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When we went to the movies on Saturday night, I had to chuckle, briefly, at the sticker
on a car in the parking lot:
“I am even against the next war.”
Problem was, the driver did not intend for me to laugh, even with irony. A cute punch-line does not a philosophy of life make.
While all surveys show that most of our country is opposed to our participation in the Iraq War, the next question is more fascinating:
Do the strongest citizen opponents of the war believe the forces we are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are a threat to come to America and ruin our way of life?
From my research, the overwhelming answer is no — at least 75 percent.
Turn up “Desperate Housewives” a little louder.
How easily we are convinced, even when the evidence to the contrary is mountain high.
Think of it this way. If you ever faced a bully in your schooldays, did he give up and shop elsewhere if you managed to escape one time? Obviously not.
The scholar Michael Ledeen explored this subject on Saturday in the Wall Street Journal. We were not prepared for World War II, and we are not primed for the contemporary war against terrorists, says Mr. Ledeen, because we like to believe that all people are fundamentally good, and if we just sit down across a kitchen table, we will be able to gently but firmly drill a sufficient dose of common sense into their minds.
Who Needs to Prepare?
Stop here if you have heard any Presidential candidate, whose name ends in a vowel, lay down a similar proposition this spring.
This is instructive because, in time of conflict — roughly 98 percent of our days — this is the main line of demarcation between liberals and the rest of the country.
It is as beautiful as it is fundamental to the liberal philosophy of life that all people are good, although admittedly some are less good. Not bad. Just less virtuous, meaning they can logically be converted to our peaceful way of life.
Didn’t They Notice? Or Care?
The rise of Nazism in the 1930s seemed to obvious to me in my later schooldays.
Didn’t some leaders see it coming? Germany’s invasion of Poland 69 years ago was not a bombshell surprise. Hitler had been saying for years what he intended to do.
If a bully doubles his fist, snorts 6 times, paws his size 17’s in the dirt, you don’t dare him to follow through, while planting your own size 9’s.
Except for Saudi Arabia, every Arab leader in the Middle East has said, “We are coming to get you.”
Still, Mr. Obama and the rest of his sizable claque respond, “You are kidding. We know you are.”
“Elect me President,” says the candidate, “and I will bring the troops home.” Audiences cheer maniacally. Mr. Obama’s followers tell the media, “Whew. Thank heaven. Then we will be safe.”
Another Warning
Mr. Ledeen tells a far different, more worrisome story. Masking our vision will not make the bad guys evaporate.
You can check out his credentials and his work. Last year he wrote “The Iranian Time Bomb” (St. Martin’s Press), which hardly received any A member of the American Enterprise Institute, Mr. Ledeen is one of the five clearest thinkers in America on the Middle East.
If we blow our chance to win this inevitable showdown — despite the sideshow attractions that you read about such as Gitmo — we can’t say we weren’t fairly warned, Mr. Ledeen writes:
“None of the democracies adequately prepared for war before it was unleashed on them in the 1940s. None was prepared for the terror assault of the 21st century. The nature of Western politics makes it very difficult for national leaders — even those rare men and women who see what is happening and want to act — to take timely, prudent measures before war is upon them. Leaders like Winston Churchill are relegated to the opposition until the battle is unavoidable. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to fight desperately to win Congressional approval for a national military draft a few months before Pearl Harbor.
“Then, as now, the initiative lies with the enemies of the West. Even today, when we are engaged on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, there is little apparent recognition that we are under attack by a familiar sort of enemy, and great reluctance to act accordingly. This time, ignorance cannot be claimed as an excuse. If we are defeated, it will be because of failure of will, not lack of understanding. As, indeed, was almost the case with our near-defeat in the 1940s.”
