As our country loses its nerve, some things to ponder. A long read but worth
it.
Have a great day.
Subject: Some things to consider
> This article by Raymond Kraft should give each of us pause for
> enlightenment and concern.
>
> SOME OF YOU ARE NOT OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER THAT NEARLY EVERY FAMILY IN
> AMERICA WAS GROSSLY AFFECTED BY WW II. MOST OF YOU DON'T REMEMBER THE
> RATIONING OF MEAT, SHOES, GASOLINE, AND SUGAR. NO TIRES FOR OUR
> AUTOMOBILES, AND A SPEED LIMIT OF 35 MILES AN HOUR ON THE ROAD, NOT TO
> MENTION, NO NEW AUTOMOBILES. READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT HOW WE WOULD REACT
> TO BEING TAKEN
> OVER BY FOREIGNERS IN 2007.
>
> This is an EXCELLENT essay . Well thought out and presented.
> ____________________________________________________
> Historical Significance
> Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of
> Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat. The
> Nazis had sunk more than 400 British ships in their convoys between
> England and America taking food and war materials.
>
> At that time the US was in an isolationist, pacifist mood, and
> most Americans wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian war.
>
> Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage
> Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following
> day on Germany, who had not yet attacked us. It was a dicey thing. We
> had few allies.
>
> France was not an ally, as the Vichy government of France quickly
> aligned itself with its German occupiers. Germany was certainly not an
> ally, as Hitler was intent on setting up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe.
> Japan was not an ally, as it was well on its way to owning and
> controlling all of Asia.
>
> Together, Japan and Germany had long-range plans of invading
> Canada and Mexico, as launching pads to get into the United States over
> our northern and southern borders, after they finished gaining control
> of Asia and Europe.
>
> America's only allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland,
> Canada, Australia, and Russia. That was about it, all of Europe, from
> Norway to Italy (except Russia in the East) was already under the Nazi
> heel.
>
> The US was certainly not prepared for war. The US had drastically
> downgraded most of its military forces after WW I because of the
> depression, so that at the outbreak of WW II, Army units were training
> with broomsticks because they didn't have guns, and cars with "tank"
> painted on the doors because they didn't have real tanks. A huge chunk
> of our Navy had just been sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor.
>
> Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of
> $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England (that was actually
> the property of Belgium) given by Belgium to England to carry on the
> war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler (a little known fact).
>
> Actually, Belgium surrendered on one day, because it was unable to
> oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble
> the next day just to prove they could.
>
> Britain had already been holding out for two years in the face of
> staggering losses and the near decimation of its Royal Air Force in the
> Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only
> because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively
> minor threat that could be dealt with later. Hitler first turned his
> attention to Russia, in the late summer of 1940 at a time when England
> was on the verge of collapse.
>
> Ironically, Russia saved America's butt by putting up a desperate
> fight for two years, until the US got geared up to begin hammering away
> at Germany .
>
> Russia lost something like 24,000,000 people in the sieges of
> Stalingrad and Moscow alone . . . 90% of them from cold and starvation,
> mostly civilians, but also more than a 1,000,000 soldiers.
>
> Had Russia surrendered, Hitler would have been able to focus his
> entire war effort against the Brits, then America. If that had
> happened, the Nazis could possibly have won the war.
>
> All of this has been brought out to illustrate that turning points
> in history are often dicey things. Now, we find ourselves at another
> one of those key moments in history.
>
> There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or
> wants, and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear,
> biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world.
>
> The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in
> Kaffiyahs -- they believe that Islam, a radically conservative form of
> Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then
> Europe, then the world. To them, all who do not bow to their will of
> thinking should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish
> the Holocaust, destroy Israel, and purge the world of Jews. This is
> their mantra (goal).
>
> There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East -- for the
> most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its
> Inquisition and its Reformation, but it is not yet known which side will
> win -- the Inquisitors, or the Reformationists.
>
> If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will
> control the Middle East, the OPEC oil, and the US, European, and Asian
> economies.
>
> The techno-industrial economies will be at the mercy of OPEC -- not an
> OPEC
> dominated by the educated, rational Saudis of today, but an
> OPEC dominated by the Jihadis. Do you want gas in your car? Do you
> want heating oil next winter? Do you want the dollar to be worth
> anything? You had better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses,
> and the Islamic Reformation wins.
>
> If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims
> who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, live in
> peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into
> the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade
> away. A moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.
>
> We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to
> fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda
> and the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. We
> can't do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the
> battle at a time and place of our choosing . . . . . . . . in Iraq .
> Not in New York , not in London , or Paris or Berlin , but in Iraq ,
> where we are doing two important things:.
>
> (1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was
> directly involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack or not, it is undisputed
> that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for
> decades. Saddam is a terrorist! Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass
> destruction, responsible for the deaths of probably more than a
> 1,000,000 Iraqis and 2,000,000 Iranians .
>
> (2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with
> Islamic terrorism in Iraq . We have focused the battle. We are killing
> bad people, and the ones we get there we won't have to get here. We
> also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq, which
> will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East,
> and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the
> Middle East for as long as it is needed.
>
> WW II, the war with the Japanese and German Nazis, really began
> with a "whimper" in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor. It
> began with the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for fourteen
> years before the US joined it. It officially ended in 1945 -- a 17 year
> war -- and was followed by another decade of US occupation in Germany
> and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own
> again; a 27 year war.
>
> WW II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a
> full year's GDP -- adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion
> dollars. WW II cost America more than 400,000 soldiers killed in action,
> and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.
>
> The Iraq war has, so far, cost the United States about
> $160,000,000,000, which is roughly what the 9/11 terrorist attack cost
> New York. It has also cost about 3,000 American lives, which is roughly
> equivalent to lives that the Jihad killed (within the United States) in
> the 9/11 terrorist attack.
>
> The cost of not fighting and winning WW II would have been
> unimaginably greater -- a world dominated by Japanese Imperialism and
> German Nazism.
>
> This is not a 60- Minutes TV show, or a 2-hour movie in which
> everything comes out okay. The real world is not like that. It is
> messy, uncertain, and sometimes bloody and ugly. It always has been,
> and probably always will be.
>
> The bottom line is that we will have to deal with Islamic
> terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away if
> we ignore it.>
> If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq,
> then we have an ally, like England, in the Middle East, a platform,
> from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East.
> The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative
> civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates to
> conquer the world.
>
> The Iraq War is merely another battle in this ancient and never
> ending war. Now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to
> get nuclear weapons; unless some body prevents them from getting them.
>
> We have four options:>
> 1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.
>
>
> 2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons
> (which may be as early as next year, if Iran's progress on nuclear
> weapons is what Iran claims it is).
>
>
> 3 We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the
> Middle East now, in Europe in the next few years or decades, and
> ultimately in America . OR
>
> 4. We can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the
> Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has
> dominated France and Germany and possibly most of the rest of Europe.
> It will, of course, be more dangerous, more expensive, and much
> bloodier.>
> If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your
> children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the
> Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.
>
> The history of the world is the history of civilization clashes,
> cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society
> and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win.
>> Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The
> pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.> Remember, perspective is every thing, and America 's schools teach
> too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young
> American mind.>
> The Cold War lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall
> came down in 1989; forty-two years!
>
> Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting
> Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany!
>
> World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year
> occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan . World
> War II resulted in the death of more than 50,000,000 people, maybe more
> than 100,000,000 people, depending on which estimates you accept.
>
> The US has taken more than 3,000 killed in action in Iraq . The
> US took more than 4 ,000 killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944,
> the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi
> Imperialism.
>
> In WW II the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week -- for four years. Most
> of the individual battles of WW II lost more Americans than the entire
> Iraq war has done so far.
>
> The stakes are at least as high. A world dominated by
> representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal
> freedoms . . or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement,
> by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law)
>
> It's difficult to understand why the average American does not
> grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom,
> but evidently not for Iraqis.
>
> "Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate here in America ,
> where it's safe.
>
> Why don't we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran , Syria ,
> Iraq , Sudan , North Korea , in the places that really need peace
> activism the most? I'll tell you why! They would be killed!
>
> The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil
> rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc . , but if the Jihad
> wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human
> rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc.
>
> Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the
> side of their own worst enemy!
>
> _______________________________________________________
> Raymond S. Kraft is a writer living in Northern California that
> has studied the Middle Eastern culture and religion .
>
> Please consider passing along copies of this article to students
> in high school, college and university as it contains information about
> the American past that is very meaningful today -- history about America
> that very likely is completely unknown by them (and their instructors,
> too). By being denied the facts of our history, they are at a decided
> disadvantage when it comes to reasoning and thinking through the issues
> of today. They are prime targets for misinformation campaigns beamed at
> enlisting them in causes and beliefs that are special interest agenda
> driven.
>
>