Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Death By A Thousand Cuts


In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.


- Lt. Colonel John McCrae, Canadian Army Medical Corps(1872-1918)



The poem above is a product of World War One, the great scar of history that changed the world and differentiated between ages. As with most such times, many of the men and women involved were aware of this as much as those who came after them and looked backwards.

We live in such times today, and we were given a reminder a few short days ago.

For all our protestations and manipulation to avoid war,to forget, to appear humane and civilized, to allow our leaders to label it as something other than what it is, the war has come to us. In fact, it's been coming to us for eight years and many of us have yet to admit it.

When I first found out about Major Malik Nadal Hasan gunning down his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood while shouting "Allahu Akbar" on November 5th, I immediately recognized this as the jihad attack it was and wrote that that when the dots were connected, there would be a Saudi funded mosque and a radical imam in the picture. There always is.

I was right. And yet, the obvious questions remain floating in the wind, unsaid, like a foul odor polite society avoids mentioning.

Fort Hood makes me angry,because it was totally unnecessary. Those thirteen men and women need not have died, and the wounded should have remained whole. The dead were slain by fear, not in themselves but in us.

That climate of fear was generated by our consistent refusal to look at what we fight in the face or to give it its proper name. Our current president won't even admit that we are in a war at all or that jihadists are any danger to us , and has his attorney general busily working on legally prosecuting some of the men who successfully interrogated and prosecuted jihadis during the last eight years and at least kept them mostly at bay.

And the only thing President Obama's been willing to say to the nation about what happened at Fort Hood is to avoid mentioning 'Muslim' or 'Islam' and to tell us that even though we had a Muslim army officer with violent, jihadist views that were apparently well known to both the FBI and the military shooting up a military facility, 'we don't know all the facts.'

He operates in exactly the same way with Iran, avoiding the unpleasant choices of dealing with a nation in the process of obtaining nuclear weapons that openly states it is at war with The Great Satan, kills our warriors whenever it can,supports and nurtures jihad and Islamic fascism.

This is denial writ large.

With that sort of direction from the top down, is it any wonder that our FBI looked the other way? That our military establishment covered for Hassan even though he expressed blatantly disloyal sentiments in violation of his oath of service and openly let them know where his loyalties lie?

And it still goes on. Both Army chief of Staff General George Casey and head of the grossly misnamed Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano fell all over themselves to let us and the Muslim world know that they are primarily concerned with a 'backlash' against Muslims and avoiding any connection of the events at Fort Hood with Islamism rather than getting to the root causes of what happened to prevent it from occuring again.

As I write this,our military and our CIA are involved in a major push to seek translators for Farsi and Arabic and recruits in Dearborn, Michigan, also known as Dearbornistan. The area is filled with Shi'ite Hezbollah supporters of questionable loyalties,yet the CIA and the military concentrate their efforts here and refuse to seek out or hire loyal Chaldean Christians, Armenians or Jews in places like Los Angeles or New York who speak and write Farsi and Arabic perfectly and would be more than willing to serve their country. Diversity uber alles, but some flavors of diversity apparently trump others.

This kind of suicidal refusal to look at reality was aided and abetted by a president who lied to us eight years ago when he told us we were fighting 'terror' and a handful of fanatics rather than an established ideology adhered to by a significant part of the Muslim world, the ummah. That ideology was and is nurtured and promoted by certain nation states, some of whom who were otherwise nice to do business with and especially generous to politicians and government figures when they retired, provided they were willing to look the other way on certain matters.

And it is nurtured in our country, given legitimacy by the very people we trust to lead and protect the nation.

Because jihad's ideology now has a home in many mosques here and around the world, major outside involvement is no longer necessary. Tools like Hasan can be warped and nurtured in place like land mines set to go off. It's no accident that al-Qaeda and The Muslim Brotherhood both advise their adherents to infiltrate the military and law enforcement. It is part of their strategy to destroy us from within, and even a cursory study of Islamist literature on the subject will tell you that.

We've decide to be like Gulliver, tied down by a bunch of 7th century lilliputian savages as they inflict the death of a thousand cuts on us. Except unlike Gulliver,we seem committed to ignore the problem and remain tied down by choice.

I wonder how long this can continue, and how much more blood will have to be spilled before we realize it.

Will we break faith with the men and women who died at Fort Hood, in Kandahar, in Falujah, in Little Rock,at the World Trade Center, at a thousand battlefields in this war and others through the ages? Will we pick up the torch?

Will we be as singleminded and unequivocal in defending our freedom and our posterity as those who think it their holy purpose to take it away? Or will we remain mired in illusion?

Something to ponder this Veteran's Day, as we sit in the crosshairs.

-selah-


4 comments:

Geoffrey Britain said...

Outstanding post with which I obviously agree.

There are a few areas however that you didn't cover and no analysis of Islamic terrorism is complete without acknowledging these factors.

There is also the matter of where all of this is leading us.

Everyone knows about Al Qaeda and the rogue nations which, of course supply the logistical and financial support, recruits and territorial refuge for terrorist organizations.

But no one seems to be mentioning the infrastructural support that is maintaining the rogue nations.

That support is being primarily supplied by Russia and China.

Russia is providing direct support, both in technology and in scientific guidance for Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Both Russia and China are blocking any effective UN security resolutions from being implemented against Iran, or any other rogue nation, in the UN.

They have maneuvered to place officials at the top of the UN's I.A.E.A. sympathetic to Iran, who are covering up, as much as possible, Iran's progress toward nuclear capability.

Russia directly and China indirectly are actively pursuing a geopolitical strategy facilitating Islamic Radicalism, so as to reduce American influence in a covert strategy of aggression against the US.

So where is this leading?

Once Iran gains the bomb, nuclear proliferation will literally explode across not only the ME but into Asia and belatedly into South America.

Once enough third world nations achieve nuclear capability it's only a matter of time till terrorists get their hands on nukes. Iran and other rogue nations will have 'credible deniabilty'.

The terrorists will use them and American cities will start to disappear. Most probably by attacking cities with port facilities. These are the ones most vulnerable from covert attack by sea and guaranteed to stop international shipping into the US.

When that happens, the economic consequences will be severe.

China, the Saudi's and the Russians hold 36% of the US debt. When the US experiences severe economic trauma from terrorist nuclear attack, the probability is that they will announce a 'loss of confidence' in our currency and essentially 'call' the notes.

That, coupled with the severe psychological impact of losing multiple US cities, along with an ongoing threat of nuclear terrorist attacks will result in the imposition of near permanent martial law within the US.

And the American 'experiment' in freedom will be essentially over.

That's where we're headed and with the social and geopolitical dynamics at work, it's as predictable as a Japanese Kabuki play.

Freedom Fighter said...

Thank you for the kind words,Geoffrey, and welcome to Joshua's Army.

(Oh, and I recommend to my valued readers that they check out Geoffrey's fine site),

There is one thing with your rather grim scenario that I disagree with..it assumes a continuation of the present status quo until disaster strikes.

First, I doubt that a major handoff of nukes to people like Hezbollah and the various Muslim Brotherhood salafist groups is imminent.

Iran would be the major source, and the Mullahs are not quite in a position where they're going to have nukes to spare for some time. Before they do,I almost guarantee that the Israelis are going to do something about it. They have no choice.

And BIN, the IAF will likely fly over Saudi territory with the Saudis turning a blind eye to do it.

Nor will Hezbollah and Hamas offer more than token retribution. The devastation visited on them by the IDF is still fresh in the mind, and they also realize that Ehud Olmert is not in charge anymore, and that this time the IDF will likely finish the job.

An Israeli strike would cripple the Mullah's plans and buy time,and before they can rebuild there is likely to be an entirely different political reality here in America.

I also don't see the Chinese or the Arabs 'calling' their debt.

The Sunni autocracies desperately need America to protect the status quo.And the doubts Obama has raised about US willingness to do that vis a vis Iran is one reason they have such a poor opinion of him.

That's also why they've been willing to essentially import inflation by continuing to trade oil in dollars, despite Iran's efforts to change this.

China's economy depends on exports to America and American and European investment in its manufacturing structure. Not would it be suicidal to bankrupt their best customer,it would also lead to them either forfeiting their investments here and to protectionism..and a likely Chinese economic depression they're ill equipped to handle.

The Chinese have also observed Obama's union connections and protectionist rhetoric, believe me.

Sometimes, the best protection against one's creditors is the huge amount of money one owes them!

Thanks for dropping by.

Regards,
Rob

Geoffrey Britain said...

"I doubt that a major handoff of nukes to people like Hezbollah and the various Muslim Brotherhood salafist groups is imminent."

I agree, I didn't mean to imply that it was imminent.

As for Israel, they have limited options. They haven't the logistical capability for any kind of a sustained conventional campaign and one or two strikes won't derail the Iranian program sufficiently. In my estimation Israel doesn't have the conventional capability to effectively cripple the Iranian program. I hope I'm wrong because the Israeli's are the only thing standing between Iran and the bomb.

Israel can't use nukes against Iranian facilities. It would be a Pyrrhic victory because it would be a public relations disaster; severe UN economic penalties, and the complete cutoff of all US aid would follow such an attack. Obama and the dems would welcome it.

The recent Israeli interception of Iranian weapons aboard a 'merchant' ship arguably makes the case that Hezbollah and Hamas have NOT given up, nor have they ever before, so I am doubtful that they are much intimidated by likely Israeli actions. They KNOW the Israeli's won't finish the job. As for a different government, while I like Netanyahu he is constrained by the left in his country as much as Bush was in ours.

I agree that it is somewhat problematic that the Saudi's would call their debt but they might move a substantial portion of it into euro's which, during an economic crises would greatly hurt us.

The Saudi's are funding terrorism over much of the world, it's an open question as to whether they are doing that more out of domestic pragmatism or shared ideology but into that calculus must be factored the Saudi's support for radical Wahhabism...

As for the Chinese, my suspicion is that China's communist leadership still values ideology over economics. Under the right conditions, as in an economic crises where calling their held US debt might hamstring the US economy, I could see them jumping on the opportunity to cripple an ideological foe and capitalism be damned.

I agree that for my predicted scenario to play out, any paradigm change is precluded. And that is certainly within the realm of possibility. We still have time to stop this train but it's going to take something major to do so.

Jason Gillman said...

I appreciate the time you spent on the post. My concern has been the same.

The eagerness to bend over backward in an attempt to seem "tolerant" irritates the hell out of me. The Chaldean population in Michigan should be sufficient for translation considerations, and frankly the recent event demonstrates with clarity that Islam is incompatible with areas of trust in our Republic.

Oh yeah.. I said it. While the "moderate" Muslim population waits on the sideline to see who is winning, we suffer from turning a blind eye to whole populations in Europe being ravaged from "change" within.

If it seemed to be a time to complete the Jihad, the moderates would side with the extremists, and help to convert or remove the infidels.