Denial Here
Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of the New Republic, in The Good Fight:
Many liberals simply no longer see the war on terror as their fight. ... The liberalism emerging today denies that fighting global jihad should even be a priority.
Denial There
George Robertson, formerly secretary general of NATO (1999-2003) and British defense secretary (1997-99), in the Washington Post:
There is something rather surreal about the transatlantic world today. There are completely separate debates about Iraq ongoing on either side of the ocean and they simply don’t connect.
There is now an elected government—of all the factions—in Baghdad, and it is struggling to get a grip on security. But too many European leaders are simply standing back from what stares them in the face as if any spillover from Iraq was a problem for America and not for we Europeans.
As day follows night, if Iraq implodes then the shock waves will wash over European capitals long before they hit Washington or Chicago or San Francisco. In the world of globalization, the Middle East is our close back yard, and it is an abdication of truly historic proportions to say to the United States, “You broke it, so you fix it.”
And it will be a cynical betrayal of our populations’ interests and lives if certain countries do not help for fear that it might help the ratings of the current U.S. president.
This just only confirms my rather cataclysmic prognosis that many, many people will need to die before the governments of the west, including the U.S., become serious about protecting it’s citizens.
The idea that some significant portion of the population chooses to ignore terrorism reminds me so much of the book Watership Downs…
The intrepid rabbits came across a colony of very well fed rabbits with beautiful coats living in a dry and well formed burrow. The trouble was that some of them went out to feed and never came back! The resident rabbits refused to speak of it. It turned out that the rabbits were being farmed by a human using traps.
I swear that anything you want to know about courage and freedom you can learn from this book.
Thank you Babs, for reminding me of a fantastic book I haven’t read in a while. I will now need to go and find my copy…
As for the actual post, you are somewhat correct. I think that the governments of Europe know what is going on. They simply expect the US to fix it for them.
I have not read Watership Down, but I think there is a key difference in the West today.
The rabbits had to take action to save themselves. Today we have a professional military, one that is made up entirely of volunteers, comprising only a fraction of one percent of the population of the U.S. (Just get the hell out of the way and shut up; we professionals will take care of it.)
A sizeable portion of the population of the U.S. and it would appear a much larger portion of the population of Europe not only refuses to save themselves but is staunchly opposed to those that offer to do the job themselves from doing so. It is as if the farmed rabbits insisted that the others stay with them.
The analogy is less like rabbits and more like Walt Disney lemmings.
I’m unsure of the exact nature of European “help” in Iraq or other trouble spots were troops must actually engage in combat operations. Given the restrictions on the NATO troops depolyed to Afganistan by our European partners that are really designed to minimize NATO troop casualties at the expense of the mission, we don’t need this kind of help in Iraq. UN style interventions in conflicts around the world have a terrible history of ineffectivness.
Aside from investment to broaden the economic activity in Iraq, much of the EU should just stay home.
On Denials – ‘Here’ and ‘There’
Some things you simply can’t and shouldn’t deny, especially world-threatening events that are certain to engulf the world in a holocaust like the planet has never experienced before. How ironic that our intellectual elites on both sides of the Atlant…
liberals don’t care about the war on terror becuase it’s not americas fight. It’s between islam and israel. Pull out of the middle east lock stock and barrel, that’s how you win the war on terror.
Pull your head out of the sand much, Lester? You may think it’s not our fight, but I guarantee the terrorists think it is. Pretending they’re not threatening us doesn’t make them stop, it just emboldens them. Your solution would make more attacks on the US mainland a certainty.
Was that sarcasm Lester?
I would like to see a few magazine covers of beheaders and their victims along with boldface headlines asking whether these are the folks that Muslims realy want to rule them.
Last week’s Spiegel had a cover picture of Ahmedinejad with the headline “The Man the World Fears.” What if it had said “The Man Who Disgraces a Proud Nation”? What if there were headlines like this all over Europe’s kiosks:
Radical Mosques: Turning Islam’s Youth Into Cannon Fodder
Brave Warriors: Hiding Behind Women and Children
Were Saddam’s Statues Blasphemous?
As you probably know from Davids Medienkritik, there is no shortage of headline writers and cover designers who can express outrage. They simply have trouble aiming it in the right direction. The biggest help Europe could offer us would be in deconstructing Islamistic propaganda.
final historian- it wasn’ t sarcasm. the source of terror is the illegal state of israel and their crtiminal treatment of the palestinian people.
We stuck up for israel before because it was easy. same as taiwan. when china was a poor communist country it was easy to tell them to back off. But we can’t stop China and we can’t stop islam. and in the case of the latter, we shouldn’t. Israel was supposed to be a ntional home for jews, not an empire.
No Lester, we stuck up for Israel and for Taiwan because it was right. If you think we can’t stop China or Islam, then perhaps it would be best for you to withdraw into a cave somewhere and hide. I’m confident that when we’re finally forced into it, America will do what’s right, not what’s easy.
It might be worth (1) reminding Lester than there was once a Persian empire, (2) suggesting that he apologize to all the non-Persians who were conquered by Persia’s emperors, and (3) calling upon him, in the name of justice and fairness, to demand that the current Iranian government grant independence to all ethnic minority groups.
doug- You think we can fight a billion muslims and another billion chinese? Wouldn’t it be a little easier to give the taiwanese and israelis visas?
There is no “right” there is only survival. we are a republic, not an empire. we can’t just go do what we would like to do
So you’re saying we should be all about Realpolitik, eh? Gee that worked so well in the past, Lester. It wasn’t until Reagan decided to stop accomodating and “containing” the totalitarian regimes that they started to fall. And what are you talking about, fight a billion Chinese? Military to military, yes, we could take them in a couple of months. If you don’t believe it, you just have no understanding of what our military is capable of. Would all the Chinese support their government in a serious war against us? I suspect China would very quickly devolve into separate states like the Soviet Union did.
Fight a billion Muslims? Again, military to military, no one can stand up to us. No brag, just fact. As far as neutralizing the Muslim penchant to conquer the world for Islam, do you really think we have a choice in the matter? If we refuse to fight, we surrender. The only time you can walk away is when there’s someone else to guard your safety and freedom. There isn’t anyone else; we’re it.
muslims won’t use their military, they will use terrorism. you think hillary clinton or george allen would declare war on CHINA? bro, i appreciatre your sentiment about sticking up for allies, especially in the case of taiwan, but history is going the way it’s going. China has nukes, islam has united the arabs. thousands of the people leave israel every year. It can’t even decide if it’s secualr or not.
Imagine if the pilgrims had landed at plymouth rock and there were 300 million indians in america with a similar level of modernixzation and weaponization. there never ould have been an america. that’s waht israel faces. jews have lived alongisde muslims there for centuries. the real hardcore orhodox guys and the people in the kabbutzes will find a way to survive.
Lester, I’m sure you’re sincere in what you say, but you have absolutely no understanding of how the world works. No, no US president will declare war on China. But if China ever decides to deliver an ultimatum on Taiwan, the US will either have to stand by its commitments or back down. If it backs down, there won’t be any countries in the world that will trust any US military alliance. If it stands up and China starts shooting, the US will end things very quickly. And if the Chinese are crazy enough to use even one nuke on the US, China as a functional country will cease to exist.
Islam has united the arabs. Yawn. Proper border control and some determined effort to “drain the swamps” in Waziristan and a few other places will neutralize the Islamofascists. Heck, even the half steps we’ve taken in the WOT so far have kept them from hitting us again.