Down the tube?

In a time of urgent crisis what would you give? What’s worth fighting for?

The Canadian Forces will most likely not reach their recruitment goals this year. Currently, the forces aren’t facing attrition, but any plans to expand seem impossible at the moment. Unless Canadians in general have a dramatic change of heart, force expansion just isn’t in the cards because not enough people are signing up. At the same time, our small Armed Forces, which are still under-equipped in many areas, face numerous growing challenges.

In Afghanistan, the going is tough, and sure to get tougher. With Islamists just across the boarder posturing and posing and giving every inclination that they want a war, things could yet get very much worse. With funds from Iran and Pakistan available to fanatics, the risk to Canadians is not going away any time soon. A democratic Afghanistan needs our help to shake off its local fanatics, yet global events threaten to engulf the comparatively minor happenstance of tribal Afghanistan and turn it into something much bigger, and much bloodier.

All of this raises the question; what are you willing to give for the cause? Is the cause worth it? Is any cause worth it? Hell, do you even believe in "the cause?" Are you in the 18-30 bracket and have you ever honestly considered joining the military? Would that be too much sacrifice for you? Try this then; what government handouts or percent of your paycheck are you willing to part with in order to ensure that those who fight in your name do so with the deadliest and best possible weapons and equipment in hand? These questions may seem obvious, but I can’t help but feel that few have taken the time to seriously ponder them.

In a recent speech, the incisive Victor Davis Hanson noted that empires do not often fall from squalor, rather they succumb in moments of greatness. He cited Rome as an example, and a prime example it is.

Having weathered a Gallic invasion and re-asserted itself in Italy, Post-Etruscan Rome faced its greatest military adversary, Hannibal, in the second Punic War. As a General, Hannibal was brilliant. While several times fought to a draw, Hannibal succeeded in wiping out numerous Roman armies. Indeed, throughout his long career in warfare, Hannibal suffered only one decisive defeat, but it was that defeat that made the difference. While the strategy and tactics of the battles and war can be minutely discussed, the one vital attribute and advantage that carried the Romans to victory was the same determination that carried them to that final battle with Hannibal, and to every battle preceding it.

Again and again Hannibal proved his dominance on the battlefield by encircling and wiping out entire Roman armies. And again and again, the Romans would rally, reform their armies, and march back to war. The Etruscan-style military organization which the Romans used at the time may seem counterintuitive to us in our modern age. Every male Roman citizen was required to serve, provide his own armor and equipment, and put his life on the line. Truly, it was all for one, and the Romans refused to let defeat on the battlefield translate to defeat in war. At war's end, the Romans had lost nearly every battle and countless lives, but their determination had won the final battle, and the war.

Several centuries later the little city state of Rome had, with that same perseverance, carved out an enormous empire. And yet, the determination of the Romans themselves began to falter. It is said that eventually the great majority of the Roman army wasn’t composed of Romans at all. While the “true Romans” sat in their supreme opulence in Rome and Constantinople, the empire was picked apart by minor barbarian kings; a wide array of relative nobodies compared to Hannibal. By the time of Attila, who was still comparatively a lightweight, the Romans quickly reverted to bribery and appeasement. In the end, the accessions were always preceded by war, war that the Romans were unwilling to see through.

The parallels to be drawn are obvious. Western civilization has reached levels of wealth and affluence unsurpassed anywhere in history. Yet in our “progressive” magnificence, we may have lost our will to fight for what we hold dear. To be sure, the pursuit of peace is a most noble undertaking, yet we are often too quick to forget that beyond our boarders are more than a few modern day barbarians who share none of our enlightened outlook. Through training and technology, our soldiers may reign supreme on the battlefield, but our civilization on the whole may have grown vulnerable in its affluence, opulence, progressiveness, and humanistic enlightenment. Cruder, blunter forces unhindered by these, may now hold the advantage. Through a shortsighted lens it may be difficult, nay impossible, to imagine the fall of our own civilization, yet history's precedent says that it is all too likely.

Which brings us back to the beginning. In a time of urgent crisis what would you give? What’s worth fighting for?

"The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage." [Alexander Tyler]

French troops: We won't go to Afghanistan
Sat, 04 Oct 2008 06:58:27 GMT

24 French soldiers have so far been killed in Afghanistan.
Troops in a military base in France have opposed their deployment to Afghanistan amid dwindling support of French forces being there.

According to French media, troops in the 27th battalion stationed in a southern France military base said on Friday that they were unwilling to go to Afghanistan as part of France's mission in the central Asian country.

The troops' refusal to go to the war-ravaged country comes as 10 French soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in August.
The August ambush is the deadliest ground attack on international forces since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the heaviest single death toll for the French military since the 1983 bombing of a barracks in Beirut killed 58 French paratroopers.

The Taliban and Former PM Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who leads Hezb-i-Islami group, separately claimed responsibility for the attack on the French troops amid speculation that they were killed by 'friendly-fire' from NATO planes that had come to help them escape the ambush.

The attack shocked France and sparked fierce debate about the country's presence in Afghanistan. Despite calls to withdraw, French lawmakers have recently approved an extension of the country's involvement in the Afghan conflict.
Despite the fact that 50 percent of the French people oppose the deployment of thousands of troops to Afghanistan, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced at the last NATO summit in April that he would send an additional 700 French soldiers to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, bringing the total to about 3,000.

Criticism of Sarkozy's policies increased following the death of the 10 French soldiers. He has also faced severe criticism for being too close to US President George W. Bush's administration.
AKM/DT

http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=71254&sectionid=351020603

calmage wrote:You know...
I'm going to sound the gong of hope here for a minute.

I think we definitely were headed to selfishness... and then right onto that greased slope of complacency.

But .. the oil, the markets, and Russia stomping their feet I think have halfway jerked humanity out of their dozing complacency and slapped apathy right out of the ballpark.

Sure.. lots of people are dazed and confused with all that's going on...
But.. at least they're awake now to the possiblity that life as we knew and loved could be a thing of history... just like Rome.

Islam, climate change, no oil, Russian aggression, and loss of trust in the global market and supply chains have people edgy and the adrenaline is starting to flow which has a resultant human response of "fight or flight".

There is no where to fly..
As we all on this big ball together..
So.. "fight" is up to bat.

Yeah.. some might try to put Obamabalm on in an effort to make the hurt and worry go away...

But.. in this day and age of instant information on a global level.. I think the Obamabalm will quickly lose it's anesthetizing effects..
Especially once people realize there is no medicine in the balm.



I think the net is helping the world see that we are all neighbors.
Yes... we have the moonbats and the religious fringe that will always be a threat to calm and stability...
But I think the great majority of people on the earth just want to live out their lives in love and security, and to know their kids have a future to look forward to as well.
I think the net will help bring that about.

Christianity vs Islam

Our Thought For The Day comes from Steve Centanni, the Fox News reporter freed over the weekend by his captors in Gaza:

"We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. Don't get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it."

Before their release, Mr Centanni and his cameraman, Olaf Wiig, had appeared on camera in Islamic robes, sitting cross-legged, and had read from scripts announcing that they had become observant Muslims and asking Bush and Blair to do likewise. "Islam is not just meant for some people. It is the true religion for all people at all times," said Mr Centanni. "I changed my name to Khaled. I have embraced Islam and say the word Allah."

Earlier, his captors released a statement saying the two men had been offered a choice between a) conversion to Islam; b) the jizya (the tax paid by non-Muslims to their Muslim masters); or c) war. There was no none-of-the-above box. "They chose Islam," said the spokesperson for the group," and that is a gift God gives whom He chooses" — even if circumstances occasionally oblige Him to give it to you down the barrel of a gun.

Just as there are rapists who tell themselves their victims are genuinely in love with them, so no doubt there are those who believe that faith can be enforced at the point of a sword. In one of the most indestructible examples of Islamostockholm Syndrome, the British journalist Yvonne Ridley was kidnapped in Afghanistan, converted to Islam, and has stayed converted: she was on Britain's Islam Channel the other day pitching softball questions to the former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohammed about his plans to destroy the United States.

But Centanni and Wiig's brief interlude as practicing Muslims is revealing in a larger sense. Ever since 9/11, the western multicultural mindset has been desperately trying to swaddle Islam within the fluffy quilt of diversity. It's "just" another religion, like the Congregationalists and Episcopalians. To be sure, it's got a few hotheads, but haven't we all? Sticking with this line requires an awful lot of brushing under the carpet and there's so much under there by now it looks like a broadloomed Himalayas. For a start, you can't help noticing the traffic is mostly one-way: In Dr. Mahathir's country, where a long English Common Law tradition is under sustained pressure from sharia, a lady called Lina Joy is currently enduring death threats and a long legal battle because she committed the "crime" of converting from Islam to Catholicism.

Well, that's Malaysia for you. But how about Michigan? Nazra Quraishi, a kindergarten teacher at a local Muslim school, wrote to The Lansing State Journal last month as follows:

"Islam is a guide for humanity, for all times, until the day of judgment. It is forbidden in Islam to convert to any other religion. The penalty is death. There is no disagreement about it. Islam is being embraced by people of other faiths all the time. They should know they can embrace Islam, but cannot get out. This rule is not made by Muslims; it is the supreme law of God."

That seems clear enough, doesn't it? In 1951, Eric Hoffer, America's great longshoreman philosopher, wrote:

"The manner in which a mass movement starts out can also have an effect on the duration and mode of termination of the active phase of the movement."

Christians and Muslims are both "people of the book." But there's a difference: Christianity started out as a religion of the weak, held by the lowliest in society and advanced by conversion and example, independent of the state. A distinction between religion and temporal power is embedded in its founding narratives. Compare the final words of Jesus to his disciples, on the day of his ascension …

"Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."

… with the final words of Mohammed to his disciples:

"I was ordered to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no god but Allah.'"

That's quite a difference. Christ is saying go to the remotest parts of the world and persuade others of what you know to be the truth. Mohammed is saying fight all men until they submit to your truth: It's not a plan for converting an existing empire (as Christianity did) but for establishing a new empire. Islam was born and spread as a warrior's creed and, while that can be sedated, the intensity of anger of today's western Muslims suggests that the Mohammedan fighter endures at the heart of their faith, albeit significantly augmented by greater firepower. Oh, come on, you say, what about the Spanish Inquisition? Well, for one thing, the Inquisition killed fewer people in a century and a half than the jihad does in an average year. But, in the larger sense, it's easy to argue that, numbers aside, it was always an aberration and distortion of Christianity's roots. It's less clear that the jihad in its most violent form is a distortion of Mohammed's message. With Islam, it's the moderate variants of the Balkans, the Central Asian Stans and South Asia that are the aberration. And they're all now fading.

So, if you're pinning your hopes on Islamic reform, the difficulty is that most prominent Islamists are doing no more than Mohammedan karaoke. Here's Osama bin Laden during the post-9/11 Afghan campaign:

"I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is no god but Allah, and his prophet Mohammed."

It's hard to argue direct quotation is a "distortion" of the "religion of peace." The respective statements of Jesus and Mohammed are, to say the least, indicative of disposition. The embrace of Christianity by the state power in Europe was the final stage in a process of pacific conversion. Whereas, at the height of its power in the eighth century, when the "Islamic world" stretched from Spain to India, its population was only minority Muslim, and it suited the Caliphate to keep it that way: fiscally speaking, a subordinate infidel population paying the jizya (the special tax for non-Muslims) was a critical component. Islam was less a proselytizing faith than a rationale for political authority. And today's jihad has far more in common with a conventional imperial regime than with any religious evangelizing.

Which means there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that Islam will soon be able to enforce submission-conversion at the point of a nuke. The good news is that any religion that needs to do that is, by definition, a weak one. More than that, the fierce faith of the 8th century Muslim warrior has been mostly replaced by a lot of hastily cobbled-together flimflam bought wholesale from clapped out European totalitarian pathologies. It would have struck almost any other ruler of Persia as absurd and unworthy to be as pitifully obsessed with Holocaust denial as President Ahmadinejad is: talk about a bad case of Europhile cultural cringe. But in today's mosques and madrassahs there is almost as little contemplation of the divine as there is in the typical Anglican sermon. The great Canadian columnist David Warren argues that Islam is desperately weak, that it has been "idiotized" by these obsolescent imports of mid-20th century Fascism. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but, if Washington had half the psy-ops spooks the movies like to think we have, the spiritual neglect in latter-day Islam is a big Achilles' heel just ripe for exploiting.

June 7, 2006
Yvonne Ridley, convert to Islam and former hostage, tells Muslims in Britain not to cooperate with police
There are many ways to wage jihad. Here's another. "Call to Muslims over police help," from the BBC, with thanks to all who sent this in:

An activist from the Respect Party has urged Muslims in east London to stop co-operating with police.
Yvonne Ridley, who became a Muslim after her kidnap by the Taleban in Afghanistan five years ago, has accused the police of being heavy-handed.

She told a meeting of the Newham branch of the Respect Party that Muslims should "boycott" the Met Police.
Jihad Watch

America Has a Naive President
Dennis Prager
Tuesday, April 07, 2009

“The basic bargain is sound: countries with nuclear weapons will move toward disarmament, countries without nuclear weapons will not acquire them.” -- President Barack Obama, Prague, April 6, 2009

As far as nuclear weapons are concerned, the President of the United States wants America to disarm: “Countries with nuclear weapons will move toward disarmament.”

It is hard to imagine a more destructive goal. A nuclear disarmed America would lead to massive and widespread killing, more genocide, and very possibly the nuclear holocaust worldwide nuclear disarmament is meant to prevent.

There is nothing moral, let alone realistic, about this goal.
Here is an analogy. Imagine that the mayor of a large American city announced that it was his goal to have all the citizens of his city disarm -- what could be more beautiful than a city with no weapons? This would, of course, ultimately include the police, but with properly signed agreements, vigorously enforced, and violators of the agreement punished, it would remain an ideal to pursue.

One has to assume that most people would regard this idea as, at the very least, useless. There would be no way to ensure that bad people would disarm; and if the police disarmed, only bad people would have weapons.

The analogy is virtually precise -- but only if you acknowledge that America is the world’s policeman. To idealists of the left, however, the notion of America as the world’s policeman is both arrogant and misguided. A strengthened “world community” -- as embodied by the United Nations – should be the world’s policeman.

To the rest of us, however, the idea of the United Nations as the world’s policeman is absurd and frightening. The United Nations has proven itself a moral wasteland that gives genocidal tyrannies honored positions on human rights commissions. The weaker the U.N. and the stronger America, the greater the chances of preventing or stopping mass atrocities.

On the assumption that the left and the right both seek a world without genocide and tyranny, it is, then, the answer to this question that divides them: Are genocide and tyranny more or less likely if America is the strongest country on earth, i.e., the country with the greatest and most weapons, nuclear and otherwise?

Moreover even if you answer in the negative and think that the world would experience less evil with a nuclear disarmed America, the goal of worldwide nuclear disarmament is foolish because it is unattainable. And unattainable goals are a waste of precious time and resources.

For one thing, it is inconceivable that every nation would agree to it. Why would India give up its nuclear weapons? There aren’t a dozen Hindus who believe that Pakistan would give up every one of its nuclear weapons. And the same presumably holds true for Muslims in Pakistan with regard to India disarming.

And what about Israel? Would that country destroy all its nuclear weapons? Of course not. And it would be foolish to do so. Israel is surrounded by countries that wish not merely to vanquish it, but to destroy it. It regards nuclear weapons as life assurance. And it regards the United Nations (with good reason) as its enemy, not its protector.

As for states like Iran and North Korea, they have already violated agreements regarding nuclear weapons. What would prompt them to do otherwise in a world where America got weaker? United Nations sanctions? And why would Russia and China even agree to them?

Finally, there would be no way to prevent rogue scientists from selling materials and know-how to terrorists.

The result of this left-wing fantasy of worldwide nuclear disarmament would simply be that those who illegally acquired or made but one nuclear weapon would be able to blackmail any nation.

What any president of the United States should aspire to is: 1). to keep America the strongest country in the world militarily (as well as economically, but that is not the question on the table); 2) to destroy those individuals and organizations that seek nuclear weapons so as to kill as many innocent people as possible; and 3) remain the world’s policeman. These aims cannot be achieved if America aims to disarm.

President Obama said “I am not naïve” in his talk. That, unfortunately, is as accurate as his statement before the joint session of Congress that “I do not believe in bigger government.”

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