War on Appeasement

opinioneditorials.com ^ | 04/09/2004 | Paul Cappitelli

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There is a global war on terrorism that is being fought in many countries throughout the world. The enemies of peace, freedom, and civilization have been fighting this war, unhindered until very recently, for decades. It took us from November of 1979 to September of 2001, an astonishing 21 years and 11 months, to commit ourselves to treating the terrorism on the US as a war on our country and our way of life.

In November of 1979 a revolution swept across Iran, resulting in the overthrow of the US backed Shah and the beginning of the radical Islamist movement’s intafada against the Western world. The date was November 4th 1979, and radical Islamist students stormed the US embassy in Tehran and captured ninety hostages, including sixty-five Americans. The new Supreme leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini, took control of the hostages and held fifty-five of the Americans for 444 days.

On November 11th, just one week later, then President Jimmy Carter announced to the world, "We refuse to permit the use of terrorism, and the seizure and holding of hostages, to impose political demands.”

Since that time, the use of terrorism on the United States has grown from a far away threat on US nationals abroad, and our allies, to the van bombing of the World trade center on our own soil in 1993. It was at this point that America failed to take the correct path and recognize the war on terror for what it truly is a direct and intentional declaration of war on the United States and the very ideals that the United States stands for.

Following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing the terrorists smelled weakness as there was no real response to this cowardly attack, and the war being waged on us was invigorated and redefined by the new terrorist network spreading throughout the world known as Al-Qaeda.

This all changed when Al-Qaeda again targeted the World Trade Center, this time using hijacked commercial airliners to crash into the two buildings, bringing both to the ground and in the processing killing thousands of Americans in New York, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania. We had a new Commander in chief in office and he and his staff saw the reality of this war on the west and the terrible consequences of treating it as simple criminal acts.

A second front immediately opened up in the war on terror, one that will likely bring difficult defeat to the peoples of the free world if it continues and grows in strength. The second front is the gathering voices of appeasement and pacifism. It is the same war Europe and the United States were losing for almost ten years while Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party ran roughshod over much of Europe. Thankfully England has a man of conviction and moral clarity serving as Prime Minister today in the name of Tony Blair, a man who has thus far kept England from following the same tragic errors of Neville Chamberlain.

But the war of appeasement is being won in many countries of the western world, and is gaining strength in many other countries we count as ‘friends and allies’. Sadly it is even gaining momentum here in the Untied States with the support of an increasing number of leftwing organizations leading the charge.

Appeasement takes on many form’s, and many activities, chief among them is partisan bickering, not on policy, but in the form of insults, and accusations intended solely to undermine the current administrations ability to wage an effective war. Senator Edward Kennedy is shameless in his quest to unseat the current administration at any cost, even that of defending our country. Appeasers refuse to recognize that when Bush claimed we are fighting a global war on terror, and all terrorists, and all countries who offer safe haven, and support to terrorists who target the United States and (this is important) “our Allies”, that it meant ALL terrorists and regimes in support of them.

Appeasers will not recognize Hamas or Hezbollah as Terrorists. Appeasers fail to link Saddam paying suicide bombers $30,000 per attack on Israel, as a regime funding terrorist acts on our Allies. Appeasers refuse to accept that evil exists, and there are those who want to kill all people who will not follow their way of life, instead claiming ‘we should understand the terrorists, and why they hate us’. Appeasers live in a dangerous pseudo-dreamscape that if allowed to foment and control our foreign policies will only lead us to extinction.

Spain is the latest casualty of the appeasement movement, a glowing loss in the war on terror. If Iraq was not a battle of terror, then why did the terrorists attack Spain? Following the attacks of 3-11 a new Spanish government was elected, one that believed appeasing the terrorists would gain their country salvation from the war the world refuses to fight. Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the newly elected Prime Minister of Spain has called for the removal of Spanish troops from Iraq, just as the terrorists had demanded of Spain. This appeasement move was ineffective however; as the terrorists saw this as the sign of weakness they had hoped for. They now are demanding that Spain remove their troops from Afghanistan or more attacks will follow on Spanish soil. The brutal truth of it is there can be no appeasing the terrorists, as their will always be another demand, there will always be another attack.

In the United States, and throughout the western world, the war on appeasement must be won or the war on terror will be lost. Political discourse is necessary in a democratic society, but that discourse should be over how to wage the war we have had thrust upon us, not whether that war is worth fighting. Until the voices of Zell Miller, Joe Lieberman, Ed Koch, and those like them are heard in the Democratic Party, the war on appeasement and thus on terror will be a losing endeavor. In the end the appeasers have become the unwitting allies and friends of the terrorists.