Blogs For Victory

Michael Ledeen points out that Obama’s quest for peace risks a war:

…We are making nice, we are unilaterally and preemptively granting them all manner of concessions, from lifting arms embargoes to Syria and Iran, to sending high-level envoys to talk to the Syrian dictator and (in the case of the unfortunate Kerry, who appears to be competing with Hillary, Mitchell and Holbrooke for the Neville Chamberlain award of 2009) hand carrying love notes from Hamas to President Obama. Who are our allies? Israel, Afghanistan and Iraq. What are we doing for them? Talking tough about Israel, threatening a yet-to-be-formed government with God-knows-what if it doesn’t make nice to its enemies, speeding up our withdrawal from Iraq, and openly dithering about the definition of our mission in Afghanistan.

If this continues, it is only a matter of time before the attacks against us and our friends and allies increase…

…It would not surprise me, in such circumstances, whether in response to an Iranian nuclear test, or a big terrorist attack on Washington, or London, or Rome, or Paris, to see an administration like this one respond massively. Just to demonstrate that we’re not wimps, that we won’t take it. And that this president is worthy of reelection.

Here, now, is something I wrote back in 2002 entitled “20th Century Victims of Peace”:

1920 – Winston Churchill urges Anglo-French to unite to destroy the Bolshevik regime; Churchill is derided as a “war monger”, trumping up phony fears of the Reds in order to improve his political situation at home. Wiser heads prevail, and the Bolsheviks gain full control of Russia – by 1940, this bit of wisdom in preserving the peace and refusing to be stampeded into pre-emptive action works its blessing; at least 20 million and maybe as many as 30 million Russians, Poles, Tatars, Uzbeks, Georgians, Chechens, Ukrainians, etc are murdered by the Bolshevik regime (this death toll is at least as much, and perhaps 50% larger, than the death toll in the First World War).

1932 – Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, watching as Japan attacks China and annexes a large portion of Manchuria, opined to President Hoover that we should run a “calculated risk of war” with Japan by cutting off their oil and scrap iron purchases in the United States. Stimson felt that Japan’s aggression, unchecked, would lead to a larger war, more deadly for America, in the future. As usual, wiser heads prevailed – no move was made, Japan got a hold of Manchuria and its resources and proceeded, year by year, to take ever more of China under its control – just in China alone, the death toll is estimated at 20 million from 1932 to 1945; when you add in the number of deaths experienced in other parts of Asia and around the Pacific when Stimson’s foreseen war did erupt in 1941, you can once again thank God that people preferred peace to war in 1932.

1934 – Winston Churchill, being one of the few western politicians who actually read Mein Kampf, raises the alarm about Hitler’s recently installed regime in Germany – he points out that Hitler is unstable, ruthless and has promised to bring all Germans under the rule of his new Reich. Churchill is insulted in the worst possible terms – actually accused of wanting a World War just so he can rise politically. Wiser heads point out that the “root cause” of German bellicosity is an inferiority complex added to the humiliations the Germans felt about losing the First World War. This bit of wisdom allows Hitler time to build his power to the point where he can unleash both World War Two and the Holocaust – death toll, in the range of 40 million in the European area.

1948 – Stalin’s USSR in direct contravention of agreements entered into with the United States and Great Britain, blockades the city of Berlin. This challenge to post-war agreements is responded to. Some advocated going to war over Berlin, figuring that the aggressive nature of the USSR was manifest and that defeating them in 1948, when they were still exhausted from World War Two, would be easier than waiting to fight them some other day in the future, when they’d only be stronger. Others figured it would be better if we could preserve peace by just trying to get Stalin to play nice about Berlin. Wiser heads, you guessed it, prevailed – although US action ended the Berlin blockade, failure to take decisive, final action against the USSR allowed it to continue – in time to get nuclear weapons, in time to spread war and misery around the world in the service of its communist ideals.

1950 – In response to the unprovoked aggression by North Korea’s communist regime against South Korea, we engage in war to expel them from the South; Douglas MacArthur, perceiving that the war was actually hatched in Peking and Moscow advocates a vigorous response, not limiting ourselves to the narrow goal of re-establishing the status quo ante in Korea. The wisdom of the world is brought to bear (after all, MacArthur is just a war-mongering alarmist who does not understand the complexities of the situation) – and stalemate is accepted. The US accepts 35,000 dead, the Koreans suffer at least a million – Mao’s regime is preserved by our inaction, and goes on over the following 20 years to murder 20 to 40 million of its own people.

1964 – Faced with a growing crisis in Vietnam, the United States determines that intervention by US forces is necessary; this is done with great wisdom – we aver from the start that we are not there to secure victory, but only to prevent South Vietnamese defeat. This wonderful program – designed to preserve the peace and prevent a widening of the war – ends up with a couple million Vietnamese dead, the South Vietnamese regime dissolved and 55,000 Americans gone to their deaths fruitlessly.

So – remember people, whenever there is a bad situation out there, advocate peace. What is always needed is a willingness to talk to the enemy and try to understand his point of view. Remember, it is Judeo-Christian civilization in general and the United States in particular which is the actual problem. If we’d only break out of our narrow-minded bigotry and understand the Islamists and the tyrants, they’d come to forgive us and thus be willing to make peace. Whatever else happens, make sure that no action is taken to get at the source of the evil, because if you do so not enough people will die at a later date – the blood-lust of the peace movement must be filled, yearly and forever