OPINION & EDITORIAL
Editors discharge duties dishonorably
Looking for a print version?
Simply choose ‘Print’ on your computer and a printer-friendly document will be generated.
Also by Letters to the Editor:
- Cartoon anti-Semitic (February 15, 2008)
- Herald unfair to Mikolajczak (February 14, 2008)
- UW needs dissenting voices (February 14, 2008)
- There will be blood... donations (February 13, 2008)
- Audience responds to debate (February 13, 2008)
Related Stories:
- Readers lonely, bitter after V-Day (February 15, 2008)
- Make room at the top (October 17, 2002)
- 'Jena Six': attacks don't void rights (September 24, 2007)
- Innocence Project uncovers major flaws in American legal system (January 26, 2007)
- Gender stereotypes persist in U.S. (November 11, 2001)
by Letters to the Editor
Sunday, February 17, 2008
In response to the anonymous poster (“ Readers lonely, bitter after V-day” Feb. 15, 2008), to say that service members are “all a bunch of trigger-happy white males that only like to murder innocent women and children” is grossly inaccurate and ridiculous. The most recent statistics I found were from 2005. In that year, white males made up just over half of all service members, 55 percent. In case you’re not clear, that means 45 percent were not white males. Females made up 20 percent of all service members. You can find more of these inconvenient details we call “facts” online. In addition, even though you’re too cowardly to post your name when you write these slurs, you should still stick with words you know how to spell. Apparently, “Mai Lai” and “sow” are above your reading level.
Even more hateful than the comment was The Badger Herald’s editorial decision to select it for the print edition of the paper. The feedback page states, “Please keep your feedback thoughtful, on-topic and respectful. Offensive language, personal attacks… may be deleted.” The Badger Herald staff screened the comment and approved it to appear online, but apparently they wanted even more people to see the crude remarks. Out of all the comments posted about The Badger Herald stories for an entire week, the editors deliberately selected that one to go to print. To post it with the label, “Your best online feedback” does a huge disservice to us, the students of the University of Wisconsin. That was the very best comment they could find to represent our students’ opinions? The editors could have selected a “thoughtful, on-topic and respectful” comment, unless they printed it because it represents their own viewpoint, and it’s an easy way to shirk responsibility.
I am a female veteran and a student here. I realize many people believe they have the right to determine what qualifies as hate speech and enforce those standards only when it’s convenient for their agenda. They don’t apply the same constraints to themselves, however. I expect that hypocrisy, that double standard from individuals. But from a newspaper?
Whatever happened to journalistic integrity? It’s an obvious double standard. If that same statement had targeted a race or a religion, or had been homophobic, the editors wouldn’t have put it online, much less in print: It would have been called hate speech. Editors use common sense guidelines to determine which comments are productive and relevant and which ones are blatantly offensive stereotyping. It’s not a violation of First Amendment rights to exercise good judgment. The editors are not violating the KKK’s rights if they refuse to print racial slurs someone posted anonymously on their website.
It’s disappointing that we have someone on our campus small-minded enough to make such blatantly false, hateful generalizations about a group of people. It’s even more disappointing that we have a newspaper unprofessional and irresponsible enough to print these epithets under the pretense of “freedom of speech.”
Jessica Grey
UW Junior, English
jlgrey@wisc.edu
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 3:13am):
Excuse us for not respecting people who kill other people for a living. It's really not nice of you to do that. If you had any morals you would not be fighting. If you had any humility you would not be expecting our thanks for your acts of treason against humanity. Just as we do not respect or condone violence in our country, we think very little that you would want to inflict your violence on another country. Honestly, what gives you that right? And you want our respect and thanks? Ummm No!
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 5:46am):
3:13 AM,
Get a life. Regardless of your view on the current military conflicts, the military does exist to serve and protect America (and other nations) from attack.
Jessica,
Thank you for your service to this country. At a campus where a student doing basic research for the military has been brutally slaughtered, it's not surprising to see the armed forces getting no respect.
Jessica Grey (February 18, 2008 @ 8:59am):
3:13 am::
The military doesn't kill people for a living. You're an idiot. Keep on posting obnoxious, ridiculous comments online without having the guts to put your name to them. Oooooh...you're such an internet badass, so big and tough behind that computer screen...
You really make everyone who's against the war look like a bunch of morons when you spout off with such ignorant BS. Not all anti-war people are also anti-brain activity, like you, but when you pretend you represent that viewpoint, you really, really do damage to the people who DO have intelligent things to say about the war and the military.
You say the military "kills people for a living," you know who else "kill people for a living"? The police. So maybe there shouldn't be any police officers out there, either, protecting the defenseless from the criminals. They shoot people on the job when they have to, and sometimes they do bad things like kill their wives and kids, like that guy who just got convicted. If you're taking that point of view, we should have police, we should just let everyone fend for themselves and say... good luck! You wouldn't last a day.
Seriously - being liberal doesn't mean you have to let all common sense, intelligence, and integrity fly right out the window. Someday, when you're a REAL grown-up, as opposed to an overgrown, whiny kid who accepts everything you're told without knowing a damn thing about it - you might understand that. Maybe.
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 9:11am):
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
â George Orwell
Even idiots like 3:13, a sheep who would die miserably at the hands of the wolves without the protection of the sheepdog. Or pehaps 3:13 thinks there are no wolves?
So 3:13, will you be bearded or in a burka when the Caliphate arrives? Hope you aren't gay or athiest - that's a stabbing.
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 9:22am):
Was there something in that letter that said, "I demand your thanks for doing my duty to my country and doing the job that allows you the freedom to be obnoxious"?
Because if there was something in there demanding any type of thanks, or recognition, I missed it.
You're using the royal we? "We do not respect or condone..." "we think..." You seem to believe your words carry more weight if you pretend you're speaking for a huge group of people instead of just being honest and admitting you only speak for yourself.
I understand you have a SMALL brain, but is it a shared brain as well? You're not able to speak for yourself? You fancy yourself the spokesperson for...what, everyone on campus? Everyone in the states? I can tell you what I think, but I can't tell you what "we" think, because I'm the only person inside my brain. Maybe you should speak to a psychiatrist if you believe that you're speaking for all these mysterious, unnamed, alleged people.
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 9:22am):
Jessica, get a life! Madison is a liberal city. You and your warmongering kind ain't welcome here. Go to school in the pro-white south where they tolerate your racism. You murder innocent women and children for a living.
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 10:35am):
Jessica, as a Muslim, I am very sorry you must face this criticism. But you see, you are fighting an unjust war for the jews. It is the jews that are responsible for every war that has ever been fought. They have taken control of your leaders and seduced them into believing that you are fighting terrorists. The truth is that you are fighting and dying for Isreal. The jew lobby is powerful and seductive. They will stop at nothing to drive the whole of humanity to destruction.
Islam is a religion of peace. We would never do such a thing. the jews have spread many lies and propoganda to make all the world believe that they are just and god-loving. No Muslim has ever killed an innocent human being. It is the jew that has killed. Just look at they're history.
Peace be with you, Jessica, and may all your American troops come home soon to be with they're families instead of dying in this perverse unjust jewish war.
Jessica Grey (February 18, 2008 @ 10:41am):
Anonymous 9:22:
Clearly you don't read well. It says I'm a VETERAN. That means I'm not in the Army anymore. What I do for a living now is work and go to school.
And where do you get this "racist" garbage from? You're just throwing around inflammatory words to try to stir people up. I never said anything racist, because I'm not racist.
Nobody murders innocent women and children. That's complete fabrication. Do what you can to get your viewpoint across, but making stuff up to try to get attention is completely ridiculous. You lose credibility when you attribute things to other people that you really just made up yourself. The only kind of people who say these ignorant things about "murdering women and children" are people who don't know anyone in the actual military...or who get their rocks off by going online and anonymously posting things they'd never have the balls to say in public or put their actual name to. It's sad that your life consists of hiding behind a computer screen to spew hate & lies just to make yourself feel like a bigger person.
Information is power. INFORMATION is the key. Not MISinformation. Not DEFAMATION. Anyone with a brain can see right through your nonsense.
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 11:05am):
9:22,
So 'progressives,' who claim to be open to a range of diverse opinions and lifestyles, are the most bigoted of all. Way to go.
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 11:41am):
"Islam is a religion of peace."
"No Muslim has ever killed an innocent human being."
What a load of BS THAT is. There are just too many examples of Muslim murder to list.
"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities â but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome."
-Sir Winston Churchill (The River War, first edition,
Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 12:00pm):
WAR is a Racket. The military collection agents.
If you kill in personal combat your a murderer. If you kill for a general they give you a medal. Tom Metzger
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 12:02pm):
"But you see, you are fighting an unjust war for the jews. It is the jews that are responsible for every war that has ever been fought."
Ah, I see the liberal-run Badger Herald approves of hate speech now. Oh, I forgot, it's OK to bash Jews in Madison. And I thought all the haters were conservatives!
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 12:21pm):
So are Shites who murder Sunnis and the Sunnis who murder Shites not realy Moslems?
Or are the womwn and children they murder not innocents?
"Islam is a religion of peace."
Sure it is, but only the peace of the grave for all the innocent victims of a blood-thirsty war-mongering religion that cries SUBMIT OR DIE!
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 12:23pm):
Madison: a great place to visit, but it's people like 9:22am that make me glad I don't have to call Madison home anymore.
Michael Johnson (February 18, 2008 @ 1:56pm):
Jessica, While I respect your service to this nation, I believe that a better service would be to stand against the violence that the US government is asking to you to take part in. I know it can be difficult to stand against military leadership as well as the government as military personnel, but if you truly believe you can the make the world safer and better, than when you can stand against violence and asking the same question many of your generals did to the Sec of Defense Rumsfeld, Why are we going to war and what are the plan for before during and after such an invasion.I think if rank and file soldiers would have question this conflict it would not have happened. As far as other comments, the BH is the moderate/center right paper, the DC is the liberal paper. While analysis of Israel is fine, to associate Zionism with the War in Iraq is such a way is very dangerous.As far as Islam, just like fundementalists in the Jewish and Christian religions, demonize monsters not everyday believers...
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 2:05pm):
Ahhhhhh..... the collected wisdom of Liberals preaching Tolerance, Diversity, and Equality! The antisemitism, racism, and overt hate speech enunciated by the good Liberals above serves their 'cause' well. It illustrates sooooooo clearly their duplicity. This is their manifesto:
"We will be tolerant, but only if you agree with Liberal dogma.
We will be inclusive, provided you conform to our failed Socialist philosphies.
We will not be racists, unless you are Caucasian.
We advocate religious freedom, unless you are Christian.
We advocate free speech but you 'denyers' of our truths need to shut up!"
Take heed UW-Madison and all of its denizens: This is your shameful past. This is your scurilous and cowardly present. It need not be your future.....
Jessica,
Your service and the service of all of our Military Veterans is gratefully acknowledged by a nation of educated and emotionally mature citizens.
Invictus Maneo!
Alumni
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 2:20pm):
"Jessica, get a life! Madison is a liberal city. You and your warmongering kind ain't welcome here. Go to school in the pro-white south where they tolerate your racism. You murder innocent women and children for a living."
I'm plenty liberal, and I'd rather have Jessica in this town than intolerant, ignorant people like you. Can't you come up with any better way to criticize an opposing argument than by relying on stereotypes that are every bit as racist as what you claim to oppose?
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 2:47pm):
"...please keep your feedback thoughtful, on-topic and respectful. Offensive language, personal attacks, or irrelevant comments may be deleted."
Apparently the BH doesn't follow it's own rules. Why do you post the garbage you do?
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 2:54pm):
It is mystifying to me that the Badger Herald decided to print that opinion bit, because it was quite obviously a (rather successful) "troll." Not only did it employ the clichés and asinine statements that only a right-wing caricature of left-wing speech would use, it also mislabeled the Vietnamese as "Viennese" and grossly misspelled "Mei Lei." I can only assume that the Badger Herald edited it into the realm of plausibility in order to either a) make the left look bad or b) fuel fake controversy, resulting in letters like the one just published.
10:35am is another clear example of a similarly outrageous attempt to troll the readers of these boards.
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 4:38pm):
10:35, what you've written is one of the most blatantly misguided, myopic things I've ever read. I pity you. And whoever is moderating this commenting board right now should be ashamed to allow such hateful comments to be posted. What good do comments like that do?
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 4:42pm):
There is absolutely NO REASON Jessica should have even had to write this letter. Whether you are for the war or not, our military performs a service for the entire country. They sacrifice time and time again for our country, whether or not you agree with it. We have lost nearly 4000 of our troops and to print that the military are "all a bunch of trigger-happy white males that only like to murder innocent women and children" is extremely offensive, inaccurate and just plain ignorant. I am disgusted by the Badger Herald staff.
-A liberal with a brain
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 6:13pm):
Good column Jessica. While I support the right of the Badger Herald to print the response they did, I do not support their choice in doing so. Just because we have the right to go to a Synagogue and yell the k-word doesn't make it productive or proper behavior. Just because we have the right to go to an NAACP meeting and yell the n-word doesn't make it productive or proper behavior. Just because we have the right to print cartoons of Muhammad in a newspaper doesn't make it productive or proper behavior. All the same, just because the BH has the right to print the most irrelevant and hateful comments present online about US soldiers doesnât make doing so productive or proper.
-David Lapidus
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 6:46pm):
Oh so "peaceful" is the Musselman.
Gunmen have attacked the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in Gaza City and blown up its library, burning thousands of books, its director says.
A number of Christian and other institutions regarded by Muslim extremists as un-Islamic have been targeted by armed gangs over the past two years in the coastal territory, the BBC's Katya Adler in Jerusalem says.
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 8:13pm):
What's with the crappy editing @ the Badger Herald by the way????
They didn't catch the misspellings in Mai Lai, sow (you reap what you sow), OR the huge headline at the top of the same page on Friday about "anti-semetism" (that's anti-semitism).
And they try to tell us that "Viennese" was accidentally copied as "Vietnamese" ... Sounds more like an editor distorting submissions in order to incite anger / spew his own viewpoint.
That's like writing, "Hey, you stupid moron! Oops! Sorry, typo! I meant to type 'you super man!' Uhhh...the keys are really close together."
Uhhhh... probably not. The Badger Herald is a huge embarassment to UW. This is a Big Ten school, and you don't know how to use spellcheck? Sad.
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 9:51pm):
I wonder why so many people that read the Badger Herald have broken sarcasm meters. Are there really that many people out there who, when confronted with the phrase "No Muslim has ever killed an innocent human being," think that this is actually a statement coming from of a living, breathing person? If people can really believe this, then they have spent too much of their time yelling back and forth online against shadows with no one attached to them. And if someone really existed who believed this, why would you waste your time replying to them? I'm nearly convinced that 8:13pm *has* to be sarcasm - how else could you correctly identify every word that makes a statement parodical and still get it wrong? - but now I don't even know anywhere.
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 10:33pm):
"...we have the right to print cartoons of Muhammad in a newspaper doesn't make it productive or proper behavior."
But it is productive if it shows that the Muslims are not fit to participate in civil society since they will riot, burn and murder over some silly cartoons. Once it is possible to walk unmolested in Mecca wearing a crucifix or a yamaka THEN I will believe that Islam is a religion of peace. It would also help if they also stopped murdering each other.
Anonymous (February 18, 2008 @ 11:44pm):
Wow. As a Veteran of the Armed Forces,I find the first commentor's (anonymous @ 3:13) remarks not only offensive, but grossly ignorant. You really need to lay off watching Full Metal Jacket, and Platoon. Or the media for that matter. The military, and the people who serve in it, are there to protect and defend the American country and the freedom and rights that her people enjoy. In case you haven't noticed, we're at war...people die in a war. If you have a problem with the war, or the US occupancy in Iraq, then exercise your right to vote, and vote for a new President.
You question Jessica about morality because of her service in the military? You accuse the military of treason against humanity? You're a big talker aren't you...yet you don't have the courage to post your name? What have you done for humanity other than waste oxygen? My guess...nothing! Don't berate on Jessica because she served her country or her loyalty to the troops. At least she stands for something, what do you stand for? Other than BS?
-Jennifer Grier, US Navy veteran & Army Wife.
Jessica Grey (February 19, 2008 @ 9:27am):
9:51 pm --
Here's the thing -- if all those other misspellings were left in there to show the "sarcasm" or "stupidity" of the poster of the comment... why the hell would the editors change "Viennese" to "Vietnamese"? if THAT word had been left as it was originally misspelled, I might agree with you, maybe the poster was making fun of the morons stoned out of their mind who have the most ludicrous ideas of what the military does.
But the fact that the editors left the misspellings in Mai Lai and sow, but changed Viennese to Vietnamese - that means they were editing for content, obviously not for spelling. Changing Viennese to Vietnamese was an editorial DECISION, it's clearly not a typo. The editors CHANGED THE CONTENT OF THE POST to make it NO LONGER satirical, to make it no longer humorous, to completely change its meaning from one of morbid comedy to one of political significance and public defamation.
If they'd left Viennese as it was, I still would've been pissed that they published it in the newspaper - because if the comment started, "all homosexuals are..." for example, they would NOT have printed it, and reasonably so. If it was a comment that started out "all Muslims are..." and ended in that type of ignorant stereotype, you never would've seen it in print, which I would agree, they probably shouldn't print it.
The editors can bluster and evade as much as they want, crying freedom of speech, but freedom of speech does not require a publication to print hate speech. What freedom of speech means is that the GOVERNMENT can't tell them what they can't print, the GOVERNMENT can't tell us what we can't say or write, not that no discretion is allowed to the editors of newspapers and they must print every hateful, false comment that someone conveys to them. I have freedom of speech, but I still cannot go into a crowded theater and yell fire, because it incites a frenzy and people could get hurt. Same thing with printing "all ((whoever)) kill, rape, steal, and should suffer in jail" comments.
If they really believed that their definition of "freedom of speech" required them to print every obscene, slanderous statement that any coward anonymously posts on their website, or that any idiot submits as their opinion, then they would print ALL the comments they receive. If I write them a five page letter about what I had for breakfast this morning, they would HAVE to print it. It's my right to freedom of speech.
NO. Freedom of speech means the editors use their discretion to determine what's productive, what's not libel/slanderous, what's ACCURATE, and print that. They pick and choose which items to publish. In this instance, they selected an offensive, obscene, bigoted remark and printed it. Irresponsible, unprofessional, obvious media bias.
Even if you believe freedom of speech dictates that they should have printed it, freedom of speech definitely does not mean they should alter the content and effectively change the entire meaning of the original comment. They took a post that could be taken as a joke, CHANGED A KEY WORD to make it more offensive and very possibly completely changed the original poster's intended meaning, and then print it. That means they're injecting their OWN perceptions and viewpoints into the "news." They're stifling the voice of people by deliberately, "creatively" editing what was written so that it's more suited to the editor's opinion of what it should say, or what it could mean.
Is it that difficult to understand??
Anonymous (February 19, 2008 @ 9:49am):
An Important History Lesson: Why We Are in Iraq
by Raymond S. Kraft
Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk more than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England and America for food and war materials.
The US was in an isolationist, pacifist, mood, and most Americans and Congress wanted nothing to do with the European war, or the Asian war.
Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on Germany, which had not attacked us. It was a dicey thing. We had few allies.
France was not an ally, the Vichy government of France aligned with its German occupiers. Germany was not an ally, it was an enemy, and Hitler intended to set up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe. Japan was not an ally, it was intent on owning and controlling all of Asia. Japan and Germany had long-term ideas of invading Canada and Mexico, and then the United States over the north and south borders ? after they had settled control of Asia and Europe.
America's allies then were England, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and Russia, and that was about it. All of Europe, from Norway to Italy, except Russia in the east, was all ready under the Nazi heel.
America was not prepared for war. America had stood down most of its military after WWI and throughout the depression. At the outbreak of WWII, there were army units training with broomsticks over their shoulders because they didn't have guns and cars with "tank" painted on the doors because they didn't have tanks. And a big chunk of our Navy had just been sunk and damaged at Pearl Harbor.
Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England that was the property of Belgium and was given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler. Actually, Belgium surrendered in one day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day anyway, just to prove they could. Britain has been holding out for two years already in the face of staggering shipping losses and the near decimation of its air force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later and turning his attention to Russia, at a time when England was on the verge of collapse in the late summer of 1940.
Russia saved America's butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany. Russia lost something like 24 million people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow, 90% of them from cold and starvation, mostly civilians, but more than a million soldiers. More than a million!
Had Russia surrendered then, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire campaign against the Brits, then America, and the Nazis would have won the war.
I say this to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. And we are at another one.
There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world, unless they are prevented from doing so.
The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs. They believe that Islam, a radically conservative (definitely not liberal!) form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world, and that all who do not bow to Allah should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, purge the world of Jews. This is what they say.
There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East, for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation today, but it is not yet known which will win ? the Inquisition or the Reformation.
If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihads, will control the Middle East, and the OPEC oil, and the US, European, and Asian economies, the techno industrial economies, will be at the mercy of OPEC, not an OPEC dominated by the well educated and rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis.
You want gas in your car? You want heating oil next winter? You want jobs? You want the dollar to be worth anything? You better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses and the Islamic Reformation wins.
If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions and live in peace with the rest of the world and move out of the 10th century and into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away, and a moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.
We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda, the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. We cannot do it nowhere. And we cannot do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle now at the time and place of our choosing, in Iraq.
Not in New York, not in London, or Paris, or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we did and are doing two very important things.
(1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in 9/11 or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades. Saddam is a terrorist.
Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction, who is responsible for the deaths of probably more than a million Iraqis and two million Iranians.
(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq. We have focused the battle. We are killing bad guys there and the ones we get there we won't have to get here, or anywhere else. We also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq, which will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it is needed.
World War II, the war with the German and Japanese Nazis, really began with a "whimper" in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor. It began with the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for fourteen years before America joined it. It officially ended in 1945 ? a 17 year war ? and was followed by another decade of US occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own again ... a 27 year war.
World War II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year's GDP ? adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars, WWII cost America more than 400,000 killed in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.
The Iraq war has, so far, cost the US about $160 billion (U.S. GDP in 2006 = 13.04 trillion dollars, which means that the IRAQ war has cost the U.S. approximately 12.5% of a full yearâs GDP), which is roughly what 9/11 cost New York. It has also cost about 2,200 American lives, which is roughly 2/3 of the 3,000 lives that the Jihad snuffed on 9/11. But the cost of not fighting and winning WWII would have been unimaginably greater ? a world now dominated by German and Japanese Nazism.
Americans have a short attention span, now, conditioned I suppose by 60 minute TV shows and 2 hour movies in which everything comes out okay.
The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain, and sometimes bloody and ugly. Always has been, and probably always will be.
The bottom line here is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away on its own. It will not go away if we ignore it.
If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq, then we have an "England" in the Middle East, a platform, from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East. The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates. The Iraq war is merely another battle in this ancient and never ending war. And now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons. Unless we prevent them! Or somebody does.
We have four options.
1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.
2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may be as early as next year, if Iran's progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is).
3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East, now, in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America.
4. Or we can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and maybe most of the rest of Europe. It will be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier then.
Yes, the Jihadis say that they look forward to an Islamic America. If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.
We can be defeatist peace activists, as anti war types seem to be, and concede, surrender to the Jihad, or we can do whatever it takes to win this war against them.
The history of the world is the history of civilizational clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win.
Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti -pacifists kill them.
In the 20th century, it was Western democracy vs. communism, and before that Western democracy vs. Nazism, and before that Western democracy vs. German Imperialism. Western democracy won, three times, but it wasn't cheap, fun, nice, easy, or quick. Indeed, the wars against German Imperialism (WWI), Nazi Imperialism (WWII), and communist imperialism (the 40 year Cold War that included the Vietnam Battle, commonly called the Vietnam War, but itself a major battle in a larger war) covered almost the entire century.
The first major war of the 21st Century is the war between Western Judeo Christian Civilization and Wahhabi Islam. It may last a few more years, or most of this century. It will last until the Wahhabi branch of Islam fades away, or gives up its ambitions for regional and global dominance and Jihad, or until Western Civilization gives into the Jihad.
It will take time. It will not go with no hitches. This is not TV.
Remember, perspective is everything, and America's schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind.
The Cold War lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Forty two years. Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany.
World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten-year occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan. WWII resulted in the death of more than 50 million people, maybe more than 100 million people, depending on which estimates you accept.
The US has taken a little more than 2,000 KIA in Iraq. The US took more than 4,000 killed in action on the morning of June 6th, 1944, the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In WWII the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week for four years. Most of the individual battles of WWII lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.
But the stakes are at least as high ? a world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms. or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law).
I do not understand why the American Left does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis. In America, absolutely, but nowhere else.
300,000 Iraqi bodies in mass graves in Iraq are not our problem? The US population is about twelve times that of Iraq, so let's multiply 300,000 by twelve. What would you think if there were 3,600,000 American bodies in mass graves in America because of George Bush? Would you hope for another country to help liberate America?
"Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate where it's safe ? in America. Why don't we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places in the world that really need peace activism the most?
The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc. Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy.
If the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. Everywhere the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. And American Liberals just don't get it.
Anonymous (February 19, 2008 @ 12:42pm):
The following allows all of you the comfort of to criticize things you have no understanding of while continuing to mooch off of your parents and or the financial aid provided to you by the very government you choose to bad mouth.
Oath of Enlistment
I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.
Add a comment
We welcome your thoughts, but please keep your feedback thoughtful, on-topic and respectful. Offensive language, personal attacks, or irrelevant comments may be deleted.
Login...
Not registered? Sign up now.
It's quick, free, and the email address you provide will not be sold or solicited.
