Monday, August 22, 2005

Part I: The war on terror by the halves

After the Japanese launched their attack against Pearl Harbor, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that America was at war. One day after the attack FDR asked for got a declaration of war on Japan. America was united in a struggle for its very survival. Our politicians argued at the margin about strategies but all were in agreement that we were at war and that the war must be won decisively. No politician dare try and take political advantage of the early desperate days of the war where setbacks were many and assurance of success was to be found only in the words of the Commander in Chief.

Our unity permeated every aspect of life. News organization, while reporting the bleak truth about the war, sought out good news as well and emphasized it. Entertainers joined the effort producing upbeat songs, plays and movies about the war effort. Every part of America was mobilized for the war. Blackouts were enforced along America’s coastline. America’s armed forces grew by millions. The nation’s industrial might was converted from manufacturing Fords and Frigidaires to rolling out unprecedented numbers of tanks, ships and aircraft. Rationing of key war materials began almost immediately and continued until the end of the war. On December 8, 1941, America was at war and everyone knew it.

By comparison, four years after 19 jihadists brought down four civilian aircraft into a field and three of our most identifiable landmarks killing more than 3,000, half the nation have no understanding that America remains a nation at war. In contrast to WWII were every citizen was asked to sacrifice for the war effort, Americans today are counter intuitively asked go about living our lives just as we did before the attacks. Our stock market continues to hum along. We continue to rely solely on an all volunteer armed force. There has been no major conversion of our industrial base from producing pleasure goods to producing war goods. There have been no bond drives or special taxes to support the war. There is no rationing.

Our current effort in Iraq is viewed by most Americans as a conflict separate from Afghanistan and the war on terror. Democrats view the war not as a struggle for America’s survival but rather as a political opportunity. Democrats see Iraq as “George Bush’s war” as opposed to part of America’s war on terror. In spite of the fact that President Bush made almost exactly the same arguments for going to war as President Clinton and John Kerry, Dems continue to argue endlessly about why we went into Iraq in the first place rather than how to win now that we’re there. Dem hacks compare Abu Ghraib and Gitmo to Nazi Germany, Pol Pot’s Cambodia and Stalin’s gulag. I suppose they forget that in America’s most unforgivable prison scandal, Dem icon FDR interned Japanese Americans during WWII. For Dems it’s a war only in the sense that it allows them to mobilize an antiwar movement against a Rep president. Dems argue for a draft not because we need one but rather as means to jump start that antiwar effort. For Dems it’s a war only in the sense that it allows them to call for higher taxes to extract some kind of sacrifice, no matter how unwarranted and wrong headed, from the American people. The deficit continues to fall due to President Bush’s tax cuts but according to Dems we need to raise taxes to pay for the “war.” For Dems the war is not America’s struggle against a cruel and evil enemy. The real war is against a cruel and evil Bush administration. For the Dems there is no war on terror – at least not until they regain the White House and get to run it.

Two wholly owned subsidiaries of the DNC, the MSM and Hollywood elites, are quite happy to carry the Dem’s water to the American people on the war in Iraq. The war itself by any standard has been successful. You’d never know it from the MSM. In WWII journalist sought out good news when there was desperate little. Today the MSM ignore the plethora of good news and focuses endlessly on the latest car bomb or kidnapping. They ignore the scores upon scores of heroic events in Iraq and instead focus on a woman deranged by grief in an attempt to rekindle a Vietnam era antiwar movement. Hollywood know nothings mistake pop culture notoriety with having a brain. With the exception of a few country western stars, they march in complete lock step afraid to find a contrary voice lest they be uninvited to the next DNC Bush bashing fund raiser.

With this as a backdrop, life going along pretty much as normal, Dems calling the president and Americans engaged in the war effort Nazis, the MSM and Hollywood’s complicity in Dem activities, it’s little wonder that half of America thinks that we are engaged in some kind of sidebar in Iraq rather than the critical front in the war on terror. As such they search for an exit strategy in Iraq rather than a victory strategy, which ironically is the only suitable exit strategy.

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