Posted on 11/12/2006 7:36:33 AM PST by FlameThrower
If it’s any consolation, this is not the beginning of the end of Western civilization. It is the end of the beginning… of the end of Western civilization.
Three years ago, I wrote a screed called Tet II in which I predicted that American liberals would once again turn victory into defeat – this time in Iraq.
But Bush did not crack, and I found myself actually daring to hope that our Captain MacWhirr would, out of sheer unimaginative stubbornness, tame the coolies in the hold and outlast the typhoon. [Read Conrad’s masterpiece and experience the first six years of the 21st Century in metaphor. “[T]he interest of which for us was, of course, not the bad weather but the extraordinary complication brought into the ship's life at a moment of exceptional stress by the human element below her deck.” Unfortunately, reality has been edited to fit our national character: the ending will be changed.]
Oddly, it was a storm that dashed my hope for Bush. Not a typhoon, but a hurricane. Katrina was a low blow, but it turned the fight. The storm, itself, destroyed one city; the aftermath will destroy all cities and civilization, itself. The delayed result of those breached levies: nuclear terror to midwife the birth of a new Dark Ages.
I am not blaming this election. It is a result more than a cause. But there are irreversible moments in history, moments after which the toothpaste cannot ever be put back into the tube. We are in such a moment. The election irrevocably selected between two futures; the one selected is not the one we would have chosen with our eyes open.
Bush seemed about to confront the coming crisis five years ago. But the war – not the war in Iraq, but the war here over Iraq – undermined his efforts and distracted him from the task. He must take some of the blame for that. Now, we have just elected not to tackle the job and to institute policy gridlock where we need urgent action. Looking back it was probably all inevitable. It is about who we are. About our failings as a people.
Let me assert a couple of simple facts. I will not try to prove them. They are self evident to reasonable people. Unreasonable people are not my audience, and no proof would suffice for them, anyway.
First assertion: In the modern world of porous borders, massively destructive and easily secreted weaponry, huge concentrations of exposed economic value and apocalyptic religious fundamentalism, preemption is the only viable strategy for combating an implacable terrorist enemy bent solely on destruction. The Maginot Line did not work in two dimensions; it certainly will not in four.
Second assertion, to misquote Captain Segura (Ernie Kovacs): “There are two classes of people: those who can be [terrorized] and those who can't…. One never [terrorizes] except by mutual agreement.” If you do not consent to be terrorized, terrorism does not work. If it does not work, it will, eventually, not happen. To allow it to work is to invite it to happen. The successfully terrorized victim serves as accomplice to the terrorist.
The Left invites terrorism. Partly because they are weak in the face of life’s adversities. Partly, here and now, because it suits their tactical political agendas. The Left is only too happy to oblige the terrorist -- to be terrorized in the right cause.
During the Cold War the Left gave aid and comfort to the Communist enemy -- ranging from outright espionage to deferential respect -- because an American victory would have severed their philosophical roots and deposed the patron of their ideological comrades in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa. But the war on terror is a war between Radical Islam and Western Liberalism. The Left has no dog in this fight.
When ideologies die, their movements often stumble on from bureaucratic inertia, like zombies. They rehearse old, outdated programming and dedicate themselves to the quest for power. Marxism-Leninism died decades ago in the Soviet Union; the system ground on until 1991. Similarly, the dead husk of the American Left struggles on -- animated by habit spasms and lusting for power.
The Left’s only conscious goal now is to regain political power. To do this they must deprive Bush of his victories -- in Iraq and against terror. This means robbing America of its victories in those struggles. It could mean the death of Western Civilization. That is a price they will gladly pay. They are the coolies rioting over dollars in the hold of MacWhirr’s typhoon-tossed steamer Nan-Shan.
Our enemy knew from the start about this inescapable curse of the American psyche. Tet is their source book. They knew they could simply call and raise, again and again, no matter how bad the hand they had been dealt in Iraq. Inevitably, America would flinch and fold.
This knowledge emboldened them to launch, and then to persevere in their insurgency – which grew as the anti-war movement gained strength. And vice versa.
The Left, by sensitizing itself and us to the terror, became an accomplice – a catalyst in the killing and maiming of thousands of American servicemen. They gave the insurgents hope. And, in turn, directly benefited as the terror campaign persisted. The more they could make it appear that our policy in Iraq was “Bush’s failed policy” – even at the cost of causing it to fail – the better their political fortunes, as the election has now proved.
In the end, of course, Bush has failed. About the time I wrote Tet II in late 2003, he had lost his nerve in the face of domestic criticism, going from dynamic offense to static occupation. This made Iraq the climactic battle in the war against terrorism – and it is exactly the sort of battle we, as a people, are least suited to fight.
This piece is not about incrimination – although it does sound like it, I admit. It is too late for that now. And we can’t, ultimately, blame the Left and its chief weapon, the Media. The failure is ours, the American people’s. With popular sovereignty comes responsibility. We have been tested; and found wanting. Now we will face the consequences. And they will bring us, all of us, more than enough penance.
Nukes are paradigm-shifting weapons that invalidate Segura’s Law. You can maintain a stiff upper lip to the occasional terror bombing, but stoical detachment cannot withstand nuclear attack.
If Iraq had succeeded, it might have aborted this future. Brought Western values of a sort to the Middle East and disarmed Iran and North Korea. But now, other radical states will actively seek nuclear technology. Iran will not be dissuaded. North Korea will, eventually, dispense its weapons.
In a couple of years, we will have passed the point of no return. The toothpaste will be out of the tube. Terrorists will have nukes. And, inevitably, terrorists will use those nukes on us.
Bush’s original strategy was preemption: to attack and destroy the terrorist in their homes before they could muster an attack. To eliminate the festering failed States that sustained them. It morphed under pressure to nation-building. We will soon adopt a third way: we will “redeploy” out of Iraq – tail between our legs. And the terrorist will follow us home. The nuclear attacks will be random, unstoppable and devastating.
The only way to fight terrorism, if you cannot prevent the attacks, is to ignore their effects. To refuse to consent to being terrorized.
The British ignored the IRA bombing of the old Commercial Union Building in London a generation ago. America ultimately shrugged off the destruction of the Twin Towers five years ago. But New York, Chicago, London, Paris… The loss of entire cities will cripple Western economies and traumatize all civilized peoples. We will be locked in an unavoidable and unwinnable war of asymmetrical attrition: our landmark cities for their caves and mud-huts.
Great cities, the emblems of Western Civilization, began as a walled defenses against marauding enemies. In a world turned upside-down, they are now our great vulnerability. They are suicidal concentrations of expensive economic, cultural and political assets waiting, exposed, for destruction. The only way to ignore nuclear terrorism will be to “redeploy” preemptively out of the crosshairs. Within years our cities will die – abandoned or incinerated.
Or both. The “redeployment” will be delayed. Trump will continue to build; the NYSE, to trade; Congress, to convene. When the strikes come, the toll will be staggering. A thousand fold or more what we have lost in Iraq or lost on 9/11. Economies will collapse. Millions will die of disease and famine.
The great things we have, as a civilization, built on the Earth over one thousand years will evaporate in a series of blasts, set off by a rag-tag army of primitives. We will be left, some of us, to scrape out our bitter existence beyond the ruble, in what were the suburbs.
But at least the Left will have succeeded in one thing: eliminating the root cause of Islamic radicalism. The gulf that divides Christendom and the Caliphate. That energizes their hatred for us. For we and our works will have been laid low.
And then…. Who knows? One guess: dung beetles, muttering “Allah Akbar”, munching on the remains of Western Civilization.
Nice article. I agree wholeheartedly with your analysis of the left in the cold war, and their reasons for allowing the terrorists to win. I think the war for civilization is not over, but the cost has just gone up a great deal, as when Europe failed to stop Hitler in 1938, leading to millions more deaths. In that war, the outcome could have gone either way, and with Democrats in charge of a nuclear terror war, the outcome is not certain. The good guys don't always win--ask the Romans, or better, ask the Byzantines. Their empire was overrun by barbaric Muslims, too, their cathedrals turned into mosques, their men killed, their women made concubines. The people who did that are still there, and they still want to do that.
While I'm certainly not advocating it, the loss of a number of major cities would be bad why?
An astute student of history and human nature, one Thomas Jefferson, predicted all this after witnessing the run up to the FIRST socialist/communist revolution in France while ambassador there. He penned the following observations concerning what would happen HERE should that socialism come to the United States. He CORRECTLY predicted that we would become an increasingly contentious and litigious people as we shouldered one another out of the way to get OURS from the public trough and the trough would soon be empty.
That whirring noise you may hear coming from that mountain in Charlottesville, Virginia is Mr. Jefferson getting up to around 3600 RPM.
"The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIX, 1782. ME 2:230
I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. Papers 12:442
"I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts; but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere; and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue and freedom, would be my choice." --Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, 1800. ME 10:173
"Our cities... exhibit specimens of London only; our country is a different nation." --Thomas Jefferson to Andre de Daschkoff, 1809. ME 12:304
"Everyone, by his property or by his satisfactory situation, is interested in the support of law and order. And such men may safely and advantageously reserve to themselves a wholesome control over their public affairs and a degree of freedom which, in the hands of the canaille of the cities of Europe, would be instantly perverted to the demolition and destruction of everything public and private." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:401
"An insurrection... of science, talents, and courage, against rank and birth... has failed in its first effort, because the mobs of the cities, the instrument used for its accomplishment, debased by ignorance, poverty, and vice, could not be restrained to rational action. But the world will recover from the panic of this first catastrophe." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:402
"I fear nothing for our liberty from the assaults of force; but I have seen and felt much, and fear more from English books, English prejudices, English manners, and the apes, the dupes, and designs among our professional crafts. When I look around me for security against these seductions, I find it in the wide spread of our agricultural citizens, in their unsophisticated minds, their independence and their power, if called on, to crush the Humists of our cities, and to maintain the principles which severed us from England." --Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814. ME 14:120
>LA or Chicago or more likely targets, IMHO<
Like they have no allies there? LOL
Good first draft. Now read Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" carefully and give it another shot.
The supporters of the war in Iraq should have known the problems going in. It is, among many other things, a war of political correctness: we must pretend that Iraq is ripe for democracy and liberal society because to suggest anything else would be racist, wouldn't it? Family values, after all, don't stop at the border. GWB was compelled by his PC values to attempt nation building, it was built into the plan from the start and was not a result of pressure.
Sure they do......but they don't set national policy, do they?
All one needs to do is to "google search" the 2000 & 2004 Red Blue BY-COUNTY election map to see from whence America's problems arise...
Very subtle....I once wrote a paper on this in college...most people would not understand it....
You don't really understand the horrendous damage that will be done in the next two years, do you?
And every civilized society has fallen too!
If they were smart, they'd leave the northern, central northern, and western population centers alone. If they were smart, they'd attack the Red enclaves surrounding the southern, central and southwest urban areas...
in three years of freep, this might be the single greatest post
mega bump
We need to clean our own house first. We are long overdue for a cleansing of the murderous, treasonous Left from our country. Ugly to contemplate; ultimately, a necessity if America is to survive.
It won't be London.. Blair is out, and the Dems do not realize the evil with which they are dealing. The worst hurt comes from destroying America. The old addage about the scorpion and the turtle will ring true, with the Slammies being the ones "who just couldn't help it."
I certainly agree -- and have for decades.
It's been fifty years but I swear I remember something about defending against domestic enemies in the enlistment oath of the Armed Forces of the United States.
If necessary there's what I have often said, Every two-hundred-year-old republic is entitled to at least one patriot-dictator. Hey! I don't make the rules.
Excellent post. Thanks!
Nice take on the current times.
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