| YOU CAN NOT MAKE A THEOCRACY INTO A DEMOCRACY = RADICAL ISLAM IS THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNMENT IS RADICAL ISLAM. NO NEIGHBORING MUSLIM COUNTRY WILL EVER ALLOW A MUSLIM COUNTRY LIKE IRAQ TO BECOME A DEMOCRACY. The Flaw of Diplomacy Without Action | ||
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| Since the Democratic victory in the U.S. congressional elections, talk has increased of striking deals with Syria and Iran to solve the problems in Iraq. Do such deals work? Immediately after Democrats ran the table in U.S. congressional elections, the presidential administration announced there would be big changes. The White House chief of staff said the president wanted to “take a whole fresh look” at its war effort. An indication of what that “fresh look” might produce came in the expeditious replacement of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with Robert Gates. Gates is widely believed to favor a pragmatic policy, one that would include negotiating with Iran and Syria to fix Iraq’s problems. The president is also considering the recommendations of the congressionally appointed Iraq Study Group, which also recommends opening up talks with Syria and Iran. That’s “a whole fresh look”: accepting the election as a rebuke of the war policy and moving in a softer direction. Even the president’s British ally, Tony Blair, implied that a deal with Syria and Iran is a possibility. In essence, however, the administration has already been moving in this direction for a couple of years. The government that swiftly toppled dictatorships in Afghanistan and Iraq has taken every subsequent opportunity to demonstrate its firm commitment to multilateral diplomacy for solving problems. This approach has a consistent history of producing talk without action—always finding another option short of war. As a result, we are moving into an era when the enemies of Western civilization simply do not fear consequences for their actions. Hence, Hezbollah launches war against Israel; Hamas does everything but; North Korea freely tests long-range missiles and nuclear weapons; Iran spurns international pressure to refrain from doing the same; Iraqi and Afghan insurgents brazenly attack, emboldened by even surviving to fight another day. These are growing forces in the world that have proven time and again that they cannot be talked into giving up their destructive agendas. But the general policy in international bodies—and in American politics, with a couple of brief exceptions—is still to forego action for the sake of talk, indefinitely. In Civilization and Its Enemies, Lee Harris exposes the fundamental cause for this approach and explains why it is doomed to fail. It is the difference between one side wanting to do anything (short of dying) in order to hold on to things as they are, and the other side willing to do anything (including dying) for the sake of the cause. One side has everything to lose; the other side has nothing to lose. The diplomacy-at-all-costs mind does not comprehend the victory-at-all-costs mind. It is unwilling to believe any nation would be so crazy as to risk plunging the globe into large-scale war. Consider: World War i was called “the Great War” because people assumed it would end warfare forever; having witnessed the horrors of that conflict, it seemed unthinkable that anyone would ever tread that path again. Harris calls this idea “the Grand Illusion”—and Hitler exploited it masterfully. He “grasped the enormous opportunity that the aftermath of the Great War gave to any power that could plausibly threaten to bring about another great war. For as long as he could even imply such a threat, those who were not prepared to commit themselves to such a conflict … would be forced to compromise over issues that they would otherwise have been willing to fight for, if only they could have been certain that the fight would not immediately escalate into total war.” In other words, the party willing to risk even death has an incalculable advantage over the party willing to do anything to preserve life. And the nation unwilling to wage total war will always be forced to appease the nation that has no such fears. Thus a paradox: The more the world turns to instruments of international diplomacy and justice—the more that nations invest their confidence in the ability of such organizations to prevent large-scale war—the greater the rewards become for the nation, terrorist group or religious faction that is willing to risk total war. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stated his belief that world war must come before the Islamic messiah can return. He simply does not fear Armageddon. His willingness to risk having even nuclear bombs dropped on his country gives him a tremendous advantage: He can pursue his provocative agenda fearlessly. He will not change his course unless an outside power changes it for him, using force. International bodies such as the United Nations simply are not capable of action on that scale. They are designed to address problems through talk alone. America is embracing the same approach, retreating to the illusory bunker of multilateralism. By subjugating itself to the international community, the U.S. is effectively giving up the use of its military as a genuine instrument of national sovereignty. Given the fact that, in recent years, it has been the only nation willing to fight—even limited, small-scale battles against petty dictators—this trend is opening up a massive opportunity for any party eager to embrace war. And now, after an election that empowered the party that has incessantly criticized virtually every aspect of those campaigns the president did undertake, the trend will only accelerate. .......................................................................... LEVITICUS - CHAPTER 26, VERSE 19, 20, 21 |
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
THERES NO WILL TO WIN THIS WAR
