If The Cause Is Great Enough, The Price Is Irrelevant.

If The Cause Is Great Enough, The Price Is Irrelevant.
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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No one likes war. But, contrary to what the peaceniks tell us, war CAN bring change for the better. Ask the Brits, the French, the Germans the Belgium’s, the Jews…. and the list goes on.

War ABSOLUTELY changes things. The Middle East, for better or for worse, is changed forever. The US has a beachhead in the Middle East and we will be there, to one degree or another, forever. We are not going to leave. As the democracies begin to shape up, and form up, and freedom begins to spread, those who hold the dictator’s reins now will, over time, find themselves out of a job. Those who would hold the Middle East back in the 14th century will find they alone are left in the past. The people are going to move on to liberty and freedom. Once a people taste freedom, it is not possible to strip them of it again. Not for long, anyway. Take it from them and they will fight you to reclaim it.

The spark of freedom has been planted in Middle Eastern countries, ancient in origin, yet infants in the ways of democracy. It will take time to see if that spark ignites the longing for freedom, for self-determination, for liberty, and for the dignity of a free people.

Yes, there is reason to believe that within days, or weeks, or months of the US pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan, they will revert to their pre-war totalitarian ways. Many of us feel that is the most likely scenario. And yet, there is the optimistic outlook, which says democracy will win out, and the newly freed people will manage to pick up the pieces and build nations able, willing, and even eager to take their place amongst the democratic peoples of the world. Honestly… I hope the optimists win this one. The US, and it’s coalition partners, have paid a dear price, in blood and treasure, to set those enslaved peoples free and give them that chance.

In the meantime, America marches on. Many of us worry that while we are busy securing freedom for nations in distant places we are in danger of relinquishing our OWN freedom as the pre-World War Two Germans did… at the ballot box. SOME of us, and we hope, enough of us, still believe that Ronald Reagan’s dream of America as a great “shining city on a hill” still perseveres. The nation Reagan pointed to as the last, best, hope of a world, that lost its way, is in serious danger of joining the lost. I ask again, if the cost of Iraqi and Afghani freedom is the loss of our OWN freedom… then, is THAT price too dear?

For our non-American readers… that is what defines Americans. We are a people willing to risk it all… to set other men free. It costs us… dearly…each time we commit ourselves to a fight for other men’s freedom. For years, and even decades afterwards, we lick our wounds and contemplate the question of the cost, over and over again. For we know, deep down inside ourselves, that freedom must be nurtured with the blood of free men for it’s continued existence. You see… we know that our own freedom depends upon the freedom of our fellowman. As testament to our commitment survey the cemeteries filled with American dead from the remote jungle islands of the Pacific to the picturesque European countryside.

Even now, America is engaged with a foe in a worldwide war to beat back the terrorists who have stated their goal as a worldwide caliphate (kingdom) ruled by a singe religion… a theocracy. They have shown they will do anything, including the cold-blooded murder of thousands, yea, millions of innocents to achieve that goal. America and a handful of brave partner nations is the only thing standing between the free world and the ravenous wolves of Islamofacism.

Yes, we worry about the cost. Yes, we worry about our own freedom. But we know that America’s dedication to freedom would be less than complete should we ever turn our backs on our fellowman struggling to join us in the sacred, priceless, state of freedom.

If the cause is great enough, the price is irrelevant.

J. D. Longstreet

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Conservative+Freedom+War+Peace+Change+Democracy

America's Empire of Trust ... By Alan Caruba

America’s Empire of Trust
By Alan Caruba
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Though most Americans are unaware of it, the rest of the world is taking an active interest in the sometimes heated debate we are having regarding the alleged healthcare “reform” that is, in fact, yet another effort to push the nation further into the same socialist tentacles that have been embraced elsewhere.


Unlike Las Vegas, what happens in America doesn’t stay in America. As the world’s sole superpower, the man we select to be our president becomes the de facto president of the world insofar as his decisions reach into dusty villages in Afghanistan, affect global stock and commodity markets, and can determine the success or failure of movements toward freedom everywhere.


There would be no “Pax Americana” if we were seen to abandon our allies.


The similarities between the Roman Empire and the young American Empire are examined in an excellent book by Thomas F. Madden, “Empires of Trust.”


When I was born in the late 1930s America was a resolutely isolationist nation. We didn’t want to get involved in European wars. We had gotten into World War I because our ships were attacked by German submarines. When it was over, we pulled out our troops.


Not so for World War II, yet another conflict we resisted joining until the attack on Pearl Harbor. At the end of that war, we left troops in Europe to fend off the threat of the Soviet Union. We left troops in Japan to occupy it until democracy could be introduced to replace the emperor. In both cases, we spent billions to rebuild these shattered nations.


American troops are still in Europe and still in Japan. Though asked to withdraw from Iraq, a contingent of American troops will remain there long into the future and it is likely too that they shall be in Afghanistan as well. Americans were twice forced to invade Iraq; initially to force them out of Kuwait and, after 9/11, to remove Saddam Hussein, a threat to the entire region, but most particularly to Saudi Arabia, a major source of oil to the West.


While America always invades as part of a “coalition”, that is a charade because no other nation has the military strength and power to swiftly bring an offending nation to heel. It is not the conquest that is difficult. It is the clean up afterwards.


In point of fact, America maintains military units all over the world and they are there by invitation. Another element of America’s Empire of Trust is that the wars in which we have engaged since the end of World War II have all been in distant places. That pattern began with the Korean conflict in the 1950s. That was followed by the distress when America took over the conflict in Vietnam from France.


After initial enthusiasm for revenge following 9/11, our current participation in the Iraq and Afghan conflicts in Iraq has long since cooled. Americans, as did the citizens of Rome, do not like extended military engagements.


There are any number of similarities between the citizens of Rome who sought their own security by slowly having to conquer neighboring enemies in Italy, subdue the Carthaginian threat from North Africa, and disturbances in Greece.


The growth of the Roman Empire took place over centuries, but the reluctant Romans did not seek conquest; only peace for themselves. They did this by turning conquered enemies into friends and, since they were so successful in war, they were continually entreated to extend their protection further and further from Rome. The result was an Empire of Trust.


The Romans created the first republic in which power resided in its citizens. The American republic was, in many ways, patterned after the Roman republic, but the Founders also sought to avoid the errors of Rome, dividing power within government and ensuring that our military’s allegiance was to the Constitution, not a particular leader. Our wars must be approved by congressional resolutions.


Even in Rome there were early predictions that their empire would end. By 146 BC the Romans were the most powerful nation of those bordering the Mediterranean from Spain to Egypt and they would remain so for some sixteen centuries.


Most Americans draw their “knowledge” of ancient Rome from Hollywood films, but the scenes of decadence and apparent tyranny are wrong in many ways. A pious people, the famed decline in morality and the necessity to subdue religious chaos in the Middle East actually occurred by the time the empire had largely converted to Christianity as the state religion. They occurred late in its long history of having imposed the “Pax Romana” on the known world. The last elements of the empire would disappear in 1453.


A world at peace was always the Roman goal and, following World War II, it has been America’s goal. However, as Madden points out, “War—not peace—is the normal state of affairs in human history.” What is called peace “is an intermission, a time to prepare for more war.”


America was forced to enter two wars in Europe in the last century because, as Madden, notes, “The countries and leaders of Europe waged nearly constant warfare for more than fifteen centuries.”


This is why, too, that American soldiers and marines, assisted by troops contributed by a relatively few and greatly reluctant allies, are now fighting a “hot” war in Afghanistan after a lengthy engagement in an Iraq. Americans do not like long wars, but Madden bluntly says that “Americans need to accept that the War on Terror is going to be a long one.


Liberals always claim that “war never solves anything”, but history demonstrates that war always solves something. We have a United States of America because we fought a long, bloody Civil War. We are not subject to the dictates of a Nazi Germany in control of Europe or an Empire of Japan controlling Asia because we fought and won World War II. Our proxy wars weakened the former Soviet Union.


Former President Bush was right when, in 2002, he said, “We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best. We cannot put our faith in the word of tyrants, who solemnly sign nonproliferation treaties, and then systematically break them. If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long…we must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge.”


That is the definition of “Pax Americana” and it is the mission of the American Empire.


Alan Caruba
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Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. A business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

© Alan Caruba, August 2009
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Conservative+America+Peace

No State For Palestine… EVER!

No State for Palestine… ever!

J. D. Longstreet

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The simple truth is, there should be no Palestinian state and there is no reason, today, to think there will be any time in in the immediate future.

Did you know that the area and the people, erroneously called Palestinians, were offered a state of their own back in the 1930’s? Bet you didn’t know that.

It seems we have to go over the history of the rejected Palestinian state over and over and I can only surmise the Public School System and the university and college systems in the US simply don’t teach it!

Look, the plain truth is… the people, calling themselves Palestinians, have been offered a state of their own at least three times since the 1936 Arab revolt. They have flatly turned it down every time! Yes! The first offer made by the Peel Commission in the 1930s offered them a vast piece of real estate much larger that that offered to the Jews… and … they turned it down!

UN Resolution 181 passed soon after the Second World War gave Israel 55% of the so-called Palestine and the Palestinians 45%. The Jews accepted and in doing so recognized that Palestine would become a state next door to them. They accepted that. But the Arabs rejected it, flat out, and started another war against the Jews, which they (the Arabs) promptly lost.

It has been 60 years now and the whining and moaning is still coming from the “woe is me” crowd who called themselves Palestinians.

The problems between Israel and the Palestinians are not because Israel has settled on some disputed land. No! The cause of all the trouble in that “center of the earth” strip of land is due entirely to the Arabs refusal to accept the existence of a Jewish state called Israel, or called anything else, for that matter. That is the crux of the problem.

“Right of Return” is far more dangerous to The State of Israel than an all out attack by their Arab neighbors. You’re going to hear more and more about the Palestinians demand for a Right of Return.

So what is the Right of Return? “The idea of the right of return is to demand that Israel allow the descendants of the 750,000 Palestinians who were displaced in 1948 and their families (which now stands at almost 4 million) back into Israel and give them full compensation for their troubles. Even if only half of these Palestinians returned, it would alter Israel's identity as a Jewish state and effectively create a second Palestinian state. One assumption made under the right of return is that the all the Arabs that lived in Israel proper were forcibly expelled from their homes in 1947 and 48. This is a myth. While historians know for a fact that a small number of the 750,000 displaced Arabs were forcibly expelled by Zionist militias (a famous example being Deir Yassin), honest and impartial historians also know that a large number of this 750,000 strong population left on their own, either to avoid an upcoming war between the Zionists and the Arabs, or to join the Arabs in the fighting against the newly established state.” (From:the Middle East Now. You'll find it HERE. )

The "Palestinians" will obfuscate, and delay, and continue to carry on their war to wipe Israel from the face of the map. They will use any means to do it, up to, and including, using the US State Department and Secretary of State... and a VERY naive President to do it.

As a conservative, I believe in “peace through victory”. To take that a step farther, I believe we ought to unleash Israel and let them do whatever they find necessary to eradicate the Palestinian problem on their borders.

But that is not going to happen any time soon. Watch as our socialist President, with his Secretary of State, try to bring peace to the the Holy Land. Watch as the Arabs play them for "suckers" just as they have all the rest since the late 1940's. It would be funny... if it were not for all the dead bodies lying all over the landscape.

If the world truly wants peace in the Middle East, especially that portion we erroneously call Palestine, then the world should get out of the way and allow Israel to take care of business.

J. D. Longstreet

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