damned, because as the Flapping Rectums tell it, this country was built on mutilated vaginas.
The fact that a Flapping Rectum sees what isn’t there is a sign of psychosis, but of course, they’re in denial. Time for some Zoloft.
Flapping Rectums come from all over the planet, incidentally. A European, for example, will tell you that Americans are simpletons, uncultured and barbaric, but neglect the fact that 20,000 people died in Europe last summer due to lack of air conditioning. Well, if being in an air-conditioned home, office or hospital on a hot day makes me a simpleton, fine, I’m happy to be one. If the elderly of this country don’t die in massive numbers due to heat stroke because we have air conditioning that works, fine, I’m happy to be barbaric. This is a continent that exterminated six million people on a production line basis. Point this out to a Flapping Rectum, and one of two things will happen: he will either make a gesture or noise implying that your argument is nonsensical or he will change the subject, and tell you that despite air conditioning, you still live in a (pick one) racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semetic, etc, etc, etc, society. It’s always the same argument and the same response. A Flapping Rectum from the Middle East will tell you that you live in a decadent society, detached from the love of God, but fail to notice the astounding number of churches, synagogues, mosques, religious libraries, nunneries, monasteries and cathedrals that exist, usually within spitting distance. This, of course, is the same Flapping Rectum who is so sure of his own pious, Godly society, that he can find a religious rationalization for blowing up an office building or school bus, as long as it’s full of Jews (or their infidel puppets).
The point is this; the rest of the world does not really hate America and those that make the argument that they do, are clearly in some sort of time warp. The rest of the planet loves America, to the extent that millions of them try to emigrate here every year, legally and no. If you believe that Cubans get onto rickety rafts and brave the Atlantic to get to America because they hate us, you’re wrong. If you think that millions of Mexicans cross the border risking life and limb in waterless deserts because they hate us, you’re wrong. If you think, even for a fraction of a second, that Europeans, so busy emulating us that they have to force smaller countries to join for what is, in all intents and purposes, a "United States of Europe" (even if it is dominated by socialists), then you have another thing coming. These people have a deep and abiding affection for America, or at least, what they believe American ideals to be.
The reason why we bear the brunt of such outrageous behavior from the rest of the planet is simple: They’re jealous.
We live in a society that tolerates all religions, while others do not. I wonder how many Catholics there are in Baghdad? We live in a society where people are free to be anything they wish to be, and we give them the tools to do it with; an education and a job, unlike, say, an Iraqi Kurd or a Muslim immigrant to France. We live in a world where political power is, theoretically, derived from the people, not from the barrel of a gun, like in China, or based on the fabulous, unshared wealth generated in something unlike a free market, vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia. The United States welcomes everyone that wishes to just enjoy a better life and is willing to work for it, unlike, say, Italy. It’s the bunch of morons scattered about the face of the planet that pontificate about human rights and the brotherhood of man, and when called upon, fail to reach into their pockets, or their hearts, that cast these stones at our country.
And when Arabs and Chinese, North Koreans and Indonesians, Mexican Mestizos and Canadians all wail about the United States and it’s ham-handed and hard-hearted policies and it’s seeming disregard for the plight of others less fortunate, they’re really talking about themselves. They haven’t the wealth, the power or the opportunities to do what this country does, and THEY hate us for it. They’ve just projected their hatred onto the rest of the world to make themselves feel better about it.
Sort of like when you expel gas from your Flapping Rectum.
In the last three years, the United States has been attacked on various fronts. We are attacked diplomatically by "allied" nations who "feel our pain", but who despise us nonetheless. We are attacked morally and spiritually by holier-than-thou renegades who believe that someone who watches a J-Lo on TV cannot compare, in terms of pious righteousness, with someone willing to blow up an Israeli day care center. We are attacked physically by craven cowards, who revel in their "warrior tradition" and who could never beat us in a straight-up fight, and thus, resort to the tactics of the common street mugger – lurk in the shadows, attack from behind and then run like hell. Often, when events like this occur, there is a battalion of special people who come out of the woodwork to explain the "why" to us. Usually, these are other Americans who secretly hate their own country and who often bathe in a self-created aura of guilt and pretense which causes them to actually be embarrassed to be Americans.
This battalion, which I refer to as the "Flapping Rectums", will be perfectly willing to give you a free symposium on why the rest of the world hates us. These people will always give one (and usually more) of the following excuses for mass murder, surmising that Americans are: greedy, mean, thoughtless, ignorant, arrogant, dismissive, disinterested, intrusive, imperialistic, spoiled, impious, impetuous, bumbling, crude, violent, indifferent, stubborn, selfish, lazy, wealthy, gluttonous, unchaste, uncivilized, unkempt, self-absorbed, obnoxious, disagreeable, Sneezy, Doc and Dopey. The gist of their argument is always a variation on the same theme, that Americans do not understand the rest of the world, and that if we made an effort to do so, all would be champagne and roses.
This, of course, is plain, unadulterated psychobabble-driven, horse manure. However, since most of the Flapping Rectums wouldn’t have the sense to pour piss out of a boot (with instructions on the heel) this is unsurprising. The Flapping Rectums don’t live in the same world that normal folks do, or at least, they don’t believe they do.
A Flapping Rectum will go to great lengths, and shed tears while doing it, explaining to you how the United States is still the most racist country on the planet. They forget 160 years of American history, Civil War, Civil Rights Acts, Voting Acts, affirmative action and quota systems. They forget that Jim Crow died the ghastly death it deserved in the 1960’s. They overlook the fact that blacks are not being strung up from trees and churches systematically firebombed anymore. They fail to see that when the Klan does manage to get permission to hold some sort of demonstration that the counter-demonstration is usually larger, more diverse, and generally more violent than those in the sheets. They ignore the numbers of blacks in business, academia, science and law. They believe that racism cannot be assumed to be eliminated unless it is blacks that own everything and whites that pick cotton by hand in the Southern sun. A Flapping Rectum is disconnected with reality in such a way that makes them impervious to facts or provable demonstration. They believe that a terrorist attack is just deserts for a racist past.
This same person will tell you, from the other side of their mouth, that this country is hung up on sex and gender roles, and since we aren’t as "progressive" as the rest of the world incinerated office buildings are the whirlwind we reap. I haven’t seen any women around here treated like chattel slaves, wrapped up head-to-toe in a burlap sack, beaten and denied an education. Have you? I don’t see homosexuals being stoned in the streets in any numbers, have you? I’ll bet you’ve noticed the absolutely massive piles of female clitorises laying in all the streets of American cities, the result of the astronomical numbers of female circumcisions practiced here daily. You haven’t? Well, I’ll be damned, because as the Flapping Rectums tell it, this country was built on mutilated vaginas.
The fact that a Flapping Rectum sees what isn’t there is a sign of psychosis, but of course, they’re in denial. Time for some Zoloft.
Flapping Rectums come from all over the planet, incidentally. A European, for example, will tell you that Americans are simpletons, uncultured and barbaric, but neglect the fact that 20,000 people died in Europe last summer due to lack of air conditioning. Well, if being in an air-conditioned home, office or hospital on a hot day makes me a simpleton, fine, I’m happy to be one. If the elderly of this country don’t die in massive numbers due to heat stroke because we have air conditioning that works, fine, I’m happy to be barbaric. This is a continent that exterminated six million people on a production line basis. Point this out to a Flapping Rectum, and one of two things will happen: he will either make a gesture or noise implying that your argument is nonsensical or he will change the subject, and tell you that despite air conditioning, you still live in a (pick one) racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semetic, etc, etc, etc, society. It’s always the same argument and the same response. A Flapping Rectum from the Middle East will tell you that you live in a decadent society, detached from the love of God, but fail to notice the astounding number of churches, synagogues, mosques, religious libraries, nunneries, monasteries and cathedrals that exist, usually within spitting distance. This, of course, is the same Flapping Rectum who is so sure of his own pious, Godly society, that he can find a religious rationalization for blowing up an office building or school bus, as long as it’s full of Jews (or their infidel puppets).
The point is this; the rest of the world does not really hate America and those that make the argument that they do, are clearly in some sort of time warp. The rest of the planet loves America, to the extent that millions of them try to emigrate here every year, legally and no. If you believe that Cubans get onto rickety rafts and brave the Atlantic to get to America because they hate us, you’re wrong. If you think that millions of Mexicans cross the border risking life and limb in waterless deserts because they hate us, you’re wrong. If you think, even for a fraction of a second, that Europeans, so busy emulating us that they have to force smaller countries to join for what is, in all intents and purposes, a "United States of Europe" (even if it is dominated by socialists), then you have another thing coming. These people have a deep and abiding affection for America, or at least, what they believe American ideals to be.
The reason why we bear the brunt of such outrageous behavior from the rest of the planet is simple: They’re jealous.
We live in a society that tolerates all religions, while others do not. I wonder how many Catholics there are in Baghdad? We live in a society where people are free to be anything they wish to be, and we give them the tools to do it with; an education and a job, unlike, say, an Iraqi Kurd or a Muslim immigrant to France. We live in a world where political power is, theoretically, derived from the people, not from the barrel of a gun, like in China, or based on the fabulous, unshared wealth generated in something unlike a free market, vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia. The United States welcomes everyone that wishes to just enjoy a better life and is willing to work for it, unlike, say, Italy. It’s the bunch of morons scattered about the face of the planet that pontificate about human rights and the brotherhood of man, and when called upon, fail to reach into their pockets, or their hearts, that cast these stones at our country.
And when Arabs and Chinese, North Koreans and Indonesians, Mexican Mestizos and Canadians all wail about the United States and it’s ham-handed and hard-hearted policies and it’s seeming disregard for the plight of others less fortunate, they’re really talking about themselves. They haven’t the wealth, the power or the opportunities to do what this country does, and THEY hate us for it. They’ve just projected their hatred onto the rest of the world to make themselves feel better about it.
Sort of like when you expel gas from your Flapping Rectum.
Three Years Later -- Part I...
Three days from now we will be observing the third anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And we still have many things to be thankful for, and just for this fact alone instead of mourning, I will at least put the best face I can on the three years that have passed.
To begin with, I’m alive. By some trick of fate, some cosmic conspiracy of luck, or maybe I just ate my Wheaties that day, but I’m here. I missed being within the WTC by about 90 seconds or so, when it was struck by the first aircraft, though said airliner did in fact pass directly above my head. That’s something to celebrate. Though I wasn’t physically injured, the attacks and their aftermath did scar me in several ways. I suffer from PTSD (Post-traumatic stress syndrome) and the occasional panic attack, both provoked by the events of 9/11. I can control one with medication and the other requires a great deal of therapy, but I console myself with the realization that I was not burnt to a cinder, crushed by falling steel or masonry, or buried alive, to die a slow, suffocating death. I’m absolutely ecstatic that I did not have to make a choice that some of the poor victims did, deciding whether it was better to burn, get crushed or jump from 100 stories. I don’t know what I would have done in that situation, and I’m happy that I didn’t have to make that choice.
If that makes me selfish, then so be it. I will not apologize for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, so to speak, and escaping with life and limb intact. When one considers the horror, devastation and grief caused by 19 Saudis, needlessly inflicted upon thousands, if not millions, for the simple crimes of being Americans and (mostly) non-Muslims, I feel strongly that those of us who managed not to get it that day have something to be thankful for.
Life is always something to celebrate.
The most fortunate part of this tragedy, if something good could be found in it, is that I have come to realize that I have what everyone always seems to be seeking – a second chance. Once one finally realizes that death is that close to us all, and can come violently and unexpectedly, one decides that maybe some of the frenzied activity that we call "life" is really irrelevant. Why go to a job that you hate and which makes you miserable? You have a second chance – go and do what you want with life now. Chasing a paycheck and the bonuses attached to work on Wall Street no longer seemed attractive to me anymore. At the end of the day, when lunatics, who are willing to die in a bastardized cause, can kill you, what does money mean? It’s irrelevant. When you go to a workplace that makes you unhappy, engaged in a profession that you never foresaw for yourself, and it makes you agitated, nasty, depressed and the only reason you still do it is just because you have bills to pay, why do it? Life, my friends, is too short to slave away in a cubicle, producing something of value only to someone who sees you as a tool to shore up his bottom line.
The second chance revolves around doing what I want to do, a chance to make myself happy. Not monetarily rich, but spiritually and emotionally enriched, satisfied that what I do might make a difference to someone along the way, reconnecting with people and resuming my place in humanity. At the moment, I’m trading in systems programming for either culinary school, or failing that, getting my history degree so that I can teach and maybe write. Bringing joy to others, bringing knowledge to others, helping others to achieve and to do it in a way that makes me happy, and motivated, is my new goal. I don’t intend to waste my second chance. The world may revolve around Wall Street and computers these days, but neither is any longer the center of my personal universe.
Reflecting on what has occurred in the last two years, I have much to say and even more to think about. Where to begin is difficult, as there are multiple threads in this tangled web, but I’ll do my best. In no particular order, here are some issues that have been bouncing around my skull recently.
1. The War on Terrorism – President Bush, true to his word, has made Afghanistan (and vicariously, us) safer by making sure that the Taliban and their supporters are either gone, or so deep in hiding as to be fearful of revealing themselves in the sunlight. It’s no longer Terrorist University, and Osama is decomposing under a pile of rubble somewhere. Fighting still continues in that tortured country, however, the fighting there is serving a purpose, and is similar to the endgame being played in Iraq at the moment. A new, freer nation is emerging from nearly 40 years of war and strife. Elections are being held, hospitals and schools are being built, life is begining to resemble something tolerable in Afghanistan.
Iraq is emerging as a free nation, slowly, but once the momentum has been gained, there will be no stopping the process. Iraqis, seriously threatened, beaten, tortured, starved, gassed, conscripted to die in huge numbers in desert and swamp, can now breathe a little easier. Certainly, aspects of life in Iraq are unalterably changed; there are no longer roving bands of secret policemen and uniformed militia listening in on conversations and reporting/detaining those who have a beef with the regime. There is no longer the threat that Saddam’s boys might come and take your daughter or wife because they tickled their fancy. The thuggery of a total police state has been eliminated by the American invasion and the continuing presence of American troops. Sure, not everything is quiet and, certainly, some things that once were will never be again. However, on balance, this is a good thing if Iraqis can manage to pull their country back together, get on with the business of business in a free-market setting and establish something resembling democratic (or at least Republican) institutions, then the lives and treasure spent will have been worth it. At the very least, we have arrested one of the world’s worst dictators, murderers and the biggest waste of sperm. The effects this will have on terrorists is obvious – one less supporter, one less friendly government to hide and fund them, one less madman willing to use them as a proxy in his monomaniacal fight against the United States.
The naysayers, always willing to throw the brickbat of "quagmire" around when it’s a member of the opposition party in the White House, will claim (they still do) that the War was unnecessary, that thousands of innocent Iraqis died for no reason, and that we are losing the peace because the country wasn’t turned into a first-world economic power within 10 days of the invasion. Usually, these are the same people who apparently didn’t know the word quagmire when their icon, JFK a was stuck in the morass of Vietnam (Which would go on for the better part of two decades), leaving a mess to be cleaned up by others. Their beef then was getting drafted and deprived of all them drugs and free sex.
These are the people who will point to the casualties suffered by the U.S. after hostilities were formally announced as over, and will say, "See? They’re still fighting, how could we have won?" The answer to this is very simple, and that’s why it never occurred to any of them. Post-invasion administration of a (for lack of better term) conquered country is always difficult. To begin with, there is always the struggle for succession to power – various factions, with numerous axes to grind, delusions of grandeur, ideological slants, religious pretexts, etc., will always attempt to impose their will in a post-war scenario because a) there is a vacuum in the political and power structure that can often be manipulated for their own gain and b) once the old Top Dog’s foot is off the throat of his former political adversaries, they get confident and cocky that they can take over and do what they have been waiting to do with little or no opposition.
In both Afghanistan and Iraq, this is the situation. Some warlord, cleric, former army officer or government official decides that he is the person to run the country. This is difficult to do when an invader, who has overwhelming military force at his disposal, occupies your country and even more so when you have rivals who have also managed to survive. So, the continued attacks on U.S. troops are designed to not only kill as many as possible, but to weaken our standing in the eyes of a grateful nation, who will switch support to the side that inflicted the casualties, theoretically. The United States, and not other Iraqis, are the real threat to the would-be successors of Saddam. They know the U.S. will hunt them down, kill them or at least imprison them, before turning them over to their Iraqi rivals for elimination.
The second part of this strategy revolves around the maxim that a weaker force cannot confront a stronger one without either losing, or gaining a victory that’s so costly as to be next to useless. The only way around this kind of scenario is guerilla war, avoiding the exposure of your assets to destruction while attempting to inflict as much damage as possible against the enemy. It has a drawback, however, in that the factions must occasionally come out to fight, and when they do, the U.S. stomps on them. This reduces their numbers, their standing in the eyes of the community, and might even cause another rival to get too big for his britches. This kind of situation is good for the U.S. terrorism fighters – akin to drawing flies onto flypaper. The terrorists do all the work for us, gathering in Iraq and Afghanistan from all over the Middle East shitholes that they come from, and gathering in one place for easier destruction. The few who are lucky enough to survive will go into hiding, probably never daring to take up arms again. Experience in Vietnam, the Philippines, and Central America, proves that the U.S. knows how to fight a counter-insurgency conflict, when politics doesn’t get in the way.
The aftermath of both the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions are not unique events, unforeseen nor uncontrollable. Similar things happened in Germany, Japan and France after the Second World War, and when the Soviet Union disintegrated. Time is the great equalizer here – it’s on our side, and while we wait it might be painful, but in the end, good things will come of it. The naysayers have got it all wrong, which doesn’t surprise me when you realize just who they are.
2. Rebuilding the World Trade Center – This is a tough issue to discuss without sounding callous and mean spirited. I understand that there are those who died in the disaster that were never recovered. I understand the horrific grief that accompanies the loss of a loved one, especially in such a heinous way. I totally respect the view that something needs to be done to ensure that a memorial, monument, etc., is incorporated into the design of whatever eventually gets built on the site in the future. There are those, however, who wish no construction to take place, and I feel they are letting their grief get in the way of their good sense, and maybe being just too selfish for the rest of us.
The sad fact is that while 3,000 of our fellow New Yorkers were incinerated in the ruins, there are nine-plus million of us that didn’t get killed. This nine million or so needs things, like jobs, the City needs revenue if it’s not to become a ghost town, and business needs a place to settle down, close to the financial center of the planet. The people who live in Battery Park or the surrounding neighborhood should not have to suffer the depressing thought of 3,000 murdered people every time they look out their windows at a 16-acre hole in the ground. Something must be built on the site and, unfortunately, I believe that in this case, too much say is being given to those with no rationality, only grief, to offer on this subject.
When the City of New York is several- billion plus in the hole, when businesses are leaving because of high taxes and steep commercial real estate rates, does it make sense to leave 16 acres of the world’s premier real estate empty? The people who say no to reconstruction are, understandably, thinking of themselves and the ones they lost. They are not thinking about the rest of us or about the future. For them, time has stopped on 9/11.
New York will not survive unless it can restore the commercial space and transportation hubs that served Lower Manhattan and which constituted a pretty penny in revenue for both the city and the state. Whatever the city and state lost in revenue with the destruction of the towers, it will make up on the backs of the rest of us. When enough people and businesses have fled for greener, friendlier pastures, there won’t be any backs left. This cannot be allowed to happen, and because there is so much money at stake, I can almost predict that it won’t. However, the obstructionists, who have a valid claim and an understandable reason, will either kill any new construction or delay it for so long that if and when anything is ever built on the site, it will not matter. If you believe a new set of towers on the site is an insult to your loved ones, think about what your idea of a massive memorial will do: turn a tragedy into a tourist attraction. Is that what you want – a Disneyland of death and destruction? I would find that even more insulting and insensitive if I was in your position. It’s bad enough the city has an open sore in the heart of its business district, do we have to continue to pick at it? I understand that for all of you who oppose new construction that the hurt will never diminish, the scars will never heal. However, engaging in a continual orgy of grief, in effect using your "Oprah moment" to deny the living a chance for a better life, is wrong. In it’s own way, this kind of behavior is actually disgusting.
As for the proposals for what might actually be built on the site (someday), someone should walk into every architectural school on the planet and see what drugs are being passed out. Sky Gardens? Skeleton-like buildings? Monstrosities of geometry and glass? What is needed is simple, attractive, office and commercial space without the added geegaws that most have presented, which either serve no functional purpose, or which will only entail greater expense when it’s finally built. New Yorkers don’t need an "inspirational" replacement, they need good, solid commercial real-estate that’s aesthetically pleasing. Half the designs I’ve seen so far look like a Dali painting that’s been stretched and folded numerous times. Some call it artistic license, I call it a vacuous display of personal ego on the part of most of the designers. In the end, nothing like what has been envisioned thus far will be built because the final considerations will not be artistic, but financial.
3. The Truth About Islam – Finally we have seen just what a destructive, nihilistic force this is. Under the pretext of a religious belief, it has been used as a shield to protect murderous, racist thugs, to excuse the indiscriminate murder of women and children, and to hide the fact that the folks who believe in it are stuck in a cesspool of their own making. Islam has always been a violent religion, and will get more so as technology advances and better ways of killing people emerge in the future.
One thing we must always remember about the 9/11 attacks is this: this was not the result of American foreign policy (15 of the 19 killers were from an "allied nation" that we had saved in the previous decade), it was not a result of poverty (most of the hijackers were middle-class and college-educated), nor was it reciprocity for U.S. "aggression" and "oppression" of Muslims. When one considers that the United States in the last thirty years has helped Afghans beat a Soviet Army equipped with superior means of killing, intervened in the "ethnic cleansing" of Muslims in the Balkans, ,protecting them and killing our own (Serbs) on their behalf, spent a vast fortune on economic and humanitarian aid in places like Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Somalia, and the "Palestinian lands", defended Saudi Arabia and liberated Kuwait from Saddam, I think it’s pretty clear the Islamists have never had a better friend than the United States. Heck, the Iranians even took U.S. citizens hostage, an act of war, and that country is still on the map. If the argument is that the United States has propped up illegitimate governments in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, etc., then it doesn’t hold water, in my opinion. We may have dealt with some shady characters in the name of realpolitik, but we didn’t put them in power. Europeans did that, but we don’t see Big Ben or the Eiffel Tower being rammed by jumbo jets, do we?
No, the attack was not made upon us for any reason of economics or politics, it was made because we are the ultimate representative of what Islam cannot offer it’s faithful – progress, hope, peace, medicine, education, employment, law and freedom to express yourself and to do as you wish. These are WESTERN concepts or inventions that Islam cannot provide for the people who are hungry for them because the religion is enmeshed in the very lives of the people who practice it, and chains them in place.
"Do not live amongst the Infidel or practice his ways", states the Koran (I’m paraphrasing here). However, when your children go hungry because the use of certain farming implements and techniques comes with the taint of modernity and Westernism, how do you feel? When your parents are dying from a curable disease that can’t be treated because the technology that could help them is "infected" by the infidels who invented it, how would you feel? When you cannot get a job or go to school because the system that maintains what passes for the country you live in has no concept of free-markets or freedom, and has an education system that is thoroughly steeped in tradition and theology, what would you do?
Never doubt for a moment that the vast majority of the people who live in the Middle East would dearly love to have what we take for granted, or at the least, would accept as much of it as they could stand. The problem is that the very fabric of their society would disintegrate if they did. How does one reconcile the need for modernity at the expense of destroying everything you know? The mullahs cannot accept anything that threatens their positions, which is based upon the word of God, and so they berate Westerners and western ideas as being the tools of the Devil. Well, if the Devil has found a way to give me a better life, and I don’t have to sin for it, how could that be bad? Why can’t I have it? This society is on the edge – it’s psychopathic, it has multiple personalities. It’s confused and feels helpless. God (and thus the Mullahs) cannot be responsible for the state of the Islamic world, therefore, it must be those nasty infidels who have kept the secret of a better life from God’s own people. That is why 19 idiots flew three jet aircraft into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon – it’s a temper tantrum turned deadly. This tantrum is spiced with radical politics, racism and a veneer of religious sanction, but in the end, it’s simply a way to maintain the status quo in a dead-end society. The Mullahs fear us and our concepts of freedom – if their own people ever got to enjoy the very least of rights that we take for granted, if they could have the choices we have with regards to food, education, media, they would bolt Islam like a panicked stallion.
That is why 3,000 Americans had to die on September 11, 2001. Three years later, and things are still the same, as far as the Muslims are concerned, but here in America, we are committed to making sure they change for the better. Not just for own sake but for the sake of the millions that are trapped in a stagnant society. We’re not out to destroy a religion or a culture, we’re out to destroy an idea – that God sanctions mass-murder based on a hodge-podge mix of perverted religion, racism and ignorance.
The lessons will be taught – in the end, will enough Muslims be left to learn them?
Three days from now we will be observing the third anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And we still have many things to be thankful for, and just for this fact alone instead of mourning, I will at least put the best face I can on the three years that have passed.
To begin with, I’m alive. By some trick of fate, some cosmic conspiracy of luck, or maybe I just ate my Wheaties that day, but I’m here. I missed being within the WTC by about 90 seconds or so, when it was struck by the first aircraft, though said airliner did in fact pass directly above my head. That’s something to celebrate. Though I wasn’t physically injured, the attacks and their aftermath did scar me in several ways. I suffer from PTSD (Post-traumatic stress syndrome) and the occasional panic attack, both provoked by the events of 9/11. I can control one with medication and the other requires a great deal of therapy, but I console myself with the realization that I was not burnt to a cinder, crushed by falling steel or masonry, or buried alive, to die a slow, suffocating death. I’m absolutely ecstatic that I did not have to make a choice that some of the poor victims did, deciding whether it was better to burn, get crushed or jump from 100 stories. I don’t know what I would have done in that situation, and I’m happy that I didn’t have to make that choice.
If that makes me selfish, then so be it. I will not apologize for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, so to speak, and escaping with life and limb intact. When one considers the horror, devastation and grief caused by 19 Saudis, needlessly inflicted upon thousands, if not millions, for the simple crimes of being Americans and (mostly) non-Muslims, I feel strongly that those of us who managed not to get it that day have something to be thankful for.
Life is always something to celebrate.
The most fortunate part of this tragedy, if something good could be found in it, is that I have come to realize that I have what everyone always seems to be seeking – a second chance. Once one finally realizes that death is that close to us all, and can come violently and unexpectedly, one decides that maybe some of the frenzied activity that we call "life" is really irrelevant. Why go to a job that you hate and which makes you miserable? You have a second chance – go and do what you want with life now. Chasing a paycheck and the bonuses attached to work on Wall Street no longer seemed attractive to me anymore. At the end of the day, when lunatics, who are willing to die in a bastardized cause, can kill you, what does money mean? It’s irrelevant. When you go to a workplace that makes you unhappy, engaged in a profession that you never foresaw for yourself, and it makes you agitated, nasty, depressed and the only reason you still do it is just because you have bills to pay, why do it? Life, my friends, is too short to slave away in a cubicle, producing something of value only to someone who sees you as a tool to shore up his bottom line.
The second chance revolves around doing what I want to do, a chance to make myself happy. Not monetarily rich, but spiritually and emotionally enriched, satisfied that what I do might make a difference to someone along the way, reconnecting with people and resuming my place in humanity. At the moment, I’m trading in systems programming for either culinary school, or failing that, getting my history degree so that I can teach and maybe write. Bringing joy to others, bringing knowledge to others, helping others to achieve and to do it in a way that makes me happy, and motivated, is my new goal. I don’t intend to waste my second chance. The world may revolve around Wall Street and computers these days, but neither is any longer the center of my personal universe.
Reflecting on what has occurred in the last two years, I have much to say and even more to think about. Where to begin is difficult, as there are multiple threads in this tangled web, but I’ll do my best. In no particular order, here are some issues that have been bouncing around my skull recently.
1. The War on Terrorism – President Bush, true to his word, has made Afghanistan (and vicariously, us) safer by making sure that the Taliban and their supporters are either gone, or so deep in hiding as to be fearful of revealing themselves in the sunlight. It’s no longer Terrorist University, and Osama is decomposing under a pile of rubble somewhere. Fighting still continues in that tortured country, however, the fighting there is serving a purpose, and is similar to the endgame being played in Iraq at the moment. A new, freer nation is emerging from nearly 40 years of war and strife. Elections are being held, hospitals and schools are being built, life is begining to resemble something tolerable in Afghanistan.
Iraq is emerging as a free nation, slowly, but once the momentum has been gained, there will be no stopping the process. Iraqis, seriously threatened, beaten, tortured, starved, gassed, conscripted to die in huge numbers in desert and swamp, can now breathe a little easier. Certainly, aspects of life in Iraq are unalterably changed; there are no longer roving bands of secret policemen and uniformed militia listening in on conversations and reporting/detaining those who have a beef with the regime. There is no longer the threat that Saddam’s boys might come and take your daughter or wife because they tickled their fancy. The thuggery of a total police state has been eliminated by the American invasion and the continuing presence of American troops. Sure, not everything is quiet and, certainly, some things that once were will never be again. However, on balance, this is a good thing if Iraqis can manage to pull their country back together, get on with the business of business in a free-market setting and establish something resembling democratic (or at least Republican) institutions, then the lives and treasure spent will have been worth it. At the very least, we have arrested one of the world’s worst dictators, murderers and the biggest waste of sperm. The effects this will have on terrorists is obvious – one less supporter, one less friendly government to hide and fund them, one less madman willing to use them as a proxy in his monomaniacal fight against the United States.
The naysayers, always willing to throw the brickbat of "quagmire" around when it’s a member of the opposition party in the White House, will claim (they still do) that the War was unnecessary, that thousands of innocent Iraqis died for no reason, and that we are losing the peace because the country wasn’t turned into a first-world economic power within 10 days of the invasion. Usually, these are the same people who apparently didn’t know the word quagmire when their icon, JFK a was stuck in the morass of Vietnam (Which would go on for the better part of two decades), leaving a mess to be cleaned up by others. Their beef then was getting drafted and deprived of all them drugs and free sex.
These are the people who will point to the casualties suffered by the U.S. after hostilities were formally announced as over, and will say, "See? They’re still fighting, how could we have won?" The answer to this is very simple, and that’s why it never occurred to any of them. Post-invasion administration of a (for lack of better term) conquered country is always difficult. To begin with, there is always the struggle for succession to power – various factions, with numerous axes to grind, delusions of grandeur, ideological slants, religious pretexts, etc., will always attempt to impose their will in a post-war scenario because a) there is a vacuum in the political and power structure that can often be manipulated for their own gain and b) once the old Top Dog’s foot is off the throat of his former political adversaries, they get confident and cocky that they can take over and do what they have been waiting to do with little or no opposition.
In both Afghanistan and Iraq, this is the situation. Some warlord, cleric, former army officer or government official decides that he is the person to run the country. This is difficult to do when an invader, who has overwhelming military force at his disposal, occupies your country and even more so when you have rivals who have also managed to survive. So, the continued attacks on U.S. troops are designed to not only kill as many as possible, but to weaken our standing in the eyes of a grateful nation, who will switch support to the side that inflicted the casualties, theoretically. The United States, and not other Iraqis, are the real threat to the would-be successors of Saddam. They know the U.S. will hunt them down, kill them or at least imprison them, before turning them over to their Iraqi rivals for elimination.
The second part of this strategy revolves around the maxim that a weaker force cannot confront a stronger one without either losing, or gaining a victory that’s so costly as to be next to useless. The only way around this kind of scenario is guerilla war, avoiding the exposure of your assets to destruction while attempting to inflict as much damage as possible against the enemy. It has a drawback, however, in that the factions must occasionally come out to fight, and when they do, the U.S. stomps on them. This reduces their numbers, their standing in the eyes of the community, and might even cause another rival to get too big for his britches. This kind of situation is good for the U.S. terrorism fighters – akin to drawing flies onto flypaper. The terrorists do all the work for us, gathering in Iraq and Afghanistan from all over the Middle East shitholes that they come from, and gathering in one place for easier destruction. The few who are lucky enough to survive will go into hiding, probably never daring to take up arms again. Experience in Vietnam, the Philippines, and Central America, proves that the U.S. knows how to fight a counter-insurgency conflict, when politics doesn’t get in the way.
The aftermath of both the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions are not unique events, unforeseen nor uncontrollable. Similar things happened in Germany, Japan and France after the Second World War, and when the Soviet Union disintegrated. Time is the great equalizer here – it’s on our side, and while we wait it might be painful, but in the end, good things will come of it. The naysayers have got it all wrong, which doesn’t surprise me when you realize just who they are.
2. Rebuilding the World Trade Center – This is a tough issue to discuss without sounding callous and mean spirited. I understand that there are those who died in the disaster that were never recovered. I understand the horrific grief that accompanies the loss of a loved one, especially in such a heinous way. I totally respect the view that something needs to be done to ensure that a memorial, monument, etc., is incorporated into the design of whatever eventually gets built on the site in the future. There are those, however, who wish no construction to take place, and I feel they are letting their grief get in the way of their good sense, and maybe being just too selfish for the rest of us.
The sad fact is that while 3,000 of our fellow New Yorkers were incinerated in the ruins, there are nine-plus million of us that didn’t get killed. This nine million or so needs things, like jobs, the City needs revenue if it’s not to become a ghost town, and business needs a place to settle down, close to the financial center of the planet. The people who live in Battery Park or the surrounding neighborhood should not have to suffer the depressing thought of 3,000 murdered people every time they look out their windows at a 16-acre hole in the ground. Something must be built on the site and, unfortunately, I believe that in this case, too much say is being given to those with no rationality, only grief, to offer on this subject.
When the City of New York is several- billion plus in the hole, when businesses are leaving because of high taxes and steep commercial real estate rates, does it make sense to leave 16 acres of the world’s premier real estate empty? The people who say no to reconstruction are, understandably, thinking of themselves and the ones they lost. They are not thinking about the rest of us or about the future. For them, time has stopped on 9/11.
New York will not survive unless it can restore the commercial space and transportation hubs that served Lower Manhattan and which constituted a pretty penny in revenue for both the city and the state. Whatever the city and state lost in revenue with the destruction of the towers, it will make up on the backs of the rest of us. When enough people and businesses have fled for greener, friendlier pastures, there won’t be any backs left. This cannot be allowed to happen, and because there is so much money at stake, I can almost predict that it won’t. However, the obstructionists, who have a valid claim and an understandable reason, will either kill any new construction or delay it for so long that if and when anything is ever built on the site, it will not matter. If you believe a new set of towers on the site is an insult to your loved ones, think about what your idea of a massive memorial will do: turn a tragedy into a tourist attraction. Is that what you want – a Disneyland of death and destruction? I would find that even more insulting and insensitive if I was in your position. It’s bad enough the city has an open sore in the heart of its business district, do we have to continue to pick at it? I understand that for all of you who oppose new construction that the hurt will never diminish, the scars will never heal. However, engaging in a continual orgy of grief, in effect using your "Oprah moment" to deny the living a chance for a better life, is wrong. In it’s own way, this kind of behavior is actually disgusting.
As for the proposals for what might actually be built on the site (someday), someone should walk into every architectural school on the planet and see what drugs are being passed out. Sky Gardens? Skeleton-like buildings? Monstrosities of geometry and glass? What is needed is simple, attractive, office and commercial space without the added geegaws that most have presented, which either serve no functional purpose, or which will only entail greater expense when it’s finally built. New Yorkers don’t need an "inspirational" replacement, they need good, solid commercial real-estate that’s aesthetically pleasing. Half the designs I’ve seen so far look like a Dali painting that’s been stretched and folded numerous times. Some call it artistic license, I call it a vacuous display of personal ego on the part of most of the designers. In the end, nothing like what has been envisioned thus far will be built because the final considerations will not be artistic, but financial.
3. The Truth About Islam – Finally we have seen just what a destructive, nihilistic force this is. Under the pretext of a religious belief, it has been used as a shield to protect murderous, racist thugs, to excuse the indiscriminate murder of women and children, and to hide the fact that the folks who believe in it are stuck in a cesspool of their own making. Islam has always been a violent religion, and will get more so as technology advances and better ways of killing people emerge in the future.
One thing we must always remember about the 9/11 attacks is this: this was not the result of American foreign policy (15 of the 19 killers were from an "allied nation" that we had saved in the previous decade), it was not a result of poverty (most of the hijackers were middle-class and college-educated), nor was it reciprocity for U.S. "aggression" and "oppression" of Muslims. When one considers that the United States in the last thirty years has helped Afghans beat a Soviet Army equipped with superior means of killing, intervened in the "ethnic cleansing" of Muslims in the Balkans, ,protecting them and killing our own (Serbs) on their behalf, spent a vast fortune on economic and humanitarian aid in places like Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Somalia, and the "Palestinian lands", defended Saudi Arabia and liberated Kuwait from Saddam, I think it’s pretty clear the Islamists have never had a better friend than the United States. Heck, the Iranians even took U.S. citizens hostage, an act of war, and that country is still on the map. If the argument is that the United States has propped up illegitimate governments in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, etc., then it doesn’t hold water, in my opinion. We may have dealt with some shady characters in the name of realpolitik, but we didn’t put them in power. Europeans did that, but we don’t see Big Ben or the Eiffel Tower being rammed by jumbo jets, do we?
No, the attack was not made upon us for any reason of economics or politics, it was made because we are the ultimate representative of what Islam cannot offer it’s faithful – progress, hope, peace, medicine, education, employment, law and freedom to express yourself and to do as you wish. These are WESTERN concepts or inventions that Islam cannot provide for the people who are hungry for them because the religion is enmeshed in the very lives of the people who practice it, and chains them in place.
"Do not live amongst the Infidel or practice his ways", states the Koran (I’m paraphrasing here). However, when your children go hungry because the use of certain farming implements and techniques comes with the taint of modernity and Westernism, how do you feel? When your parents are dying from a curable disease that can’t be treated because the technology that could help them is "infected" by the infidels who invented it, how would you feel? When you cannot get a job or go to school because the system that maintains what passes for the country you live in has no concept of free-markets or freedom, and has an education system that is thoroughly steeped in tradition and theology, what would you do?
Never doubt for a moment that the vast majority of the people who live in the Middle East would dearly love to have what we take for granted, or at the least, would accept as much of it as they could stand. The problem is that the very fabric of their society would disintegrate if they did. How does one reconcile the need for modernity at the expense of destroying everything you know? The mullahs cannot accept anything that threatens their positions, which is based upon the word of God, and so they berate Westerners and western ideas as being the tools of the Devil. Well, if the Devil has found a way to give me a better life, and I don’t have to sin for it, how could that be bad? Why can’t I have it? This society is on the edge – it’s psychopathic, it has multiple personalities. It’s confused and feels helpless. God (and thus the Mullahs) cannot be responsible for the state of the Islamic world, therefore, it must be those nasty infidels who have kept the secret of a better life from God’s own people. That is why 19 idiots flew three jet aircraft into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon – it’s a temper tantrum turned deadly. This tantrum is spiced with radical politics, racism and a veneer of religious sanction, but in the end, it’s simply a way to maintain the status quo in a dead-end society. The Mullahs fear us and our concepts of freedom – if their own people ever got to enjoy the very least of rights that we take for granted, if they could have the choices we have with regards to food, education, media, they would bolt Islam like a panicked stallion.
That is why 3,000 Americans had to die on September 11, 2001. Three years later, and things are still the same, as far as the Muslims are concerned, but here in America, we are committed to making sure they change for the better. Not just for own sake but for the sake of the millions that are trapped in a stagnant society. We’re not out to destroy a religion or a culture, we’re out to destroy an idea – that God sanctions mass-murder based on a hodge-podge mix of perverted religion, racism and ignorance.
The lessons will be taught – in the end, will enough Muslims be left to learn them?
The Islamonazi...
Time to hit the archives, folks, are regale you with one of my diseased rantings from when I used to write this thing as a personal diary. This essay has never appeared on this site before, and it's quite long, so bear with me. Is it just me, or do Islamic terrorsits and the Nazis have a lot in common? This was originally written in Feb, 2003.
Evil, it seems to me, never changes. It may, to quote Tolkien, "seem fairer but feel fouler", but nonetheless, the spirit of evil does not mutate one iota. Evil, in my opinion, is not a noun, verb or adjective. It is instead, a malicious spirit which exists within the human soul and which is contained only with great effort and caged by a premise that we call morality. Morality is sort of like the traffic cops for evil; it stops Evil at every red light, and hands out tickets when the lights get passed.
Sometimes, however, as in life, the traffic cop is not always on duty, nor is he there at the scene of an accident, or at least right away. Morality is sort of like a traffic cop in another way, if no one checks up on him he’s prone to hit the donut shop a little too much, and duty be damned. Mankind has few choices when confronted by Evil unrestrained by the traffic cop of Morality. Either the citizens of the world take the law into their own hands and patrol their own streets, aiding the traffic cop or maybe shaming him into doing his job, or they just accept red light runners as a fact of life and let them go. Once you let the light runners go, don’t be surprised if they’re smoking their tires on your front lawn or speeding through school zones with reckless abandon.
Traffic cops and Speeders are not the point of this screed, however. They only serve as representations of the way the spirit of Evil and the force of Morality are intertwined. And maybe it isn’t even a good example, but it seems to fit.
We in the world, especially in the United States today, are confronted by an Evil that evidently gives not two turds for the Traffic Cops of Morality. This Evil is not new, nor is it hidden. It’s called Islam, and we’ve (Western Civilization) known about it for 1,400 years, and we’ve become sort of like the complacent citizens in our example. We have allowed it to survive, to grow and fester, and now it’s running stop signs and causing chaos on the roads of our daily lives. The Cops have been at the donut shop and have gorged themselves on the specials of the day: the Politically Correct Creuller, the Éclair of Inattentiveness, the Insidious Jelly Donut of Neglect, and finally, the Chocolate coated Croissant of Ignorance.
Islam is Evil. I don’t care what anyone says to the contrary. It is Evil personified. What does one call a religion that calls for the deaths of all non-believers? Does Buddhism ask its adherents to do this? Does Shinto? Christianity or Judaism? Answer is: No. Islam is the only religion that I can think of that calls for the forcible conversion of it’s faithful, on pain of death. Islam revels in death, it dances in the infliction of pain and suffering, it celebrates the oppression of its followers, and calls itself moral. In many ways, Islam is similar to the greatest Western Evil: Nazism.
The Nazis of the last century saw themselves as the saviors of the world. They would save the planet from the twin Evils of Communism and Jewry, and anyone who didn’t see things their way was considered an enemy. A deadly enemy. Islam sees itself today as the savior of the world (or at least their version of it), and sees those that oppose it in much the same way. The opposition is a deadly enemy that must be eliminated at all costs, even unto the ultimate sacrifice of committing a spectacular suicide, which is forgiven provided enough Infidels leave this world with you.
I feel that Radical Islam is the new National Socialism of our age. As in the 1940’s, we must steel ourselves and confront this threat the same way we confronted the Nazis. We cannot sit back and think the cheery, PC thoughts of the last generation; all cultures are valid, all religions or philosophies have their place in the world, we cannot judge non-Western people by Western standards. That mind set put us in the situation we find ourselves in today, with the results of September 11th, and the more recent attacks in Bali and Yemen, and the threat of war with Iraq (p.s. – do it already, would you, Mr. President?).
Many people would not agree with me and that’s fine. You have your opinion and I have mine, and that’s what makes America great. However, I’m sure you would all agree with me when I make a statement such as "The Nazis were the personification of Evil, and it was necessary to stop them before they enslaved the world". Any naysayers of that statement should feel free to check themselves into an institution at their earliest convenience. If you think for second that World War, mass murder, forced sterilization, eugenics, super police-state intimidation, plunder and destruction on a grand scale are excusable, please volunteer for the firing squad (as a target). That’s the Nazi legacy, and it’s very quickly becoming the Islamic legacy.
I submit for your cogitation:
1. The Nazis created a super-state of occupied Europe, and based it upon the twin premises of ridding the world of Communists and Jews. This political order stemmed from the fear of both Marxist-Leninist thought and of a people who would not assimilate (Jews). The political thrust of Nazism also hid a plan for the colonization of the world by people bearing the same ideology as a standard of battle, based upon national pride and a belief in their own superiority. The Nazi was supposed to be ruthless and pitiless in imposing this new order upon the world, because in the end, it was for the betterment of mankind. This excused things such as theft, murder, rape and dispossession because the motive was supposed to be pure: an Aryan nation would need room to prosper and the enemies of that nation would be the ones to provide it by the very act of dying. Once the world had seen the example of peace and prosperity set by the Aryan nation, they would simply follow. However, not being Aryan or Nazi enough, they would only be given the scraps from the Nazi table. Anyone who stood in the way and who could not be convinced of the righteousness of the Nazi cause, had to be eliminated or subjugated. It was the will of the Fuehrer that all mankind live in the Nazi way. Radical Islam today does much the same thing: it’s followers are a "Master Race" because they have been chosen by God to usher in a new order that will create an Islamic super-state based on Islamic Law (contradiction in terms). The benefits of Islamic Law are supposed to be equality (unless you’re a woman), fairness (unless you’re an oil sheik or a cleric, in which case you’re above the law), and brotherhood (unless you fail to join the club, in which case, you must die). The Islamonazi must be relentless in his push to impose this order on the world. Non-conformists (Jews, hedonistic Westerners, i.e. The Infidels) must be eliminated or subjugated. It is the will of Allah that all mankind should live under his sway. The Islamonazi is forgiven the grievous sins of mass murder because his actions are sanctioned by God, much like the S.S. mass murderers were sanctioned by Hitler. The world must be made to see things the Islamonazi’s way, because it is for the betterment of mankind. Failure to play by his rules means death.
2. The Nazis had interesting ways of dealing with dissent or resistance to the new order: concentration camps, harassment by secret police, death squads, terror reprisals, razing entire sections of cities (Guernica, Rotterdam, Warsaw Ghetto, the London Blitz). The Nazi’s idea of conformity was enforced with the threat of death, torture and imprisonment or destruction on a scale never before seen by man.The Islamonazi has interesting ways of dealing with dissent as well: he crashes airliners into office buildings, straps explosives to his chest and walks into shopping malls to blow himself up, he cuts the hands and feet off of those who oppose him. He threatens to use poisons and diseases to eliminate dissent (much like the Nazis used Zyklon B to eliminate the Jews). He threatens to raze the Western World unless we obey him or fall cowering at his feet.
3. The Nazi was convinced he was right because he was superior. The Nazi used folklore, archeology and other sciences, propaganda, and force to prove that he was superior. He was a member of a "Master Race" which was pre-ordained to rule the world. He used envy to motivate his people; Germany is a great nation, and is not now a great nation because the world oppressed Germany. The World was jealous of Germany and the German people.
The Islamonazi is the chosen of God, enforcing the will of God, utilizing the word of God to prove his own superiority. He engages in propaganda to keep his own oppressed masses in line; you are poor because the Western Devil stole your riches. You are oppressed because the World is jealous of you, the chosen of Allah. Both Islam and National Socialism call for a "holy war" or "jihad" to be fought to return the state to its former glory. A War fought to turn back the clock to the glorious past of the German Nation. The Nazi war was carried out in a brutal and bloody fashion, with no mercy or quarter given to those that got in the way. They Nazis quickly forgot the rules of civilized society when it came to enforcing their will upon conquered peoples. The Islamonazi wishes to return the world to the idyllic state it was in when Islam held sway from Iberia to the Borders of China, from India into the Russian steppes. The Nazi only wished to turn the clock back about 100 years. The Islamonazi wishes to see it set back seven or eight centuries, and he will slaughter anyone who opposes his goal.
4. The Nazis instituted a system wherein children were considered property of the state, and "special" children were sent to special camps and schools to steep them in Nazi ideology for the purposes of creating future generations of vicious Aryan warriors. The state of these camps and schools was such that children were encouraged to prey upon one another, as if they were characters in "Lord of the Flies". The belief was that once the human qualities of compassion and decency were suppressed, these children would make excellent standard bearers for a future Nazi world. These children became the mind-slaves of the Nazi order, and had no belief in anything but complete victory over whoever their Fuerher said was their enemy.
The Islamonazi, in the past, kidnapped Christian children, sent them back to the Islamic world for intense training in military skills and Islam. The result was the Jannisaries, fanatic Islamic warriors that terrorized their own people in the name of Allah. The Jannisaries were a slave army, totally committed to the idea of the caliphate and unswervingly loyal to the Sultan. The Islamonazi instituted the concept of the slave army, where Janissaries, Mamelukes, and steppe people from the fringes of the Islamic empire were turned into "Koran-Thumping" soldiers of Allah, completely dedicated to the implementation of a true Islamic state (the Caliphate), regardless of cost, and regardless of how many needed to die in order to achieve it. Schools in the "Palestinian Authority" routinely teach their children that to kill the Jew is a blessed thing. How many times have we seen the famous picture of a Palestinian infant dressed up as a suicide bomber? These children are being made mind-slaves to the idea of a world-bestriding, Islamic behemoth and being basted in hate and revisionist history.
5. The Nazi system was led by a select elite. This elite were the true "descendants of Hitler", men whose loyalty to the cause and to Hitler himself, were beyond question, because they were either committed or complicit in the crimes that were committed in the execution of the Nazi plan for dominance. They’re will was undeniable: their every whim, taken as holy writ and executed without question. There were to be no other leaders except for these men, and those they judged acceptable in terms of ideology and willingness to serve. The Islamonazi is led by a select caste of elite that manages to somehow trace its lineage back to the Prophet Mohammed. They are the true believers, and their word is law (the fatwa). Their commitment to Islam is beyond question, because they too, are complicit in the crimes that are committed in the name of their Ideology and their religion. Their word is taken as the word of God, himself, and cannot be gainsaid or questioned, on pain of death. In both systems, there could be no other leaders than those that shared perfect ideology and whom had devoted their lives to the movement, nor anyone that could not prove himself to be of "pure ancestry".
6. The Nazis used terror whenever they could not get co-operation, or conquer, by other means. When we talk about terror, we need only to remember the following things: Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz, Guernica, Rotterdam, The Blitz, The Warsaw Ghetto, The "Night and Fog" Decree, Krystalnact, the "Night of the Long Knives", Malmedy. How many V-2 rockets landed in London or Antwerp? The Islamonazi acts in similar fashion. If he cannot obtain his desire by peaceful methods, he resorts to unrestrained violence. How many have died in car bombings? At weddings or in pizzerias? How many have been killed or maimed in attacks on Consulates and office buildings? How many have been slaughtered in the streets of the Middle East over differences between Islam and the West, not to mention the internecine struggles of Islam itself? How many Scuds fell on Iran? How many fell on Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia?
Terror was not just a reaction to frustration, it was a deliberate policy used by both to demonstrate the genocidal commitment of the soldiers of their respective systems, and as a threat to even greater violence to come when the system does not get it’s way. It’s a vivid illustration: this is what we are capable of doing, so you’d better play ball. It was an officially sanctioned use of state resources expended in order to implement a vision of society that would be ultimately horrible. Slavery, domination, intimidation are all trademarks of that state. One in submission to ideology, and the other in submission to religion.
7. Both the Nazi and the Islamonazi rigidly adhere to a policy based on deadly nihilism and subjugation of the individual to a greater cause. Independent thinkers are purged. Dissent is crushed. People other than the chosen elite are nothing but cattle, slaves or the oil that greases the engine of progress. There are two sorts of people in these systems: "Us and Them". "Us" is the chosen branch of humanity, those that struggle for the cause will be ultimately rewarded. "Them" is the enemy, and by virtue of his opposition, he must be stamped out because he opposes progress or the will of God. There is no death too good for "Them". There is no atrocity for which one cannot be forgiven if it is perpetrated against "Them".
8. Both systems base their ideology on the hatred of others, and share a common hatred; hatred of Jews. The Jews were the "betrayers" in the Nazi worldview, they could not stand to see a strong, vibrant, Imperial Germany, and so they conspired to bring Germany down. They owned all the land, ran the banks, the industry and were dominant in the "professions". The Jew permeated and defiled "sacred" German society. The Islamonazi views the Jew in the same way. The Jew "occupies" the Holy Places. The Jew conspires to destroy the Islamic world. The Jew runs everything, including the governments of every country on earth. September 11th wasn’t an Arab "martyrdom operation", it was a plot to by Jews to manipulate the United States into destroying the Arabs for them. There is a fear, hatred and revulsion for the Jew in both societies, which permeates every activity, and is used to justify every policy, and to explain every failure. Ultimately, both systems have a built-in psychosis. A system built on a psychosis is certainly not a healthy one.Think of the Islamonazi as a Nazi on steroids.
We’re seeing the rise of a Fourth Reich in the Middle East. One that is convinced of the righteousness of it’s cause, which believes that "God is on our side" and which is willing to commit the most vile acts in the name of something which is supposed to be a "peaceful" institution; that of the religion of Islam. Where "Mein Kampf" and Hitler left off, the Islamic loonies in the Middle East will pick up. The two systems admire each other and mirror each other perfectly. Hitler was known to have had an affection for the warrior culture of the Middle East, which brought such romantic heroes as Saladin into being. Hitler was ever entranced by the romantic notion (tainted with hatred, of course). The Nazis worked like beavers to inflame the Arabs into fighting for the Germans against the British. Apparently, it took 60 years or so for true Nazi-ism to take root in the Middle East, but it has taken root, and grown into a festering weed that strangles Arab society every bit as it did German.
The Arabs should pay attention to history. They should pay attention to the premise that history repeats itself. They should learn the lesson that was taught in the 1940’s: That the people of the world, and especially the United States, when roused, are capable of destroying, utterly, anything they put their minds to destroying. The fanatical ideologies of the past all fall by the wayside in the course of history: Nazi-ism, Communism, the Bushido Code, Chivalry, Crusading, the French Republic. And who caused them to be first, discredited ideologies, and second, utterly and completely lain waste? Western man, did. And we did it with atomic bombs, with fleets of bombers, with economic productivity, with the freedom to question and to persue the individual rights with which we were all born. Sometimes, it didn’t even require these things to stop the ideologues: sometimes, it only took a thought, and time.
Those are weapons you cannot defeat. That’s why Hitler couldn’t win, why Stalin had to put half his population in charge of watching the other half, and why Japanese pilots got desperate enough to crash their planes into aircraft carriers: they were confronted with weapons, ideologies and moralities, which tore at the very heart of their own fanaticism.
I don’t see any Nazis, I see few Communists, I don’t see any Samurai. Take the hint; freedom trumps fanaticism every time. Learn that before the next Dresden or Hiroshima takes place in Damascus. Evil always loses in the end.
Time to hit the archives, folks, are regale you with one of my diseased rantings from when I used to write this thing as a personal diary. This essay has never appeared on this site before, and it's quite long, so bear with me. Is it just me, or do Islamic terrorsits and the Nazis have a lot in common? This was originally written in Feb, 2003.
Evil, it seems to me, never changes. It may, to quote Tolkien, "seem fairer but feel fouler", but nonetheless, the spirit of evil does not mutate one iota. Evil, in my opinion, is not a noun, verb or adjective. It is instead, a malicious spirit which exists within the human soul and which is contained only with great effort and caged by a premise that we call morality. Morality is sort of like the traffic cops for evil; it stops Evil at every red light, and hands out tickets when the lights get passed.
Sometimes, however, as in life, the traffic cop is not always on duty, nor is he there at the scene of an accident, or at least right away. Morality is sort of like a traffic cop in another way, if no one checks up on him he’s prone to hit the donut shop a little too much, and duty be damned. Mankind has few choices when confronted by Evil unrestrained by the traffic cop of Morality. Either the citizens of the world take the law into their own hands and patrol their own streets, aiding the traffic cop or maybe shaming him into doing his job, or they just accept red light runners as a fact of life and let them go. Once you let the light runners go, don’t be surprised if they’re smoking their tires on your front lawn or speeding through school zones with reckless abandon.
Traffic cops and Speeders are not the point of this screed, however. They only serve as representations of the way the spirit of Evil and the force of Morality are intertwined. And maybe it isn’t even a good example, but it seems to fit.
We in the world, especially in the United States today, are confronted by an Evil that evidently gives not two turds for the Traffic Cops of Morality. This Evil is not new, nor is it hidden. It’s called Islam, and we’ve (Western Civilization) known about it for 1,400 years, and we’ve become sort of like the complacent citizens in our example. We have allowed it to survive, to grow and fester, and now it’s running stop signs and causing chaos on the roads of our daily lives. The Cops have been at the donut shop and have gorged themselves on the specials of the day: the Politically Correct Creuller, the Éclair of Inattentiveness, the Insidious Jelly Donut of Neglect, and finally, the Chocolate coated Croissant of Ignorance.
Islam is Evil. I don’t care what anyone says to the contrary. It is Evil personified. What does one call a religion that calls for the deaths of all non-believers? Does Buddhism ask its adherents to do this? Does Shinto? Christianity or Judaism? Answer is: No. Islam is the only religion that I can think of that calls for the forcible conversion of it’s faithful, on pain of death. Islam revels in death, it dances in the infliction of pain and suffering, it celebrates the oppression of its followers, and calls itself moral. In many ways, Islam is similar to the greatest Western Evil: Nazism.
The Nazis of the last century saw themselves as the saviors of the world. They would save the planet from the twin Evils of Communism and Jewry, and anyone who didn’t see things their way was considered an enemy. A deadly enemy. Islam sees itself today as the savior of the world (or at least their version of it), and sees those that oppose it in much the same way. The opposition is a deadly enemy that must be eliminated at all costs, even unto the ultimate sacrifice of committing a spectacular suicide, which is forgiven provided enough Infidels leave this world with you.
I feel that Radical Islam is the new National Socialism of our age. As in the 1940’s, we must steel ourselves and confront this threat the same way we confronted the Nazis. We cannot sit back and think the cheery, PC thoughts of the last generation; all cultures are valid, all religions or philosophies have their place in the world, we cannot judge non-Western people by Western standards. That mind set put us in the situation we find ourselves in today, with the results of September 11th, and the more recent attacks in Bali and Yemen, and the threat of war with Iraq (p.s. – do it already, would you, Mr. President?).
Many people would not agree with me and that’s fine. You have your opinion and I have mine, and that’s what makes America great. However, I’m sure you would all agree with me when I make a statement such as "The Nazis were the personification of Evil, and it was necessary to stop them before they enslaved the world". Any naysayers of that statement should feel free to check themselves into an institution at their earliest convenience. If you think for second that World War, mass murder, forced sterilization, eugenics, super police-state intimidation, plunder and destruction on a grand scale are excusable, please volunteer for the firing squad (as a target). That’s the Nazi legacy, and it’s very quickly becoming the Islamic legacy.
I submit for your cogitation:
1. The Nazis created a super-state of occupied Europe, and based it upon the twin premises of ridding the world of Communists and Jews. This political order stemmed from the fear of both Marxist-Leninist thought and of a people who would not assimilate (Jews). The political thrust of Nazism also hid a plan for the colonization of the world by people bearing the same ideology as a standard of battle, based upon national pride and a belief in their own superiority. The Nazi was supposed to be ruthless and pitiless in imposing this new order upon the world, because in the end, it was for the betterment of mankind. This excused things such as theft, murder, rape and dispossession because the motive was supposed to be pure: an Aryan nation would need room to prosper and the enemies of that nation would be the ones to provide it by the very act of dying. Once the world had seen the example of peace and prosperity set by the Aryan nation, they would simply follow. However, not being Aryan or Nazi enough, they would only be given the scraps from the Nazi table. Anyone who stood in the way and who could not be convinced of the righteousness of the Nazi cause, had to be eliminated or subjugated. It was the will of the Fuehrer that all mankind live in the Nazi way. Radical Islam today does much the same thing: it’s followers are a "Master Race" because they have been chosen by God to usher in a new order that will create an Islamic super-state based on Islamic Law (contradiction in terms). The benefits of Islamic Law are supposed to be equality (unless you’re a woman), fairness (unless you’re an oil sheik or a cleric, in which case you’re above the law), and brotherhood (unless you fail to join the club, in which case, you must die). The Islamonazi must be relentless in his push to impose this order on the world. Non-conformists (Jews, hedonistic Westerners, i.e. The Infidels) must be eliminated or subjugated. It is the will of Allah that all mankind should live under his sway. The Islamonazi is forgiven the grievous sins of mass murder because his actions are sanctioned by God, much like the S.S. mass murderers were sanctioned by Hitler. The world must be made to see things the Islamonazi’s way, because it is for the betterment of mankind. Failure to play by his rules means death.
2. The Nazis had interesting ways of dealing with dissent or resistance to the new order: concentration camps, harassment by secret police, death squads, terror reprisals, razing entire sections of cities (Guernica, Rotterdam, Warsaw Ghetto, the London Blitz). The Nazi’s idea of conformity was enforced with the threat of death, torture and imprisonment or destruction on a scale never before seen by man.The Islamonazi has interesting ways of dealing with dissent as well: he crashes airliners into office buildings, straps explosives to his chest and walks into shopping malls to blow himself up, he cuts the hands and feet off of those who oppose him. He threatens to use poisons and diseases to eliminate dissent (much like the Nazis used Zyklon B to eliminate the Jews). He threatens to raze the Western World unless we obey him or fall cowering at his feet.
3. The Nazi was convinced he was right because he was superior. The Nazi used folklore, archeology and other sciences, propaganda, and force to prove that he was superior. He was a member of a "Master Race" which was pre-ordained to rule the world. He used envy to motivate his people; Germany is a great nation, and is not now a great nation because the world oppressed Germany. The World was jealous of Germany and the German people.
The Islamonazi is the chosen of God, enforcing the will of God, utilizing the word of God to prove his own superiority. He engages in propaganda to keep his own oppressed masses in line; you are poor because the Western Devil stole your riches. You are oppressed because the World is jealous of you, the chosen of Allah. Both Islam and National Socialism call for a "holy war" or "jihad" to be fought to return the state to its former glory. A War fought to turn back the clock to the glorious past of the German Nation. The Nazi war was carried out in a brutal and bloody fashion, with no mercy or quarter given to those that got in the way. They Nazis quickly forgot the rules of civilized society when it came to enforcing their will upon conquered peoples. The Islamonazi wishes to return the world to the idyllic state it was in when Islam held sway from Iberia to the Borders of China, from India into the Russian steppes. The Nazi only wished to turn the clock back about 100 years. The Islamonazi wishes to see it set back seven or eight centuries, and he will slaughter anyone who opposes his goal.
4. The Nazis instituted a system wherein children were considered property of the state, and "special" children were sent to special camps and schools to steep them in Nazi ideology for the purposes of creating future generations of vicious Aryan warriors. The state of these camps and schools was such that children were encouraged to prey upon one another, as if they were characters in "Lord of the Flies". The belief was that once the human qualities of compassion and decency were suppressed, these children would make excellent standard bearers for a future Nazi world. These children became the mind-slaves of the Nazi order, and had no belief in anything but complete victory over whoever their Fuerher said was their enemy.
The Islamonazi, in the past, kidnapped Christian children, sent them back to the Islamic world for intense training in military skills and Islam. The result was the Jannisaries, fanatic Islamic warriors that terrorized their own people in the name of Allah. The Jannisaries were a slave army, totally committed to the idea of the caliphate and unswervingly loyal to the Sultan. The Islamonazi instituted the concept of the slave army, where Janissaries, Mamelukes, and steppe people from the fringes of the Islamic empire were turned into "Koran-Thumping" soldiers of Allah, completely dedicated to the implementation of a true Islamic state (the Caliphate), regardless of cost, and regardless of how many needed to die in order to achieve it. Schools in the "Palestinian Authority" routinely teach their children that to kill the Jew is a blessed thing. How many times have we seen the famous picture of a Palestinian infant dressed up as a suicide bomber? These children are being made mind-slaves to the idea of a world-bestriding, Islamic behemoth and being basted in hate and revisionist history.
5. The Nazi system was led by a select elite. This elite were the true "descendants of Hitler", men whose loyalty to the cause and to Hitler himself, were beyond question, because they were either committed or complicit in the crimes that were committed in the execution of the Nazi plan for dominance. They’re will was undeniable: their every whim, taken as holy writ and executed without question. There were to be no other leaders except for these men, and those they judged acceptable in terms of ideology and willingness to serve. The Islamonazi is led by a select caste of elite that manages to somehow trace its lineage back to the Prophet Mohammed. They are the true believers, and their word is law (the fatwa). Their commitment to Islam is beyond question, because they too, are complicit in the crimes that are committed in the name of their Ideology and their religion. Their word is taken as the word of God, himself, and cannot be gainsaid or questioned, on pain of death. In both systems, there could be no other leaders than those that shared perfect ideology and whom had devoted their lives to the movement, nor anyone that could not prove himself to be of "pure ancestry".
6. The Nazis used terror whenever they could not get co-operation, or conquer, by other means. When we talk about terror, we need only to remember the following things: Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz, Guernica, Rotterdam, The Blitz, The Warsaw Ghetto, The "Night and Fog" Decree, Krystalnact, the "Night of the Long Knives", Malmedy. How many V-2 rockets landed in London or Antwerp? The Islamonazi acts in similar fashion. If he cannot obtain his desire by peaceful methods, he resorts to unrestrained violence. How many have died in car bombings? At weddings or in pizzerias? How many have been killed or maimed in attacks on Consulates and office buildings? How many have been slaughtered in the streets of the Middle East over differences between Islam and the West, not to mention the internecine struggles of Islam itself? How many Scuds fell on Iran? How many fell on Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia?
Terror was not just a reaction to frustration, it was a deliberate policy used by both to demonstrate the genocidal commitment of the soldiers of their respective systems, and as a threat to even greater violence to come when the system does not get it’s way. It’s a vivid illustration: this is what we are capable of doing, so you’d better play ball. It was an officially sanctioned use of state resources expended in order to implement a vision of society that would be ultimately horrible. Slavery, domination, intimidation are all trademarks of that state. One in submission to ideology, and the other in submission to religion.
7. Both the Nazi and the Islamonazi rigidly adhere to a policy based on deadly nihilism and subjugation of the individual to a greater cause. Independent thinkers are purged. Dissent is crushed. People other than the chosen elite are nothing but cattle, slaves or the oil that greases the engine of progress. There are two sorts of people in these systems: "Us and Them". "Us" is the chosen branch of humanity, those that struggle for the cause will be ultimately rewarded. "Them" is the enemy, and by virtue of his opposition, he must be stamped out because he opposes progress or the will of God. There is no death too good for "Them". There is no atrocity for which one cannot be forgiven if it is perpetrated against "Them".
8. Both systems base their ideology on the hatred of others, and share a common hatred; hatred of Jews. The Jews were the "betrayers" in the Nazi worldview, they could not stand to see a strong, vibrant, Imperial Germany, and so they conspired to bring Germany down. They owned all the land, ran the banks, the industry and were dominant in the "professions". The Jew permeated and defiled "sacred" German society. The Islamonazi views the Jew in the same way. The Jew "occupies" the Holy Places. The Jew conspires to destroy the Islamic world. The Jew runs everything, including the governments of every country on earth. September 11th wasn’t an Arab "martyrdom operation", it was a plot to by Jews to manipulate the United States into destroying the Arabs for them. There is a fear, hatred and revulsion for the Jew in both societies, which permeates every activity, and is used to justify every policy, and to explain every failure. Ultimately, both systems have a built-in psychosis. A system built on a psychosis is certainly not a healthy one.Think of the Islamonazi as a Nazi on steroids.
We’re seeing the rise of a Fourth Reich in the Middle East. One that is convinced of the righteousness of it’s cause, which believes that "God is on our side" and which is willing to commit the most vile acts in the name of something which is supposed to be a "peaceful" institution; that of the religion of Islam. Where "Mein Kampf" and Hitler left off, the Islamic loonies in the Middle East will pick up. The two systems admire each other and mirror each other perfectly. Hitler was known to have had an affection for the warrior culture of the Middle East, which brought such romantic heroes as Saladin into being. Hitler was ever entranced by the romantic notion (tainted with hatred, of course). The Nazis worked like beavers to inflame the Arabs into fighting for the Germans against the British. Apparently, it took 60 years or so for true Nazi-ism to take root in the Middle East, but it has taken root, and grown into a festering weed that strangles Arab society every bit as it did German.
The Arabs should pay attention to history. They should pay attention to the premise that history repeats itself. They should learn the lesson that was taught in the 1940’s: That the people of the world, and especially the United States, when roused, are capable of destroying, utterly, anything they put their minds to destroying. The fanatical ideologies of the past all fall by the wayside in the course of history: Nazi-ism, Communism, the Bushido Code, Chivalry, Crusading, the French Republic. And who caused them to be first, discredited ideologies, and second, utterly and completely lain waste? Western man, did. And we did it with atomic bombs, with fleets of bombers, with economic productivity, with the freedom to question and to persue the individual rights with which we were all born. Sometimes, it didn’t even require these things to stop the ideologues: sometimes, it only took a thought, and time.
Those are weapons you cannot defeat. That’s why Hitler couldn’t win, why Stalin had to put half his population in charge of watching the other half, and why Japanese pilots got desperate enough to crash their planes into aircraft carriers: they were confronted with weapons, ideologies and moralities, which tore at the very heart of their own fanaticism.
I don’t see any Nazis, I see few Communists, I don’t see any Samurai. Take the hint; freedom trumps fanaticism every time. Learn that before the next Dresden or Hiroshima takes place in Damascus. Evil always loses in the end.
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
SOMEBODY gets it...
Finally! Someone at the New York Times (aka official mouthpiece of the Comintern) gets it right. Unfortunately, the poor man is only the token conservative at the paper, but we can only hope that them thar "sophisticated" Times readers actually take the time to read everything in the "paper of record". Mr. Brooks hits it right on the head. And because I'm such a nice guy, I will provide it for ya, just to save you the trouble of registering with the Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/07/opinion/07brooks.html?ex=1095134400&en=8b9635e78ee3661c&ei=5006&partner=ALTAVISTA1
It's a shame that people very often have to be reminded about these things, but for damn sure, when you see just WHO reads the Times, you don't seem to wonder about it so much.
Finally! Someone at the New York Times (aka official mouthpiece of the Comintern) gets it right. Unfortunately, the poor man is only the token conservative at the paper, but we can only hope that them thar "sophisticated" Times readers actually take the time to read everything in the "paper of record". Mr. Brooks hits it right on the head. And because I'm such a nice guy, I will provide it for ya, just to save you the trouble of registering with the Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/07/opinion/07brooks.html?ex=1095134400&en=8b9635e78ee3661c&ei=5006&partner=ALTAVISTA1
It's a shame that people very often have to be reminded about these things, but for damn sure, when you see just WHO reads the Times, you don't seem to wonder about it so much.
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Bill Under the Knife...
This past weekend, former President and World-renown rapist (allegedly), William Clinton underwent quadruple bypass surgery in a New York Hospital. Unfortunately, the surgery was a success, but that is neither here nor there. What is amazing, or newsworthy, about this?
a) Clinton actually HAS a heart...
b) After the surgery he managed to call John Kerry and tell him to "shut the hell up" about Vietnam...
Ah, that Bill. Always had his priorities straight. About to be indicted for lying under oath; bomb an aspirin factory. About to be accused of sexual harrassment or rape; burn down a church in Waco, Texas. Had a life-threatening operation; call John Kerry and give him some political pointers.
I'm so glad this man is no longer in the White House. Now, if we could just get his wife on an operating table somehow...
This past weekend, former President and World-renown rapist (allegedly), William Clinton underwent quadruple bypass surgery in a New York Hospital. Unfortunately, the surgery was a success, but that is neither here nor there. What is amazing, or newsworthy, about this?
a) Clinton actually HAS a heart...
b) After the surgery he managed to call John Kerry and tell him to "shut the hell up" about Vietnam...
Ah, that Bill. Always had his priorities straight. About to be indicted for lying under oath; bomb an aspirin factory. About to be accused of sexual harrassment or rape; burn down a church in Waco, Texas. Had a life-threatening operation; call John Kerry and give him some political pointers.
I'm so glad this man is no longer in the White House. Now, if we could just get his wife on an operating table somehow...
A Closer look at the Other Side...
One of the very few public services this blog offers is an occasional re-hashing of what other people have said. This often happens because I have found something , somewhere, that pretty much sums up what I have to say, but does so in a way that I would be incapable of imitating.
I admit, I'm not much of a writer, and quite frankly, I believe that when I do manage to cobble together something approaching "masterpiece" it's because I'm angry. After all, that's when it tends to get funny.
But I digress.
One cannot go through life angry all the time, nor should one use anger as their sole source of inspiration. That's probably not very healthy. I could rail against liberals and terrorists all day (and often do), but in the end, I sometimes have a problem with getting my message across. So, I have decided that today I will present three articles from various sources that pretty much sum up my idea of what the "Other Side" in this election stands for, and why they're view of the War on Terror, and the world, is wrong.
First, we present the wonderful Mark Steyn, and his view of the personalities involved in Bush bashing:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;sessionid=IYZK5XUSBXWFBQFIQMGCM5OAVCBQUJVC?xml=/opinion/2004/09/07/do0702.xml
Next, we have the ever-eloquent Jame Lileks, and his view about what democrats find important, and why it doesn't wash with Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public:
http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/04/0904/090604.html
And finally, from across the pond, we have Melanie Phillips, who I had never heard of before I found this little tidbit, but I can guarentee you that I will be looking for more of her stuff:
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles/archives/000787.html
Three views on three vital areas of interest in the coming election, and three views which show the gaping divide between conservative/republican and democrat/world-socialist thought.
One of the very few public services this blog offers is an occasional re-hashing of what other people have said. This often happens because I have found something , somewhere, that pretty much sums up what I have to say, but does so in a way that I would be incapable of imitating.
I admit, I'm not much of a writer, and quite frankly, I believe that when I do manage to cobble together something approaching "masterpiece" it's because I'm angry. After all, that's when it tends to get funny.
But I digress.
One cannot go through life angry all the time, nor should one use anger as their sole source of inspiration. That's probably not very healthy. I could rail against liberals and terrorists all day (and often do), but in the end, I sometimes have a problem with getting my message across. So, I have decided that today I will present three articles from various sources that pretty much sum up my idea of what the "Other Side" in this election stands for, and why they're view of the War on Terror, and the world, is wrong.
First, we present the wonderful Mark Steyn, and his view of the personalities involved in Bush bashing:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;sessionid=IYZK5XUSBXWFBQFIQMGCM5OAVCBQUJVC?xml=/opinion/2004/09/07/do0702.xml
Next, we have the ever-eloquent Jame Lileks, and his view about what democrats find important, and why it doesn't wash with Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public:
http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/04/0904/090604.html
And finally, from across the pond, we have Melanie Phillips, who I had never heard of before I found this little tidbit, but I can guarentee you that I will be looking for more of her stuff:
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles/archives/000787.html
Three views on three vital areas of interest in the coming election, and three views which show the gaping divide between conservative/republican and democrat/world-socialist thought.
Sunday, September 05, 2004
A New Age in Terrorism?
In the past two weeks, we've seen terrorists attack Russia (a school held hostage, two airliners blasted out of the sky) and France (where two journalists are awaiting their possible appointment with the Turbaned Guillitine). Now, unless terrorists are like democrats, I can't figure out just why it is that they are picking on countries and regimes that formerly fell all over themselves to support them. They are engaged in biting the hands that used to feed them.
I'm sure the Russians, back in the heady days of the Soviet Union, wrote checks to just about any bunch of bomb-throwing, plane-hijacking, Jew and democracy-hatingmiscreants that somehow served the cause of "World Socialism", or just made things somewhat uncomfortable for the West, in general. Red Brigades, Baader-Meinhoff, the IRA, the PLO and a littany of Islamic whackjobs used to have direct lines to the KGB. Russia, more recently, stonewalled U.S. efforts in the United Nations to go to war against Iraq and against sanctions of the Hussein regime in the wake of the first Gulf War.
France, on the other hand, took the tact that anything that complicated American life was good for France. So, France followed Russia in the U.N., did business with Hussein, Khadafy, the Mullahs, and everyone else the U.S. wouldn't, even if it violated the sacred code of "U.N. Sanctions", and indirectly, helped the terrorists and the regimes that supported them.
Both have, I should hope, learned their lesson.
I do not wish a 9/11 on the people of either country. I was physically sick at the news (and the pictures) of Russian schoolchildren shot in the back. French journalists are another story, but then again, giving the people in question the benefit of the doubt, they had a job to do,and that's no excuse for them having been kidnapped.
However, to the Russian and Frech governments, I say, you reaped what you have sown.
American resolve, in my opinion, is forcing the terrorists to seek other ways to deal in death, and since bombing Uncle Sam produces diminishing returns (just ask the Taliban and Saddam), they are now turning their attention to places that don't show the same kind of resolve. Spain was an example.
Maybe now the French, Russians, Germans, et. al, will finally understand what their "nuanced Kerry-like" worldview has denied them all this time: an understanding of just what kind of folks we're dealing with here. These are not people fighting for political rights. These are not men engaged in a war for cultural, economic or political parity. These are people intent on the destruction of western culture as a whole. It doesn't matter to them whether they hit New York, Moscow, Paris or Madrid --- what matters is that somewhere, an infidel westerner is killed. Preferably a lot of them.
And the more sickening the attack, the more depraved the actions of the "other side" in this war, the more they enjoy it. Knocking down office buildings not good enough? Then bomb a commuter train. Still not good enough? Then randomly snatch people from the streets and behead them for public consumption. Still not getting through to these folks? Then hold 1,500 children hostage for three days and shoot them in the back.
Perhaps the French and the Russians will get on board now, which, ultimately is better for all involved. But did it require, at this writing, 350 dead children to have to prove the point that if you allow a terrorist a freepass, he gets even more brazen and disgusting the next time around?
Forget politics. This is not about politics. It's a struggle to the death and the West had better win it.
In the past two weeks, we've seen terrorists attack Russia (a school held hostage, two airliners blasted out of the sky) and France (where two journalists are awaiting their possible appointment with the Turbaned Guillitine). Now, unless terrorists are like democrats, I can't figure out just why it is that they are picking on countries and regimes that formerly fell all over themselves to support them. They are engaged in biting the hands that used to feed them.
I'm sure the Russians, back in the heady days of the Soviet Union, wrote checks to just about any bunch of bomb-throwing, plane-hijacking, Jew and democracy-hatingmiscreants that somehow served the cause of "World Socialism", or just made things somewhat uncomfortable for the West, in general. Red Brigades, Baader-Meinhoff, the IRA, the PLO and a littany of Islamic whackjobs used to have direct lines to the KGB. Russia, more recently, stonewalled U.S. efforts in the United Nations to go to war against Iraq and against sanctions of the Hussein regime in the wake of the first Gulf War.
France, on the other hand, took the tact that anything that complicated American life was good for France. So, France followed Russia in the U.N., did business with Hussein, Khadafy, the Mullahs, and everyone else the U.S. wouldn't, even if it violated the sacred code of "U.N. Sanctions", and indirectly, helped the terrorists and the regimes that supported them.
Both have, I should hope, learned their lesson.
I do not wish a 9/11 on the people of either country. I was physically sick at the news (and the pictures) of Russian schoolchildren shot in the back. French journalists are another story, but then again, giving the people in question the benefit of the doubt, they had a job to do,and that's no excuse for them having been kidnapped.
However, to the Russian and Frech governments, I say, you reaped what you have sown.
American resolve, in my opinion, is forcing the terrorists to seek other ways to deal in death, and since bombing Uncle Sam produces diminishing returns (just ask the Taliban and Saddam), they are now turning their attention to places that don't show the same kind of resolve. Spain was an example.
Maybe now the French, Russians, Germans, et. al, will finally understand what their "nuanced Kerry-like" worldview has denied them all this time: an understanding of just what kind of folks we're dealing with here. These are not people fighting for political rights. These are not men engaged in a war for cultural, economic or political parity. These are people intent on the destruction of western culture as a whole. It doesn't matter to them whether they hit New York, Moscow, Paris or Madrid --- what matters is that somewhere, an infidel westerner is killed. Preferably a lot of them.
And the more sickening the attack, the more depraved the actions of the "other side" in this war, the more they enjoy it. Knocking down office buildings not good enough? Then bomb a commuter train. Still not good enough? Then randomly snatch people from the streets and behead them for public consumption. Still not getting through to these folks? Then hold 1,500 children hostage for three days and shoot them in the back.
Perhaps the French and the Russians will get on board now, which, ultimately is better for all involved. But did it require, at this writing, 350 dead children to have to prove the point that if you allow a terrorist a freepass, he gets even more brazen and disgusting the next time around?
Forget politics. This is not about politics. It's a struggle to the death and the West had better win it.
Bloggus Interruptus...
I've been sorta-kinda busy over a Stopdemocrats.com, so I have sorely neglected my own site. I apologize to the three of you that actually read this. I've got two things to say about that site:
1. It will probably disappear right after the election.
2. No one is reading it, as far as I can tell.
However, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I was trying it out to see what kind of exposure I would get, and the answer is: up until now, none. Too bad, because I've posted some really good stuff there, and for some reason, I am not allowed to copy it here.
So, if you've missed me, head on over to stopdemocrats.com, bump up the hit numbers and, read what I've been screaming for the past two weeks. You'll find me under "Commentary".
I've been sorta-kinda busy over a Stopdemocrats.com, so I have sorely neglected my own site. I apologize to the three of you that actually read this. I've got two things to say about that site:
1. It will probably disappear right after the election.
2. No one is reading it, as far as I can tell.
However, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I was trying it out to see what kind of exposure I would get, and the answer is: up until now, none. Too bad, because I've posted some really good stuff there, and for some reason, I am not allowed to copy it here.
So, if you've missed me, head on over to stopdemocrats.com, bump up the hit numbers and, read what I've been screaming for the past two weeks. You'll find me under "Commentary".
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