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Historical Significance

(from a reader – source not confirmed)

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 after 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 was a terrorist!   Saddam 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 a gain . . 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 somebody 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 and an attorney living in Northern

California that has studied the Middle Eastern culture and religion

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