NationStates Jolt Archive

long read...sorry

i am on the fence about this article,and i am not a historian so i cant with any honesty stand behind any statements within.

i will take exception with part of it,i do think the majority of iranians are young,and not pro american,but not violently anti american.i have many iranian friends here in the us,and they are not radical in the least bit,they may dislike our gov's policies,much as we dislike their gov's policies.
while their political masters(much like ours in the us)are belligerant towards each other.
i am curious about the larger issue,i think the iranian issue is mostly about power and influence in the gulf region,not a world wide jihad type thing.
i am curious about peoples attitudes toward appeasement and if we left the mid east tomorrow..would the hatred stop..or the death.
i dont know very much about the wahabi version of islam,i have heard about it,and it is not very moderate like the majority of islam.

like i said...just curious


From the old army pilot:




Subject: HISTORY THAT HAS BEEN LEFT OUT OF OUR TEXTBOOKS

THIS IS HISTORY THAT HAS BEEN AND / OR WILL BE LEFT
OUT OF OUR TEXTBOOKS.

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. At that time the US was
in an isolationist,
pacifist mood, and most Americans wanted nothing to
do with the European 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 yet attacked us. It was a dicey thing. We had
few allies.

France was not an ally, as the Vichy government of
France quickly aligned
itself with its German occupiers. Germany was
certainly not an ally, as
Hitler was intent on setting up a Thousand Year Reich
in Europe. Japan was
not an ally, as it was well on its way to owning and
controlling all of
Asia. Together, Japan and Germany had long-range
plans of invading Canada
and Mexico, as launching pads to get into the United
States over our
northern and southern borders, after they finished
gaining control of Asia
and Europe. America's only allies then were England,
Ireland, Scotland,
Canada, Australia, and Russia. That was about it. All
of Europe, from Norway
to Italy, except Russia in the East, was already
under the Nazi heel.

America was certainly not prepared for war. America
had drastically
downgraded most of its military forces after W.W.I
and throughout the
depression, so that at the outbreak of WW2, army
units were training with
broomsticks because they didn't have guns, and cars
with "tank" painted on
the doors because they didn't have real tanks. And a
huge chunk of our navy
had just been sunk or 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 actually the
property of Belgium, given by Belgium to England to
carry on the war when
Belgium was overrun by Hitler (a little known fact).
Actually, Belgium
surrendered on one day, because it was unable to
oppose the German invasion,
and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next
day just to prove they
could. Britain had already been holding out for two
years in the face of
staggering 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 first turning his
attention to Russia, at a
time when England was on the verge of collapse, in
the late summer of 1940.

Ironically, 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 alone... 90% of them from cold and starvation,
mostly civilians, but
also more than a 1,000,000 soldiers.

Had Russia surrendered, Hitler would have been able
to focus his entire war
effort against the Brits, then America. And the Nazis
could possibly have
won the war.

All of this is to illustrate that turning points in
history are often dicey
things. And now, we find ourselves at another one of
those key moments in
history.

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. The Jihadis,
the militant Muslims,
are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs -- they believe
that Islam, a radically
conservative 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 their
will of thinking should be killed, enslaved, or
subjugated. They want to
finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, and purge the
world of Jews. This is
their mantra.

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, but it is not known yet which will win
-- the Inquisitors, or
the Reformationists.

If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the
Jihadis, will control the
Middle East, 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 educated, 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 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 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 and the Islamic
terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. And
we can't do it
everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for
the battle at a time
and place of our choosing........in Iraq.

Not in New York, not in London, or Paris or Berlin,
but in Iraq, where we
are doing two 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 people,
and the ones we get there we won't have to get here.
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.
W.W.II 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,which is roughly
what 9/11 cost New York. It has also cost about 3,000
American lives, which
is roughly the same as the 3,000 lives that the Jihad
snuffed on 9/11. But
the cost of not fighting and winning W.W.II would
have been unimaginably
greater -- a world dominated by German and Japanese
Nazism.

This is not 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 is that we will have to deal with
Islamic terrorism until we
defeat it, whenever that is. 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
somebody prevents them.

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, of course,
be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier.

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.

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.

Remember, perspective is every thing, 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. World
War II 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 more than 2,000 killed in action in
Iraq. The US took more
than 4,000 killed in action on the morning of June 6,
1944, the first day of
the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi
Imperialism. In W.W.II the US
averaged 2,000 KIA a week -- for four years. Most of
the individual battles
of W.W.II 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).

It's difficult to understand why the American left
does not grasp this. They
favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and
freedom, but evidently not for
Iraqis.

"Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate here in
America, where it's
safe.

Why don't we see Peace Activist demonstrating in
Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan,
North Korea, in the places 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.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~

Raymond S. Kraft is a writer living in Northern
California.

didnt you notice that your copy and paste job sucked?

so he thinks that we can win the hearts and minds of the islamic world by killing more of them? he thinks that winning in iraq will keep the jihadists in line? he thinks that winning in iraq will stop iran from develping nuclear technology? he thinks that we can win iraq by adding in another 20k troops? he thinks we can win in iraq?

i think he is delusional.

Raymond craft is a right wing loon who demanded that John Kerry resign from the senate and withdrow from the presidential race because he was a traitor because he went to congress and acted as a witnedd of American atrocities in Vietnam. I wouldn't view what Kraft says with a whole lot of trust. It's generally designed for a specific purpose. In this case to justify the war.

didnt you notice that your copy and paste job sucked?

so he thinks that we can win the hearts and minds of the islamic world by killing more of them? he thinks that winning in iraq will keep the jihadists in line? he thinks that winning in iraq will stop iran from develping nuclear technology? he thinks that we can win iraq by adding in another 20k troops? he thinks we can win in iraq?

i think he is delusional.

i asked for opinions on an article..would that not imply a copy and paste?

that insult from you aside....

i appreciate your opinion,as that was what i was looking for,and if you bothered to read my comments...i did ask for constructive opinions of any vein...you unfortunately...just tried to insult me then offered no opinion other then subjective criticism of the articles writer.

+1 for you i guess

if you have anything constructive to offer..i am all ears..unless you want to attempt to insult me again,and offer no opinion.

i will say it again,as you may have skimmed over the article and just knee jerk reacted...i am on the fence on this..and i was looking for constructive...constructive opinions of both sides..as i do not have one,as of yet.

but your post kinda shades me against you.

Raymond craft is a right wing loon who demanded that John Kerry resign from the senate and withdrow from the presidential race because he was a traitor because he went to congress and acted as a witnedd of American atrocities in Vietnam. I wouldn't view what Kraft says with a whole lot of trust. It's generally designed for a specific purpose. In this case to justify the war.


thanks,that was what i was looking for,i never heard of this guy before,but like a politician(clinton and reagan come to mind)are very persuasive.

i did not want to jump to any conclusions...so i thought i would ask here,as i felt some here may be familiar with his writings/politics.

is he strictly a right wing mouth piece,or does he ever go against his masters or the party line?

Look, I didn't read all of it, but the bits I skimmed show that it is not exactly well researched. For Example:

1. Ireland was not an ally during WWII.

2. The belgium gold thing is wrong. It has more to do with the transfer of Courtalds(-sp?) the biggest non US financial trust in the US. Moreover, the large gold deposits that the US demanded from the commonwealth came from SA not Europe.

3. 1928 was not a signal year in respect of the rise of hitlerism - for want of a better word.

I could go on, but I guess you get the point.


In any case, it is bad logic to assume that you can draw comparisons from one world conflict to the next. Each are different, and each are different in their own different way. Deciding the outcome of one struggle based upon the logic of a conflict of sixty years ago will inevitably lead to defeat.

i asked for opinions on an article..would that not imply a copy and paste?

that insult from you aside....

i appreciate your opinion,as that was what i was looking for,and if you bothered to read my comments...i did ask for constructive opinions of any vein...you unfortunately...just tried to insult me then offered no opinion other then subjective criticism of the articles writer.

+1 for you i guess

if you have anything constructive to offer..i am all ears..unless you want to attempt to insult me again,and offer no opinion.

i will say it again,as you may have skimmed over the article and just knee jerk reacted...i am on the fence on this..and i was looking for constructive...constructive opinions of both sides..as i do not have one,as of yet.

but your post kinda shades me against you.

I don't think he was insulting you, just commenting on the text wrapping. It kinda sucks; there are line breaks way early, making it much more lengthy than it needs to be.

Look, I didn't read all of it, but the bits I skimmed show that it is not exactly well researched. For Example:

1. Ireland was not an ally during WWII.

2. The belgium gold thing is wrong. It has more to do with the transfer of Courtalds(-sp?) the biggest non US financial trust in the US. Moreover, the large gold deposits that the US demanded from the commonwealth came from SA not Europe.

3. 1928 was not a signal year in respect of the rise of hitlerism - for want of a better word.

I could go on, but I guess you get the point.


In any case, it is bad logic to assume that you can draw comparisons from one world conflict to the next. Each are different, and each are different in their own different way. Deciding the outcome of one struggle based upon the logic of a conflict of sixty years ago will inevitably lead to defeat.

many thanks....

this is what i was looking for.

i completely overlooked the fact about ireland,and i knew that.

thanks again.

Look, I didn't read all of it, but the bits I skimmed show that it is not exactly well researched. For Example:

1. Ireland was not an ally during WWII.

2. The belgium gold thing is wrong. It has more to do with the transfer of Courtalds(-sp?) the biggest non US financial trust in the US. Moreover, the large gold deposits that the US demanded from the commonwealth came from SA not Europe.

3. 1928 was not a signal year in respect of the rise of hitlerism - for want of a better word.

I could go on, but I guess you get the point.


In any case, it is bad logic to assume that you can draw comparisons from one world conflict to the next. Each are different, and each are different in their own different way. Deciding the outcome of one struggle based upon the logic of a conflict of sixty years ago will inevitably lead to defeat.

While we're pointing out limits to the author's historical knowledge, kudos goes to him not thinking of the ANZACs as important enough to mention as allies. Guess the 50000+ ANZAC soldiers aren't worthy of notice.
To put it in perspective, the number of soldiers killed over total civilian population for NZ was 0.75% (this from a country as far away from the fighting as one could get). USA was 0.3%

Bearing this in mind, along with the other glaring mistakes I do have to wonder why I should take any note of what the author has to say. I prefer to take stock from people who actually know what they're talking about.

And yes, I agree with you: attempting to tie the two together is a pointless and futile exercise. The enormous differences far outweigh the contrived similarities.
If you're going to do any comparisons, why use WWII? why not WWI, the battle of the Roses, The 100 years war, Caesar's invasion of Gaul or the Jedi Knights battle against the Dark Side?
I'm certain with a bit of contrived fact fiddling, one could easily 'show' how the Iraq war matches up with any of the above.

In my opinion this article has several innacuracies and a lot of hyperbola and assumptions. I agree that action should be taken, but I don't think that this article provides a very clean argument for it. Here are my problems with it:

1. It sorta obsesses over World War II, it is good and proper to take lessons from history, however when you do this you have to be careful not to directly map past events onto current situations, which he has done, ignoring many of the differences between now and World War II. This includes the offending group being an ideology and religious subsection rather than a country, different global political and economic climate, technological advantage of Western World, etc.

2. Ignores the complexities of winning an enemy over to your cause in the modern world. In World War II it was perfectly, 100% acceptable to keep killing your enemy until you cowed them into submission. (Fire bombing of Dresden, fire bombing of Tokyo, nuking Hiroshima nad Nagasaki, and the drawn out shelling of London are only the tip of the iceberg of large military maneuvers on both side which killed large numbers of civilians in an effort to lower the enemies morale) That's not acceptable any more, and because you can't just kill Muslims (violent and peaceful) until they all give up, you have to wage war very very carefully. Otherwise you will increase the numbers of violent Islamists as formally peaceful Muslims join the fundamentalist ranks. The world's new found disdain for blood also causes minor casualties to be blown way way out of proportion. This almost universally negatively impacts the US. (18 killed soldiers and we leave Somalia, a US bomb hits the wrong house and kills a family of 5 and its all over the news).

3. While Hussein was a friend to foreign terrorists (gave money to families of suicide bombers who attacked Israel, among other things) he generally didn't allow that sort of rifraff in his own back yard. It is this distinction that causes debate over whether Iraq was the right country to invade. I personally believe it was because of other things it had going for it: Horrible horrible person, may not have allowed terrorists in his country, but that's really because he had the market on fear cornered already. The fact that he escaped from Justice for so long is something the whole world should be ashamed of, including the US. His horrible actions had the benefit of making his citizens disloyal. The majority of the nation was overjoyed when the US kicked out Saddam, although it seems like few people remember those smiling, parading faces now. Anyways, back to Saddam, even though he didn't work too closely with accepted terrorist organizations (other than financial assistance), Iraq is still obviously not a Reformist Muslim nation, which would put it as one of the bad guys as described by the essay. Lastly, you can't forget about WMD. Sure, it turns out that there wasn't any, but hind sight is 20/20, and the administration had plenty of reason to believe that there were WMD when they first entered into Iraq. If World Leaders had the power to see 4 years into the future they'd all be in the stock market and we'd be right back with non-psychic World Leaders.

Even though I have some problems with the article I agree that the war in Iraq is very important. Something which will help bring the Middle East into modern times if successful, or further isolate the region. If Iraq is made into a peaceful, safe, happy region, with reasonable attitudes towards the West and prosperous because of it, I believe it will serve as an example that leads many other countries in that same direction. If it doesn't... well, would have probably been better not to have gone in at all.

Right now the situation in Iraq may look very bad, but it is a very very slow process. Personally I think mistakes were made in Iraq, and that allowing foreign fighters to inflame the cultural schisms in Iraq has set us back years, but I also think that it would have taken years anyways. I think it could be easilly 5 years before Iraq is acceptably safe (only a little longer than I thought it would take in the very beginning, I certainly didn't think we'd be done already). And after that happens it will be even longer before that change trickles throughout the rest of the region, but I still think it was an important--and good--thing to do. It's perfectly possible that Iraq will be perfectly happy one day, and everyone will still hate the US, very similar things have happened before, repeatedly, but what can you do?

While we're pointing out limits to the author's historical knowledge, kudos goes to him not thinking of the ANZACs as important enough to mention as allies. Guess the 50000+ ANZAC soldiers aren't worthy of notice.
To put it in perspective, the number of soldiers killed over total civilian population for NZ was 0.75% (this from a country as far away from the fighting as one could get). USA was 0.3%

Bearing this in mind, along with the other glaring mistakes I do have to wonder why I should take any note of what the author has to say. I prefer to take stock from people who actually know what they're talking about.

And yes, I agree with you: attempting to tie the two together is a pointless and futile exercise. The enormous differences far outweigh the contrived similarities.
If you're going to do any comparisons, why use WWII? why not WWI, the battle of the Roses, The 100 years war, Caesar's invasion of Gaul or the Jedi Knights battle against the Dark Side?
I'm certain with a bit of contrived fact fiddling, one could easily 'show' how the Iraq war matches up with any of the above.


Ooops. My bad. I would have pointed out the ANZACs had I put even a little more thought into my reply. I really should have, but I just skimmed what was obviously wrong to me - I didn't read the whole thing, as I said. Nevertheless, given the opening tone of the piece I should have picked up on that also.

Wow, that article is more full of generalizations and stereotypes than any other article I've read in a long, long time. An example:
They want to
finish the Holocaust. Really? All of them want to kill Jews? And gypsies, homosexuals, and blacks as well? Just because some people who share a common belief want Jews dead, it doesn't mean they all do. And Jew-killing is not synonymous with Holocaust. Many other minorities were persecuted during the Holocaust, such as gypsies, homosexuals, and blacks.

I don't think he was insulting you, just commenting on the text wrapping. It kinda sucks; there are line breaks way early, making it much more lengthy than it needs to be.

wayyyy too early.
Come on SAM, please spend a bit of time doing some editing and make for more intelligible reading!

i asked for opinions on an article..would that not imply a copy and paste?

that insult from you aside....

i appreciate your opinion,as that was what i was looking for,and if you bothered to read my comments...i did ask for constructive opinions of any vein...you unfortunately...just tried to insult me then offered no opinion other then subjective criticism of the articles writer.

+1 for you i guess

if you have anything constructive to offer..i am all ears..unless you want to attempt to insult me again,and offer no opinion.

i will say it again,as you may have skimmed over the article and just knee jerk reacted...i am on the fence on this..and i was looking for constructive...constructive opinions of both sides..as i do not have one,as of yet.

but your post kinda shades me against you.

if you are going to copy and paste a long ass article, its your responsibility to make it readable.

what more of an opinion did you want beyond that i disagree with his analysis? he is delusional.

You guy has no idea what he is talking about. He refers to the UK as three (not four) separate nations, not as one country.

He ignores the ANZACs as already stated.

He implies that the Iranians are Wahhibist.

He seems to think that the Saudis are rational and proper allies of the USA when the Saudi family has done the most to spread Wahhibism and that the Saudi state dictates that all citizens must be Muslim

His reformation comparison is flawed. The dictatorial might of the Vatican lost out because of the horrors it inflicted. Without inflicting such horrors there may not have been a reformation.

I got through 25% of it but it has so many factual errors that I can't be bothered to read the rest. Any opinion based on so much wrong information is worthless.

i am on the fence about this article,and i am not a historian so i cant with any honesty stand behind any statements within.

It's pretty inaccurate.

i will take exception with part of it,i do think the majority of iranians are young,and not pro american,but not violently anti american.i have many iranian friends here in the us,and they are not radical in the least bit,they may dislike our gov's policies,much as we dislike their gov's policies.
while their political masters(much like ours in the us)are belligerant towards each other.

I don't know about you, but as an American, I am quite proud that we have no political masters. (I hope that was simply poor wording on your part, and not what you really think.)

i am curious about the larger issue,i think the iranian issue is mostly about power and influence in the gulf region,not a world wide jihad type thing.


[QUOTE=Secret aj man]i am curious about peoples attitudes toward appeasement

Appeasment is a red herring issue.

and if we left the mid east tomorrow..would the hatred stop..or the death.

No, but neither will throwing away the lives of more good American soldiers.

i dont know very much about the wahabi version of islam,i have heard about it,and it is not very moderate like the majority of islam.

The wiki is a good starting point. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabi

Here are some more various sources:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saudi/analyses/wahhabism.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/gulf/wahhabi.htm
http://www.islamqa.com/index.php?ln=eng

like i said...just curious

Curiousity's always good. ;)

Subject: HISTORY THAT HAS BEEN LEFT OUT OF OUR TEXTBOOKS

BTW, here's the original source. (Please remember - everyone - to cite the source of articles.)

http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=10276

The original title was: "It Will Be the Death of Liberalism". That, to me, says pretty much all we need to know about the authors bias. As for his points, see below.

Raymond S. Kraft is a writer living in Northern
California.

I found this post on a blog that reposted part of the article. It pretty much tears up his arguments as effectively as could be done.

Comments on some fantasies of Raymond S. Kraft’s
“THIS IS HISTORY THAT HAS BEEN LEFT OUT OF OUR TEXTBOOKS.”

(In his preface Raymond Kraft wrote, —“By being denied the facts of our history, [today’s students] are at a decided disadvantage when it comes to reasoning and thinking through the issues of today. They are prime targets for misinformation campaigns beamed at enlisting them in causes and beliefs that are special interest agenda driven.”


“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. At that time the US was in an isolationist, pacifist mood, and most Americans wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian war.

“Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage Congress unanimously [not unanimous, Jeannette Rankin, Montana Member of Congress voted “no” as she also did against World War I) declared war on Japan, and the following day on Germany, which had not yet attacked us. It was a dicey thing. We had few allies.”

(This timeline is incorrect: Hitler specifically forbade the German Navy from attacking American convoys prior to Dec 7, 1941 because he remembered how sinking US ships helped provoke our decision to enter WW I. He had already launched Barbarossa, his surprise attack on the Soviet Union, and wanted to finish war on that front before taking on the United States. The great loss of shipping occurred in 1942 [after the US had declared war on both Japan and Germany] when German U boats sank 6,250,000 tons of Allied shipping. “But by the beginning of 1943 the allies gained the upper hand over the U-boats, thanks to an improved technique of using long-range aircraft and aircraft carriers and, above all, of equipping surface vessels with radar which spotted the enemy submarines before the latter could site them.” William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 1007)

(Kraft goes on to declare that the US had few allies naming England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia, ignoring all of Central and South America, India and other English colonies, China, and colonies of conquered European nations.)

* * *

“Britain had already been holding out for two years in the face of staggering shipping loses [No, see comment above) 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 first turning his attention to Russia, at a time when England was on the verge of collapse, in the late summer of 1940.”
>
(In the first four weeks of hostilities between Britain and Germany in 1939, Britain lost in the first week 64,595 tons of ships, 53,561 tons the second week, 12,750 the third and 4,646 the fourth week for a total of 26 ships of 135,532 tons sunk by U-boats plus 3 ships by mines totaling 16,488 tons. Hitler thereafter decided to show restraint while he proposed peace to France and Britain. Hitler’s April 1940 surprise German invasion of Norway was a success but one with a cost. While casualties were relatively light—about five thousand killed on each side—naval losses were not light: “The British lost one aircraft carrier, one cruiser and seven destroyers and the Poles and French one destroyer each. German naval losses were comparably much heavier: ten out of twenty destroyers, three of eight cruisers, while the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenai and the pocket battleship Luetzow were damaged so severely that they were out of action for several months. Hitler had no fleet worthy of mention for the coming events of the summer. When the time to invade Britain came, as it did so shortly, this proved an insurmountable handicap.” Shirer, p. 711

(The phrase “[Britain 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. . .” is just plain wrong. Hermann Goering, Hitler’s Air Chief, persuaded Hitler to let him soften up Britain through bombing with Germany’s massive air force which set in place the historic Battle of Britain. It pitted RAF fighter planes against waves of German attack bombers and fighters. From August 24 to September 6, 1940 the Luftwaffe sent an average of 1,000 planes a day against British defenses, and were met by much smaller forces of English Spitfires and Hurricanes manned by pilots in their early twenties who inflicted heavy losses on the attacking planes. After German planes mistakenly bombed civilians in the center of London, the RAF responded the next night by attacking Berlin, beginning a tit-for-tat slaughter of civilians of both sides. For fifty-seven consecutive nights, beginning September 7th and ending November 3rd, the Luftwaffe sent an average of 200 bombers to pound London even though Hitler had called off his “Sea Lion” invasion of England on September 17.

As Shirer wrote, “Hitler’s bomber losses over England had been so severe that they could never be made up, and in fact the Luftwaffe, as the German confidential records make clear, never fully recovered from the blow it received in the skies over Britain that late summer and fall.

“The German Navy, crippled by the losses off Norway in the early spring, was unable, as its chiefs admitted all along, to provide the sea power for an invasion of Britain. Without this, and without air supremacy, the German Army was helpless to move across the narrow Channel waters. For the first time in the war Hitler had been stopped. . .” (Shirer, p. 781)

* * *
(Kraft moves from his fantasy that Hitler could have defeated Britain when he finished with the Soviet Union to the assertion that “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. . . Had Russia surrendered, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire war effort against the Brits, then America. And the Nazis could possibly have won the war.”
Maybe in 1918, but not in 1941. The English and American fleets controlled the seas and therefore Germany’s access to oil. American industrial might was far out-producing Germany’s and was not in danger of regular bombing. Nor were the American people being demoralized by scarce food, disrupted and destroyed utilities, shortages of all consumer goods and frightening, deadly nightly bombing.
The first few months after Hitler’s June 1941 attack on the Soviet Union were indeed calamitous for the Kremlin including an estimated 1 million military and civilian dead. By September Leningrad was under siege and would be blockaded until 1943 causing an estimated million starvation deaths. Moscow was threatened, also. After driving 500 miles across Russia in little more than five months, the German army established a 200 mile semi-circular front around Moscow in late November with the largest tank force seen up to that time, but Russian resistance had stiffened. Hitler’s half-starved and freezing soldiers attacked in minus 30 degree temperatures the first days of December and were repulsed. On the 6th, 100 Russian divisions trained and equipped to fight in the bitter cold and deep snow counter-attacked destroying the myth of the invincibility of the German Army.
A year later Russian forces inflicted a greater loss on the German Army at Stalingrad, again in sub-zero temperatures imposing a psychological defeat on the German people themselves. That January 1943 defeat was followed by the battle of Kursk in July the same year. Hitler arrayed a powerful force for the purpose of trapping a large Russian force while Russian generals deduced this was the point where an attack would come. Both sides brought in vast armaments, and the Russians particularly built massive defenses against tanks and infantry. In mid July Hitler ordered the attack which heavily cost both sides, but by the fourth day Russian lines had held forcing German withdrawal and prompting an overwhelming Russian counter-attack and victory. “The legend that in summer the Germans always advanced had been dispelled once and for all. The German losses were put at 70,000 killed, 2,900 tanks, 195 mobile guns, 844 field guns, 1,392 planes and over 5,000 motor vehicles. . .
“The Russian command knew that by winning the Battle of Kursk, Russia had, in effect, won the war.” (Alexander Werth, Russia At War, 1941-45, p. 683, 685)
While the Russians suffered many losses at the hands of the German Army, there was no reason ever to assume that Russia and Stalin would surrender to Germany and Hitler.
(The reader can relax. Kraft created this straw man as a rhetorical transition to his real message.)
“All of this is to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. And now, we find ourselves at another one of those key moments in history.”
If Kraft wanted to show that mistakes in battle or strategy or effects of weather, accidents, exhaustion, or equipment malfunction changed the course of Hitler’s campaign against Britain, he could have found plenty from after-battle reports. That isn’t what he wants the reader to understand because he immediately launches a tirade about how dangerous Jihadis are and that we must keep them from sweeping across Europe and into the U.S.
. . .
‘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.”
(Forget the truth. Scare the reader. Remember our history—how we demonized witches at Salem, American Indians, black slaves, Chinese hordes, anarchists, communists, labor leaders, those who “lost” China, gays, pacifists, and now not just Muslims, but “Jihadis.” They want to take over our world!)

Didn’t Tony Blair tell us Saddam Hussein could strike London with a nuclear weapon in forty-five minutes? Undoubtedly, Mr. Kraft is better informed than the British Prime Minister, but he fails to provide us readers with any documentation of this nuclear peril.
. . .
“The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs — they believe that Islam, a radically conservative 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 their will of thinking should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, and purge the world of Jews. This is their mantra.”
While Kraft said the opposite, Wahhabi Islam is actually a branch of Islam, and it is centered in Saudi Arabia and uses government funds to support its schools to teach hostility toward infidels. Not surprisingly perhaps, nineteen of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attackers came from Saudi Arabia. And we mustn’t forget its native son, Osama bin Laden, born in Jeddah.
. . .
(After explaining that Islam is now going through an “Inquisition vs. Reformation” struggle—the Inquisitionists being the bad guys—we are guided about how to help the Reformists who accept people of other religions.)
“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 and the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. And we can’t do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle at a time and place of our choosing……..in Iraq.”
Finally! Kraft has dragged us through his fantasy of Hitler’s World War II and an equally fanciful explanation of Islam as if its billion followers were more unified than Christians, and he’s decided we must fight Wahhabism—not where Wahhabism is practiced, but in one of the most secular Middle Eastern states, at least it was before we invaded. He’ll have to plant Wahhabism in Iraq before it can be defeated there.
Now we understand. All this half-baked history and religion is his predicate for what God-fearing people must do. We must win in Iraq to keep the Jihadists from getting nuclear weapons, and in the process make Iraq a democracy.
. . .
“We … 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.”
Even the President has quit talking about making Iraq a democracy. Now all he seems to want is an Iraq with a stable government.
. . .
“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.”
After World War I, Britain tried to make an “England” there as the European Allies were carving up the Ottoman Empire. Britain got a League of Nations Mandate over Iraq in the divvying up, supported Sunni leadership, and intervened militarily on occasions until World War II, but it never created an “England” in Iraq during that 20-year period.
But that really isn’t his point. His attack is aimed at “peace activists” and “liberals” those bugaboos that seem to haunt American conservatives. If his audience is losing its enthusiasm for a war that John Hopkins University researchers calculate has cost 600,000 Iraqi lives, then maybe he can whip them up by saying that they are sounding like peaceniks or worse, “liberals.”
. . .
“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. . .”
In the fifties this kind of doggerel threatened a disbeliever with a life under communism. It’s always phrased so that if you don’t do what you’re told, your children will be punished. So we all must fight and denounce the witches at Salem, American Indians, black slaves, Chinese hordes, anarchists, communists, labor leaders, those who “lost” China, gays, pacifists, and “Jihadis.”
. . .
“Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them. . .”
That is not true. Kraft again spits in the face of history. In our own lifetimes we have seen dictators brought down through peaceful protest in Portugal and Greece in 1974, Ecuador in 1979, Peru 1980, Argentina and Spain 1982, Brazil 1985, Philippines 1986, South Korea 1987, Chile, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria, 1989, Hungary, East Germany and Namibia 1990, Taiwan 1991, South Africa 1994. And notably Britain allowed its many former colonies like India, South Africa, Kenya, Burma, Malaya, Egypt and Hong Kong to become self-governing democratic states after World War II.
. . .
“Remember, perspective is every thing, and America’s schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind.”
No, perspective is not everything. It may be everything to those with too little knowledge, to those who substitute opinions for facts, to those who rush to judgment without reflection, to those who have made a judgment based on emotion, fear, hatred or stupidity.
Perspective is but one element of a wise decision. Wisdom relies on good information, the counsel of thoughtful people, the evaluation of conflicting points of view and perspective.
Kraft proves that some schools do a poor job of teaching history. He also proves that just because he is a lawyer, he is not a good student. He does not dig out the correct facts nor cite recognized authorities for his assertions.
At a minimum, he owes his readers an apology for his numerous factual errors.
As a rhetorician he also gets failing marks because his predicates, even when he invents the facts, do not support his conclusions. For example,
“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.”
Where does this come from? “If you disagree with me, I consign your children to become Muslims.”
or
“We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq. We have focused the battle. We are killing bad people, and the ones we get there we won’t have to get here.”
Contrary to the Biblical injunction “Thou shall not kill” there is here an implicit assertion that we possess the right to kill others, that those we kill are “bad people” and that it is okay for teenage soldiers to do so without a trial or judgment, without giving the victims an opportunity to defend themselves or to hear evidence against them. Can this be so for all 600,000 Iraqis who have died so far in this war?
(To assure that readers arrive at the conclusions he believes are right, he offers four “alternatives”, the last three of which are progressively less acceptable.)
“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, of course, be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier.”
This is a set of false choices designed to make people think we must continue the killing in Iraq. Must we concede that we do not know how to settle differences with other nations by negotiation? Are we unwilling to hear the arguments of people who disagree with us? To search for solutions to their complaints as we tell them ours? What if we lived in communities where we shot first based only on our fears?
Yes, the world including the United States, is full of “peace activists” who want leaders dedicated to making this a peaceful world, and who reject a “safety through war” philosophy that tramples the rights of other people.
Robert B. Dennis

Posted by: Robert Dennis | November 07, 2006 at 04:12 PM

http://righttruth.typepad.com/right_truth/2006/03/historical_revi.html

Here's his follow up: "Why We Are In Iraq, Part II: The Precautionary Principle"
http://www.michnews.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/285/12934

Wow, that article is more full of generalizations and stereotypes than any other article I've read in a long, long time. An example:
Really? All of them want to kill Jews? And gypsies, homosexuals, and blacks as well? Just because some people who share a common belief want Jews dead, it doesn't mean they all do. And Jew-killing is not synonymous with Holocaust. Many other minorities were persecuted during the Holocaust, such as gypsies, homosexuals, and blacks.

I doubt that many Islamic terror groups would object to the systematic extermination of homosexuals.

The West's long-standing strategy of installing tyrannical pro-western regimes in Middle-Eastern countries has built up a huge amount of resentment. If we want to stop the violence, our first actions should be:

-to stop supporting unpopular, autocratic regimes
-to make a formal apology for past-support
-to ensure plentiful funding for moderate, pro-democracy groups in the Middle East, as well as women's rights campaigners.

While we're pointing out limits to the author's historical knowledge, kudos goes to him not thinking of the ANZACs as important enough to mention as allies. Guess the 50000+ ANZAC soldiers aren't worthy of notice.

Quite, but what's one more drop of ignorance in the midst of such a flood?

It was believable until he started touting "fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here" and babbling about Hussein.

This guy has a good idea what the problem is, but is clueless when it comes to the solution. He gets the idea that it's a war of ideas, but he seems to think that you can win a war of ideas by killing the people who have them. Ideas have to be defeated in their own arena, proven wrong in the public mind, and war and chaos only serves to distract and obstruct the view of the public.

no one doubts that a peaceful, liberal, democratic Iraq would be a good thing. It's just a question of whether that can possibly be accomplished, and whether it would be worth the blood shed to accomplish it.

This guy seems to think he can forsee the future. He can't.

I read about half of the article and decided finishing it would only make me dumber. First of all the author points out that the Wahabbi muslims are among the most radical and hateful elements in the Muslim world. He's right there. Then he calls the Saudis educated and rational. The Saudis bankroll and spread Wahabbi Islam! The idiot then goes on to claim Saddam was a terrorist and lists the number of Iranians he killed as proof. Then he goes on to say that the Iranians are terrorists. How is Saddam a terrorist when he was fighting against the world's biggest state sponsor of terrorism and he was fighting them as our proxy?

We can get their hearts over by killing more of them, this is true.


It's a simple matter of a few cuts

Seriously though, the whole "pacifying an islamic nation and making it democratic" thing might have worked...

...if we'd done it in Afghanistan.

If we had put all the money we've put into Iraq into Afghanistan, I believe we would have seen much better results.

We would have had the support of most other nations, resistance to the war would be significantly less, as Afghanistan is much more easily connected with 9/11 and terrorism. And most important, it would be a symbolic victory, of moderate Afghan citizens being liberated from the Taliban, rather than in Iraq, where extremist Islam has become more and more popular since the invasion.

I seriously think we could have held Afghanistan, and made this idea work there. However, this article is obviously written by the old trick of modifying the facts until they fit your theory.

I just about had a heart attack reading this article, it's so historically inaccurate. For someone who says kids are missing out on history, he needs lot of brushing up himself.

I do agree that this is a problem that will not go away over time, that will not be solved by backing off and being apologetic. Even if the West was to blame for all the problems in the Middle East (which it is not), crying about it and pointing fingers isn't going to get you anywhere. Taking all that oil money and spending it on infrastructure and industry, instead of massive palaces and opulence, might help alot - can anyone say Kuwait and UAE?

The scary thing is, what happens when these places run out of oil? Then, nobody wil care, and these places will have nothing. We'll be blamed for that one as well.