I thought the left-wing moonbat brigade had gone about as far as they could go. I thought Fahrenheit 9/11 was lunacy, I thought the 9/11 conspiracy theorists were certifiable, but NOTHING compares with what the LA Times had to say about 9/11 today:
Was 9/11 really that bad?
The attacks were a horrible act of mass murder, but history says we're overreacting.
By David A. Bell
January 28, 2007IMAGINE THAT on 9/11, six hours after the assault on the twin towers and the Pentagon, terrorists had carried out a second wave of attacks on the United States, taking an additional 3,000 lives. Imagine that six hours after that, there had been yet another wave. Now imagine that the attacks had continued, every six hours, for another four years, until nearly 20 million Americans were dead. This is roughly what the Soviet Union suffered during World War II, and contemplating these numbers may help put in perspective what the United States has so far experienced during the war against terrorism.
It also raises several questions. Has the American reaction to the attacks in fact been a massive overreaction? Is the widespread belief that 9/11 plunged us into one of the deadliest struggles of our time simply wrong? If we did overreact, why did we do so? Does history provide any insight?
Certainly, if we look at nothing but our enemies' objectives, it is hard to see any indication of an overreaction. The people who attacked us in 2001 are indeed hate-filled fanatics who would like nothing better than to destroy this country. But desire is not the same thing as capacity, and although Islamist extremists can certainly do huge amounts of harm around the world, it is quite different to suggest that they can threaten the existence of the United States.
So now the benchmark of suffering or tragedy is the Soviet-friggin'-Union during WWII? Unless we lose tens of millions of people, we're "overreacting" to a threat? Wow. The Democrats will be thrilled. This provides all the justification they'll need for gutting the new anti-terror laws if and when they take the White House. Closing GITMO? A no brainer following this logic. Allowing Imams free-reign to recruit in our prisons and universities? Why not? I mean, until the Muslims have slaughtered the ENTIRE populations of Manhattan and DC, we really have no reason to fear, we're just being drama queens going off half-cocked, using an uzzi to kill a mosquito, or something like that.
I find this fascinating coming from the same paper--and same group of people--who would have you believe that my ability to own a handgun would mean the beginning of the end of civilized society as we know it! If I can own a gun, why, gun violence will make the streets run red with the blood of little children! And if I can own an assault weapon? Oh.My.God, the end of the world is nigh!
(coughing sarcastically)
I'd like to believe the LA Times is engaging in some wishful thinking, some theraputic denial, aimed soley at quashing their own demons, for the purpose of enabling *them* to stop wetting their pants in fear, but I'm smarter than that. I know full well this is just part of the larger concerted effort to lay down a nice soft eider-down for Democratic Presidential hopefuls to land in (face first of course) when confronted by questions from those of us who *do* see reality for what it is, those of us who do not wish to underestimate the "capacity" of such a determined and intractable enemy, or who at least see that we choose to do so at our peril.
You see, what they hope the rest of us have forgotten (or more likely, hope we never learned, since after all, they designed the dreck that passes for a history curriculum in our nations schools and universities) is that history ALSO teaches us that those 20 million souls who perished in the Soviet Union did so at the hands of a man who inspired only laughter until he became dictator. Throughout his rise to power, there were naysayers scoffing at the notion that this little man with the funny moustache would or could ever pose a threat to our way of life.
Mr. Bell acts as though it's hubris of sorts, or simplemindedness, or just reactionary provincial fear-mongering to take the islamomaniacs at their word. We're not supposed to consider their words, apparently, and should instead look only to their conventional military "capabilities," at least those (I suppose) that we know about.
He also discounts completely the nature of terrorism as a tactic, as well as the nature of people who would employ such a tactic. They count on attitudes such as his. They rely on there being the constant erosive friction between those who fear them, and those who refuse to fear them. They know that such polarization helps them because it divides us against ourselves. When we read articles such as these and are swayed by them, the terrorists win, just as much as if the terrorists blew up a bus in LA. Whether we fear them or not, as long as we're working hard to blame ourselves for every problem we face, we aren't putting energy towards blaming THEM, and that's really all they care about.
That's why I don't like the term "War on Terror." It's a misnomer, and a big one. We're not at "war," in the traditional sense, and surely we're not at war with a tactic or an emotion. What we are is engaged in an epic struggle between the forces of civilization and those of barbarism. The struggle takes many forms, not just those of "battle." Sometimes (often lately) it takes the form of intimidation litigation in our courts--lawsuits designed to use our freedoms to impose restrictions on our behavior towards our enemy, restrictions that will ultimately weaken our ability to fight that same enemy. Other times it takes the form of propaganda such as the many anti-war, anti-America, anti-GITMO protests that are--at least in part--funded by those who would very much like to see our enemy improve its chances, especially from within our borders.
During WWII the Nazis didn't have quite so much success sneaking into our country, setting up shop in houses of worship, preaching their hateful message in the open and calling it "protected speech," or using our courts to advance their efforts. They didn't spend millions secretly funding protest efforts, editorials, websites and other "information" sources to discredit our efforts to fight them (or to downplay the threat they posed), and they didn't hide their hatred behind a cloak of "faith" in any God.
Most importantly, the few Americans they had unwittingly supporting their cause were (justifiably) ridiculed and marginalized once we were actually at war. Today, our enemy has useful idiots in every corner of our world, in every aspect of our civil and cultural life. They use words like "tolerance" and insist that Islam is a "religion of peace," which is merely a way to prevent us from calling our enemy by their proper name: Holy Warriors, or Jihadis, specifically of the Islamic persuasion. Whatever Islam's potential for peace, it is not being used to advance "peace" at this moment in history, that's for certain.
Now add to all of this the fact that the Nazis at least had the decency to wear uniforms, fly marked planes, drive marked tanks, etc...making theirs, at the very least, a visible, quantifiable COMPREHENSIBLE threat. But their declaration of war was the same--made out loud, and in writing, just as the Jihadis have done and continue to do, while Mr. Bell is apparently asleep or just choosing not to listen.
I am by no means trying to minimize the threat to the world posed by the Third Reich or Tojo's Japan. I am merely asking that "historians" such as Mr. Bell not minimize the Islamist threat by drawing a bogus analogy between it and the ones we faced in WWII. It doesn't fit, no matter how far he stretches it, no matter how hard he tries to ignore another truth history teaches us--most importantly that those who declare war on you will not cease to be your enemy simply because you refuse to acknowledge the threat they pose, or worse, because you refuse to fight when called upon to do so, until it's too late. Just ask Ghengis Khan how THAT kind of hubris worked out for HIM!
Posted by insomnomaniac at January 29, 2007 3:32 PM | TrackBack