There’s a great deal of talk in various NATO countries about leaving the war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan; and it’s not just from the Left.
Canada’s Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper has recently stated that his decision on whether or not to continue a Canadian presence in Afghanistan after Canada’s NATO mandate expires will depend upon what the opposition decides.
I voted for Stephen Harper because I thought him to be a leader. How wrong I was. Leaders do what they believe to be right, opposed to what they think their opposition’s position should be.
And there is a new Prime Minister in England (Gordon Brown) who will not allow his Cabinet to use the word Moslem in reference to attacks on England carried out by Moslems. He won’t even allow his Cabinet to use the term War on TERROR. As if there is no War on TERROR.
The same is happening in the USA amongst members of Congress in both Houses from both Parties. Men and women with certain beliefs are willing to sacrifice those values on the alter of winning or losing votes.
But what about leading from the front and doing what is right, no matter how unpopular it might be?
One of the least popular politicians in the 20th century, before he was finally elected to power was Winston Churchill, who continuously pressed for war against the Nazis, knowing that anything but preparing to take them on would be sleepwalking to national suicide.
He was considered nothing short of an extremist, hardliner and warmonger.
Instead of heeding the message of Churchill and preparing for war, England chose instead to beg for peace. And then got war.
After World War Two, when the Allies were at their absolute strongest, and in an extraordinary tactical position to crush a badly depleted Russian military, Churchill once again raised his voice, this time, it was to press-on and defeat Communism.
Great American generals like George Patton stood with Churchill, and begged the USA to march forward and end Communism before it had a chance to become a world power.
But there were those without the will to do the right thing because of their own political gains, who chose rather, to stand back and allow this evil to flourish.
Because of these political cowards (men and women) who were too stupid or too frightened to recognize evil when they stared it in the face, Communism caused more death, destruction and despair over the entire planet, for a much longer time (50 years after WWII) than did the Nazis.
We are faced today with the same dilemma.
Do we choose to recognize Islam as the root of all that is evil in our War on TERROR, which is in every way the precursor to what very well might become World War Three? Or do we pretend that the threat of Islam is less than what it really is, and that we can beg for peace?
In this day and age, with history as our guide, and with an enemy that is absolutely transparent, even more so than were the Nazis and Communists, we are opting for a Chamberlain solution, opposed to the message from Churchill.
Once again, just as in the near past, we are condemning ourselves to a catastrophe greater than what most of us can imagine. Like Nazism and Communism, Islam will not go away if it is left alone.
It will not go out of vogue. It will not die under it’s own weight. And we will never be able to convince Islamists that we could ever coexist in harmony with mutual respect.
How could we?
How can we live beside a society that preaches hatred towards women, and that the only law is the law of their God?
But more!
How can we live beside a fundamentalist religion that believes there is but one God, his name is Allah, and that Mohammed is his Prophet, and that the world will not be complete until all who live upon it bow to Allah and believe without question in the message of Mohammed?
Just as we did not bring the war to the Nazis or to the Communists because we chose to ignore their message, we are making the same mistake by not bringing the war to the Islamists whose message is even clearer.
There is no question in my mind, none whatsoever, that Islam has in its own way declared war on the West, and we are begging them not to.
We are pretending that there can be a peaceful solution to a violent circumstance, where in essence, the only solution will be an extremely violent response from us upon them.
We will fight them; of that there is no question. Where though, is a different matter altogether.
One Comment
Howard’s actions, he writes, were the “legal, moral and right thing to do.”
The judgement that went against him — which led him to declare bankruptcy — was based upon the precedents in a 1988 Supreme Court decision called Ford v Quebec.
By contrast, the Ford Decision was NOT based on good legal arguments, was amoral, and most certainly the wrong thing for the court to do.
On all three counts, Howard stands head and shoulders above our Supreme Court.
Comments are closed.