Saturday, July 07, 2007

The Face of the Beast

During the last several decades a dangerous habit of designating the movement de jour as a "war" has come into vogue. Some of the examples of this tendency would include the "wars" on poverty, crime, drugs, hunger, homelessness, terrorism and the so called "Cold War". I would suspect that those who tout these projects as wars have contributed to the trivialization of the most serious event that a society can undertake. To wit: war. As a result, the concept and hideousness of war as well as various cultural philosophies of waging it have been obscured until recently from those of us fortunate enough to reside in the relative security of western culture. Take for example the recent exposure to our visual senses of such outrages as the video beheading of an abducted western journalist or the stoning/stomping to death of a young woman in northern Iraq or this recent dispatch by Michael Yon from a village north of Baghdad:
They recruited boys born during the years 1991, 92 and 93 who were each given weapons, including pistols, a bicycle and a phone (with phone cards paid) and a salary of $100 per month, all courtesy of al Qaeda. These boys were used for kidnapping, torturing and murdering people.

At first, he said, they would only target Shia, but over time the new al Qaeda directed attacks against Sunni, and then anyone who thought differently. The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11 years old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, “What did he say?” Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family.

You might wish to visualize these events whenever one of our "leaders" begins to wax eloquent on the benefits of "multiculturalism".

Here at home, we face maddening calls to extend to captured terrorists the legal rights enjoyed by American citizens. Stop and think about that - really think about it. We're bleeding in multiple wars, and we want to send in the lawyers?

Perhaps the biggest lie told since 9/11 is that we must wage war according to our values. If we'd tried that in World War II, we'd still be fighting in the Philippines and struggling to reach the Rhine. In war, [not the faux wars faught since 1950] the point is to win. Nothing else matters. And you don't get credit for manners.

Our global position isn't eroding because we're stuck in Iraq or because Europeans are mad at us (they're always mad at us). We're losing ground because our leaders, Democrat and Republican, still don't believe we're at war. They live in perfect safety and don't really care if you or your children die, as long as you vote for them.

If roadside bombs were going off on Capitol Hill, we'd punish Iran ferociously and stop treating captured terrorists like white-collar crooks. But as long as the IEDs only kill and cripple our soldiers and Marines, neither political party gives a damn.

That pretty well sums up the pass to which we have come. Τhe arrows launched at our culture by its enemies both at home and abroad have become so numerous as to have, in the words of Xerxes: "blotted out the sun". We are truly "Fighting in the Shade"

thanks to: ¡No Pasarán!
cross posted at: Eternity Road

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

3 comments:

J. Sullivan said...

Michael Yon's reports are fequently a rollercoaster ride for me. On the one hand they are utterly terrifying, especially when I read of the atrocities like those mentioned here.

On the other hand, I find the tales of heroism on the part of the American and British troops as well as the Iraqi army and civilians to be fortifying to the soul. I hope their's is enough.

KG said...

The war we need to win is right here at home, in various Western countries. Until we can get rid of the leftist PC propaganda and face the problems of multiculturalism squarely we'll continue to try and beat back the flood.

Rose said...

Thanks for the post, I have put it in my permanent links under "weapons of mass destruction."