A Goy and his Blog

Varifrank has posted something I think everyone ought to read – especially those who swill at various America-hating troughs for their daily dose of how the US – no, the President himself – is “losing” in Iraq. Please check it out. And when you do, note that the phenomenon discussed there didn’t happen only once following WWII, but twice – on two fronts, amid two very different cultures.

Once they had completely crushed the Third Reich and the Empire of Japan, the Allies of post-1945 did not give the sovereign nations of Germany and Japan back to their respective peoples by turning a blind eye to the ideologies that had arrogated those countries. They recognized the Nazi insanity, that led to the Holocaust, for what it was. They recognized the Japanese Imperial hubris, that led to the Nanking Massacre and ultimate extermination of between 4,000,000 and 10,000,000 Chinese civilians and POWs, for what it was.

These ideologies were never destroyed, per se. They were replaced.

The Allies offered – and helped the Germans and the Japanese to build – alternatives to the Nazi and Imperialist ideologies. And the peaceful, productive histories of Germany and Japan since 1945 suggest that those alternatives were, while perhaps not perfect, infinitely better. Perhaps more importantly, those alternatives ultimately proved perfectly compatible with the Japanese and German cultures – including the historical traditions and the religious beliefs – in which they have flourished.

It’s easy to forget that at least part of what made hateful regimes like the Nazis possible was the relatively deafening silence from the rest of the world as they grew in power – even as countries were being invaded and millions were being slaughtered and, yes, while true weapons of mass destruction were being developed by Hitler for the purpose of global conquest. Early on, too few voices spoke out to acknowledge the destructive ideologies at the core of Hitler’s and Tojo’s plans for the civilized world. And most of the civilized world paid the price for that refusal, to one degree or another.

Some of the loudest voices in today’s press and much of on-line media seem more than averse to the sort of plain speaking that led the Allies to help rebuild Germany and Japan after the destruction of the Nazi and the Imperial forces. Instead, these voices prefer political “correctness”, innuendo, hyperbole and self-serving accusations from anonymous, unaccountable sources. They prefer backbiting, armchair analysis, erroneous assumption and the sort of recrimination only possible when armed with 20/20 hindsight. Far too few voices are willing to honestly confront the unknowns, inevitable missteps, isolated insubordination and well-known (to students of history) ugliness that are all a part of War. No military commander can see the future, but the overwhelming tone of the American and World press today demands that very ability while at the same time demanding Unreal Perfection from the troops and chain-of-command fighting the war itself. Anything less is painted as a pervading incompetence, failure, hypocrisy or willful deceit.

To stop briefly on this note, I believe it’s vital to hold one’s government and one’s armed forces to the highest standards practicable in wartime. And dissent – when tempered with reason as opposed to being driven by partisan hysteria – is vital to any self-governing culture. Few would disagree with these premises. It is quite another thing, however, to actively work for the military defeat of one’s own government. Make no mistake – that is exactly what some American voices espouse today. IMHO, these people should also be held to the highest standards in wartime, and made accountable for their treasonous actions when those actions either directly or indirectly place our fighting forces in greater harm’s way by enriching, supporting or emboldening the enemy. But that’s not happening. (UPDATE: Captain Ed discusses a particularly pernicious example of this phenomenon from someone who really, really ought to know better. Then, I suppose I should thank Jimmy for providing such timely validation of this unfortunate observation. He’s certainly not good for anything else.)

Much has been written about the strategy behind the three-birds-with-one-stone approach of (1) ousting a homicidal tyrant while at the same time (2) establishing a foothold for a new ideology in the Middle East and (3) bringing the fight to the terrorists and the culturally retarded milieu that has allowed them to flourish. Little of that strategy has been made clear to the American People, much less the rest of the world. The reasons for this are twofold, as I see it.

First, simply, one doesn’t broadcast one’s military strategy to one’s enemy ahead of a response to attack. And the United States has been responding to attack from islamist terrorists since long before September 11, 2001.

Second, now that this strategy is succeeding, now that al Qaeda and the Taliban have been neutralized in Afghanistan, now that the link between Saddam and al Qaeda has been severed, now that millions in Syrian kickbacks from the Oil-For-Food Programme are no longer flowing into terrorists’ offshore accounts, now that Iraqis have held their first election, and surrounding countries – Lebanon, Egypt, Iran – are feeling the pangs of the desire for self-government – now that all of these things are happening, enormous efforts are being exerted to downplay the validity of that strategy, and paint it’s lynchpin – Iraq’s inevitably difficult recovery from decades of homicidal tyranny – with the false colors of illegitimacy and “quagmire”. I believe that’s part of the reason we see no more Ernie Pyles in “mainstream” journalism, hijacked as it seems to be by a radical, vengeful element of the Democratic party which still believes “Gore Won”.

Incessant press and partisan hysteria has focused on “lies” used to justify the liberation of Iraq – lies that were apparently held as truth by every major intelligence agency in the world. Additional press and partisan hysteria has focused on isolated elements of the war itself, specifically Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay – despite the fact that while these issues certainly need to be addressed, they are the minutiae of war. Still more press and partisan hysteria seeks to paint recent terrorism in the UK as something caused by the liberation of Iraq while conveniently and disingenuously ignoring the terrorist acts stretching as far back as 1979.

All of this hysteria and its attendant focus on scandals, investigations, Whatever-gates and endless, breast-beating punditry, whether intentionally or not, works toward one major global detriment. That detriment comprises the destructive effects of refusing to acknowledge the insane ideology espoused by Muslims who seek to justify the slaughter of other Muslims in the name of jihad in pursuit of global submission to Allah. This ideology is no different from the insanity used to justify the slaughter of German Jews by other Germans or the slaughter of Asians in China by Asians from Japan.

The cultures of Germany and Japan recovered from the distorted ideologies responsible for the last World War. They did so, and much more, because those who defeated them in war did not enslave them, or plunder their treasures or abandon them to allow new insane ideologues to convince them to repeat their previous mistakes.

The war in Iraq is over. Saddam lost. Mission accomplished. Now we move to the next phase – the replacement of a murderous, insane ideology with one that the Islamic world can use to flourish in peace. That alternative is alluded to by acknowledgements such as that of Victor Hanson:

There are a million Muslims in Israel — the mother of all evils in the radical Islamic mind. Yet very few have turned themselves into global jihadists, and hundreds are not blowing themselves up daily in Tel Aviv, much less in London or New York. Why? Perhaps the twofold knowledge that they have rights in Israel not found in the Arab world that they don’t wish to forfeit, and they are surrounded by people who would not tolerate their terrorism.

The question in my mind, looking back at the irrefutable historical precedents of Japan and Germany, is why there seems to be an overabundance of extremely vocal opponents to the pursuit of that alternative.