At NRO, Steven Hayward has a fascinating column, Is Newt Like Churchill?. In it, Hayward acknowledges all of the criticism of Gingrich and notes the distinct parallels to similar criticism of Churchill in the days before he was elevated to Prime Minister. With that in mind, Hayward first asks whether the situation we face requires us to give positive consideration to Newt. Is Newt the man "who will both argue for and attempt to implement the large changes necessary to right our listing ship of state?" This leads to the second question, has Newt, like Churchill did before him, learned the necessary discipline from his "time in the wilderness" to lead effectively once in office? Do click on Hayward's essay to see his analysis. Hayward concludes his essay by noting:
The next couple of months may well prove out the unplanned logic of our long campaign process. The debates, Newt’s strong suit so far, are about to give way to real voting, and to the week-by-week ground game that requires focus and consistency. Newt has a chance to prove conservative skeptics wrong about his constancy — the chance to win over skeptics in the face of so much evidence against him.
The course of John Colville’s evolving assessment of Churchill in the 1940s is suggestive. Colville wrote in his diary the night Churchill became prime minister on May 10, 1940: “He may, of course, be the man of drive and energy the country believes him to be and he may be able to speed up our creaking military and industrial machinery; but it is a terrible risk, it involves the danger of rash and spectacular exploits, and I cannot help fearing that this country may be maneuvered into the most dangerous position it has ever been in.”
Over the next decade, the skeptical Colville was completely won over. He left one other judgment of Churchill that is worth recalling in connection with Newt: “Finally, in politics and indeed all his life, he was as strange a mixture of radical and traditionalist as could anywhere be found. He was certainly not a conservative by temperament, nor indeed by conviction a supporter of the Conservative Party.”
. . .
Republicans, and indeed, the entire U.S. electorate benefits from intellectually honest analysis of our candidates. This is how it should be done.
I am aware of two good quotes on socialism that combine both wit and brevity. There is of course, the famous quip from Winston Churchill:
There are only two places where socialism will work - in heaven, where it is not needed, and in hell, where it is already in practice.
And joining Sir Winston is Instapundit who today drolly observes:
Will 2010 be the year of bankrupt governments. The trouble with socialism is, sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.
Do follow the link in Instapundit's quote. It is to a good article by Ralph Peters on several of the more shaky governments standing on the economic precipice.
It turns out Pope Benedict XVI has a bit of Karl Marx in him. The Pope has issued a 144 page encyclical letter (not ex cathedra), Caritas In Veritate (Charity in Truth), arguing for what amounts to a new socialist world order with business centrally controlled and run for the social good rather than profit.
It is more than a bit ironic, since the father of socialism, Karl Marx, provided the historical framework for the war on Christianity that the left is carrying on so successfully today. But in a way, it is not surprising that both should advocate socialism, as socialism is ultimately a Utopian ideal, As Churchill sagely noted some years ago, there are only two places where socialism would work - "in heaven, where it is not needed, and in hell, where it is already in practice."
"Ex Cathedra," by the way, refers to the relatively recent doctrine of papal infallibility. The doctrine holds that the Pope speaks with divine inspiration - and thus his pronouncements are infallible - when he speaks on moral issues and invokes the doctrine of infallibility by explicitly stating that his teaching is a core belief to be adopted by the entire Church.
This from the Washington Post on the Pope's encyclical letter:
Pope Benedict XVI criticized the international economic system yesterday and called for a new global structure based on social responsibility, concern for the dignity of the worker and a respect for ethics.
"Today's international economic scene, marked by grave deviations and failures, requires a profoundly new way of understanding human enterprise," Benedict wrote in his latest encyclical, which is the most authoritative document a pope can issue. "Without doubt, one of the greatest risks for business is that they are almost exclusively answerable to their investors, thereby limited in their social value."
In the sweeping 144-page document, Benedict sketches a radically different world economy, in which access to food and water is a universal right, wealthy nations share with poorer ones and profit is not the ultimate goal of commerce. He advocates the creation of a "world political authority" to manage the economy.
He blames "badly managed and largely speculative financial dealing" for causing the economic meltdown. The primary capital to be safeguarded is people, he says, adding that economic systems need to be guided by charity and truth. . . .
Unfortunately, the Pope has things backwards. He apparently skipped Econ 101 to concentrate on religious training. Capitalism has been the greatest engine of human advancement and the war on poverty that the world has ever known. The breakdown in the markets that we are experiencing can be traced in a direct line to government intervention for the purpose of social engineering - precisely what the Pope is advocating. If the Pope wants to ensure social progress, he is going about it in completely the wrong way. As Anatole Kaletsky wrote in the Times in 2003:
Even if there were room for argument about the benefits of free trade and free markets to workers in advanced industrial countries — and there really cannot be, if we compare what has happened to ordinary people’s lives in Western and Eastern Europe, not to mention in North and South Korea, during the 50 years since the Second World War — the principle that global capitalism is the most benign and successful of all human creations would be firmly established by the social progress in China since its integration into the global economy.
A few days ago, Charles Krauthammer noted that when our President finds himself on the side of Castro and Chavez, its time for him to reevaluate his position. A similar thing can be said of our Pope. When he finds himself advocating the policies of Marx and Lenin, that ought to be a clue that it is time to reevaluate his position. Business are and always will be soulless institutions. It is the individuals who profit from and are employed by the business - those with souls - upon whom the Pope should be concentrating. And history tells us that, as a general rule, their condition will be better and their charitable giving will grow the more the business profits.
1940: Prime Minister Churchill address the people of Britain from the House of Commons during the darkest days of WWII, when Britain stood alone againt a triumphant Hitler who had just succeeded in overruning virtually all of Europe.
618 – The Tang Dynasty begins in China when Li Yuan becomes Emperor Gaozu of Tang. The dynasty would rule for the next three centuries and bring a golden age to Chinese culture.
1178 – Five Canterbury monks reported to the abbey's chronicler, Gervase, that shortly after sunset they saw "two horns of light" on the shaded part of the Moon. What they observed was a lunar impact that formed the Giordano Bruno crater. It is believed that the current oscillations of the moon's distance (on the order of metres) are a result of this collision.
1757 – Frederick the Great of Prussia was handed his first defeat in the Seven Year's War by an Austrian Army at the Battle of KolÃn. During the battle, Frederick was able to stave off an even worse defeat when he rallied his troops with the now famous cry "Rogues, do you want to live forever?"
1812 – The U.S. Congress declares war on the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, giving a formal start to the War of 1812. The war was caused by a combination of American desire to expand, British support of Indians on the borders, and British interference with U.S. maritime trade. The war would last for two years, see the White House burned, the Star Spangled banner written, and the U.S. achieve its goal of cutting off the Indians from British support.
1815 – The Duke of Wellington and a Prussian force defeat Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in Belgium. Pursuing Coalition forces entered France and restored Louis XVIII to the French throne. Napoleon abdicated, surrendering to the British, and was exiled to Saint Helena, where he died in 1821.
1830 – France invades Algeria, starting a long and bloody war that would not end for 70 years and that would reduce the Algerian population by a third. The French occupation would end 130 years later following a successful guierilla war that sapped the French will to fight. The lessons of that guerilla war would form the basis for our successful strategy in Iraq under General Petraeus.
1858 – Charles Darwin receives a paper from Alfred Russel Wallace that includes nearly identical conclusions about evolution as Darwin's own. This prompted Darwin to publish his theory.
1873 – Susan B. Anthony is fined $100 for attempting to vote in the 1872 presidential election.
1940 – With Paris fallen and Vichy France opting to cooperate with the Nazis, Charles de Gaulle, speaking by radio from London, broadcast a speech to France now known as the Appeal of June 18. He declared that the war for France was not yet over, and rallied the country in support of the Resistance. It is one of the most important speeches in French history.
1940 – Perhaps the greatest leader of the 20th century, Winston Churchill, delivered his "Finest Hour" speech. He gave it a time when Germany had just overrun Europe and British troops had been forced to retreat back to Britain from Dunkirk. The full text is at the bottom of this post.
1945 – William Joyce, nicknamed Lord Haw-Haw, was a U.S. born citizen who moved to the U.K. and joined the facist movement in the 1930's. During WWII, he broadcast Nazi propaganda into Britain. On this day in 1945, following his capture, he was charged with treason, the crime for which he would later be hung.
1959 – Louisiana politics reared its head when the eccentric Governor of Louisiana Earl K. Long was committed to a state mental hospital by a group of politicians and his wife, who in reality was probably really upset that the governor had been carrying on with the famous stripper of the era, Blaze Starr. Long responded by having the hospital's director fired and replaced with a crony who proceeds to proclaim him perfectly sane.
1979 – Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev signed SALT II, an agreement to limit the manufacture of nuclear weapons.
1981 – The AIDS epidemic is formally recognized by medical professionals in San Francisco, California.
1983 – Astronaut Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space.
1984 – A major clash between about 5,000 police and a similar number of miners takes place at Orgreave, South Yorkshire, during the 1984-1985 UK miners' strike. Defeating that strike was a major victory for PM Margaret Thacher in her effort to reform Britain's moribund socialist economy. True to form, the left still portrays her as the heavy, most recently in the 2000 film Billy Elliot.
1996 – The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, is indicted on ten criminal counts.
2006 – The first Kazakh space satellite, KazSat is launched. I can't remember if that made it into Borat.
The full text of Churchill's speech at the House of Commons, 18 June, 1940
I spoke the other day of the colossal military disaster which occurred when the French High Command failed to withdraw the northern Armies from Belgium at the moment when they knew that the French front was decisively broken at Sedan and on the Meuse. This delay entailed the loss of fifteen or sixteen French divisions and threw out of action for the critical period the whole of the British Expeditionary Force. Our Army and 120,000 French troops were indeed rescued by the British Navy from Dunkirk but only with the loss of their cannon, vehicles and modern equipment. This loss inevitably took some weeks to repair, and in the first two of those weeks the battle in France has been lost. When we consider the heroic resistance made by the French Army against heavy odds in this battle, the enormous losses inflicted upon the enemy and the evident exhaustion of the enemy, it may well be the thought that these 25 divisions of the best-trained and best-equipped troops might have turned the scale. However, General Weygand had to fight without them. Only three British divisions or their equivalent were able to stand in the line with their French comrades. They have suffered severely, but they have fought well. We sent every man we could to France as fast as we could re-equip and transport their formations.
I am not reciting these facts for the purpose of recrimination. That I judge to be utterly futile and even harmful. We cannot afford it. I recite them in order to explain why it was we did not have, as we could have had, between twelve and fourteen British divisions fighting in the line in this great battle instead of only three. Now I put all this aside. I put it on the shelf, from which the historians, when they have time, will select their documents to tell their stories. We have to think of the future and not of the past. This also applies in a small way to our own affairs at home. There are many who would hold an inquest in the House of Commons on the conduct of the Governments--and of Parliaments, for they are in it, too--during the years which led up to this catastrophe. They seek to indict those who were responsible for the guidance of our affairs. This also would be a foolish and pernicious process. There are too many in it. Let each man search his conscience and search his speeches. I frequently search mine.
Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future. Therefore, I cannot accept the drawing of any distinctions between members of the present Government. It was formed at a moment of crisis in order to unite all the Parties and all sections of opinion. It has received the almost unanimous support of both Houses of Parliament. Its members are going to stand together, and, subject to the authority of the House of Commons, we are going to govern the country and fight the war. It is absolutely necessary at a time like this that every Minister who tries each day to do his duty shall be respected; and their subordinates must know that their chiefs are not threatened men, men who are here today and gone tomorrow, but that their directions must be punctually and faithfully obeyed. Without this concentrated power we cannot face what lies before us. I should not think it would be very advantageous for the House to prolong this debate this afternoon under conditions of public stress. Many facts are not clear that will be clear in a short time. We are to have a secret session on Thursday, and I should think that would be a better opportunity for the many earnest expressions of opinion which members will desire to make and for the House to discuss vital matters without having everything read the next morning by our dangerous foes.
The disastrous military events which have happened during the past fortnight have not come to me with any sense of surprise. Indeed, I indicated a fortnight ago as clearly as I could to the House that the worst possibilities were open; and I made it perfectly clear then that whatever happened in France would make no difference to the resolve of Britain and the British Empire to fight on, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.
During the last few days we have successfully brought off the great majority of the troops we had on the line of communication in France; and seven-eighths of the troops we have sent to France since the beginning of the war--that is to say, about 350,000 out of 400,000 men--are safely back in this country. Others are still fighting with the French, and fighting with considerable success in their local encounters against the enemy. We have also brought back a great mass of stores, rifles and munitions of all kinds which had been accumulated in France during the last nine months.
We have, therefore, in this Island today a very large and powerful military force. This force comprises all our best-trained and our finest troops, including scores of thousands of those who have already measured their quality against the Germans and found themselves at no disadvantage. We have under arms at the present time in this Island over a million and a quarter men. Behind these we have the Local Defense Volunteers, numbering half a million, only a portion of whom, however, are yet armed with rifles or other firearms. We have incorporated into our Defense Forces every man for whom we have a weapon. We expect very large additions to our weapons in the near future, and in preparation for this we intend forthwith to call up, drill and train further large numbers. Those who are not called up, or else are employed during the vast business of munitions production in all its branches--and their ramifications are innumerable--will serve their country best by remaining at their ordinary work until they receive their summons. We have also over here Dominions armies. The Canadians had actually landed in France, but have now been safely withdrawn, much disappointed, but in perfect order, with all their artillery and equipment. And these very high-class forces from the Dominions will now take part in the defense of the Mother Country.
Lest the account which I have given of these large forces should raise the question: Why did they not take part in the great battle in France? I must make it clear that, apart from the divisions training and organizing at home, only twelve divisions were equipped to fight upon a scale which justified their being sent abroad. And this was fully up to the number which the French had been led to expect would be available in France at the ninth month of the war. The rest of our forces at home have a fighting value for home defense which will, of course, steadily increase every week that passes. Thus, the invasion of Great Britain would at this time require the transportation across the sea of hostile armies on a very large scale, and after they had been so transported they would have to be continually maintained with all the masses of munitions and supplies which are required for continuous battle--as continuous battle it will surely be.
Here is where we come to the Navy--and after all, we have a Navy. Some people seem to forget that we have a Navy. We must remind them. For the last thirty years I have been concerned in discussions about the possibilities of oversea invasion, and I took the responsibility on behalf of the Admiralty, at the beginning of the last war, of allowing all regular troops to be sent out of the country. That was a very serious step to take, because our Territorials had only just been called up and were quite untrained. Therefore, this Island was for several months particularly denuded of fighting troops. The Admiralty had confidence at that time in their ability to prevent a mass invasion even though at that time the Germans had a magnificent battle fleet in the proportion of 10 to 16, even though they were capable of fighting a general engagement every day and any day, whereas now they have only a couple of heavy ships worth speaking of--the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau. We are also told that the Italian Navy is to come out and gain sea superiority in these waters. If they seriously intend it, I shall only say that we shall be delighted to offer Signor Mussolini a free and safeguarded passage through the Strait of Gibraltar in order that he may play the part to which he aspires. There is a general curiosity in the British Fleet to find out whether the Italians are up to the level they were at in the last war or whether they have fallen off at all.
Therefore, it seems to me that as far as sea-borne invasion on a great scale is concerned, we are far more capable of meeting it today than we were at many periods in the last war and during the early months of this war, before our other troops were trained, and while the B.E.F. had proceeded abroad. Now, the Navy have never pretended to be able to prevent raids by bodies of 5,000 or 10,000 men flung suddenly across and thrown ashore at several points on the coast some dark night or foggy morning. The efficacy of sea power, especially under modern conditions, depends upon the invading force being of large size; It has to be of large size, in view of our military strength, to be of any use. If it is of large size, then the Navy have something they can find and meet and, as it were, bite on. Now, we must remember that even five divisions, however lightly equipped, would require 200 to 250 ships, and with modern air reconnaissance and photography it would not be easy to collect such an armada, marshal it, and conduct it across the sea without any powerful naval forces to escort it; and there would be very great possibilities, to put it mildly, that this armada would be intercepted long before it reached the coast, and all the men drowned in the sea or, at the worst blown to pieces with their equipment while they were trying to land. We also have a great system of minefields, recently strongly reinforced, through which we alone know the channels. If the enemy tries to sweep passages through these minefields, it will be the task of the Navy to destroy the mine-sweepers and any other forces employed to protect them. There should be no difficulty in this, owing to our great superiority at sea.
Those are the regular, well-tested, well-proved arguments on which we have relied during many years in peace and war. But the question is whether there are any new methods by which those solid assurances can be circumvented. Odd as it may seem, some attention has been given to this by the Admiralty, whose prime duty and responsibility is to destroy any large sea-borne expedition before it reaches, or at the moment when it reaches, these shores. It would not be a good thing for me to go into details of this. It might suggest ideas to other people which they have not thought of, and they would not be likely to give us any of their ideas in exchange. All I will say is that untiring vigilance and mind-searching must be devoted to the subject, because the enemy is crafty and cunning and full of novel treacheries and stratagems. The House may be assured that the utmost ingenuity is being displayed and imagination is being evoked from large numbers of competent officers, well-trained in tactics and thoroughly up to date, to measure and counterwork novel possibilities. Untiring vigilance and untiring searching of the mind is being, and must be, devoted to the subject, because, remember, the enemy is crafty and there is no dirty trick he will not do.
Some people will ask why, then, was it that the British Navy was not able to prevent the movement of a large army from Germany into Norway across the Skagerrak? But the conditions in the Channel and in the North Sea are in no way like those which prevail in the Skagerrak. In the Skagerrak, because of the distance, we could give no air support to our surface ships, and consequently, lying as we did close to the enemy's main air power, we were compelled to use only our submarines. We could not enforce the decisive blockade or interruption which is possible from surface vessels. Our submarines took a heavy toll but could not, by themselves, prevent the invasion of Norway. In the Channel and in the North Sea, on the other hand, our superior naval surface forces, aided by our submarines, will operate with close and effective air assistance.
This brings me, naturally, to the great question of invasion from the air, and of the impending struggle between the British and German Air Forces. It seems quite clear that no invasion on a scale beyond the capacity of our land forces to crush speedily is likely to take place from the air until our Air Force has been definitely overpowered. In the meantime, there may be raids by parachute troops and attempted descents of airborne soldiers. We should be able to give those gentry a warm reception both in the air and on the ground, if they reach it in any condition to continue the dispute. But the great question is: Can we break Hitler's air weapon? Now, of course, it is a very great pity that we have not got an Air Force at least equal to that of the most powerful enemy within striking distance of these shores. But we have a very powerful Air Force which has proved itself far superior in quality, both in men and in many types of machine, to what we have met so far in the numerous and fierce air battles which have been fought with the Germans. In France, where we were at a considerable disadvantage and lost many machines on the ground when they were standing round the aerodromes, we were accustomed to inflict in the air losses of as much as two and two-and-a-half to one. In the fighting over Dunkirk, which was a sort of no-man's-land, we undoubtedly beat the German Air Force, and gained the mastery of the local air, inflicting here a loss of three or four to one day after day. Anyone who looks at the photographs which were published a week or so ago of the re-embarkation, showing the masses of troops assembled on the beach and forming an ideal target for hours at a time, must realize that this re-embarkation would not have been possible unless the enemy had resigned all hope of recovering air superiority at that time and at that place.
In the defense of this Island the advantages to the defenders will be much greater than they were in the fighting around Dunkirk. We hope to improve on the rate of three or four to one which was realized at Dunkirk; and in addition all our injured machines and their crews which get down safely--and, surprisingly, a very great many injured machines and men do get down safely in modern air fighting--all of these will fall, in an attack upon these Islands, on friendly soil and live to fight another day; whereas all the injured enemy machines and their complements will be total losses as far as the war is concerned.
During the great battle in France, we gave very powerful and continuous aid to the French Army, both by fighters and bombers; but in spite of every kind of pressure we never would allow the entire metropolitan fighter strength of the Air Force to be consumed. This decision was painful, but it was also right, because the fortunes of the battle in France could not have been decisively affected even if we had thrown in our entire fighter force. That battle was lost by the unfortunate strategical opening, by the extraordinary and unforseen power of the armored columns, and by the great preponderance of the German Army in numbers. Our fighter Air Force might easily have been exhausted as a mere accident in that great struggle, and then we should have found ourselves at the present time in a very serious plight. But as it is, I am happy to inform the House that our fighter strength is stronger at the present time relatively to the Germans, who have suffered terrible losses, than it has ever been; and consequently we believe ourselves possessed of the capacity to continue the war in the air under better conditions than we have ever experienced before. I look forward confidently to the exploits of our fighter pilots--these splendid men, this brilliant youth--who will have the glory of saving their native land, their island home, and all they love, from the most deadly of all attacks.
There remains, of course, the danger of bombing attacks, which will certainly be made very soon upon us by the bomber forces of the enemy. It is true that the German bomber force is superior in numbers to ours; but we have a very large bomber force also, which we shall use to strike at military targets in Germany without intermission. I do not at all underrate the severity of the ordeal which lies before us; but I believe our countrymen will show themselves capable of standing up to it, like the brave men of Barcelona, and will be able to stand up to it, and carry on in spite of it, at least as well as any other people in the world. Much will depend upon this; every man and every woman will have the chance to show the finest qualities of their race, and render the highest service to their cause. For all of us, at this time, whatever our sphere, our station, our occupation or our duties, it will be a help to remember the famous lines:
He nothing common did or mean, Upon that memorable scene.
I have thought it right upon this occasion to give the House and the country some indication of the solid, practical grounds upon which we base our inflexible resolve to continue the war. There are a good many people who say, 'Never mind. Win or lose, sink or swim, better die than submit to tyranny--and such a tyranny.' And I do not dissociate myself from them. But I can assure them that our professional advisers of the three Services unitedly advise that we should carry on the war, and that there are good and reasonable hopes of final victory. We have fully informed and consulted all the self-governing Dominions, these great communities far beyond the oceans who have been built up on our laws and on our civilization, and who are absolutely free to choose their course, but are absolutely devoted to the ancient Motherland, and who feel themselves inspired by the same emotions which lead me to stake our all upon duty and honor. We have fully consulted them, and I have received from their Prime Ministers, Mr. Mackenzie King of Canada, Mr. Menzies of Australia, Mr. Fraser of New Zealand, and General Smuts of South Africa--that wonderful man, with his immense profound mind, and his eye watching from a distance the whole panorama of European affairs--I have received from all these eminent men, who all have Governments behind them elected on wide franchises, who are all there because they represent the will of their people, messages couched in the most moving terms in which they endorse our decision to fight on, and declare themselves ready to share our fortunes and to persevere to the end. That is what we are going to do.
We may now ask ourselves: In what way has our position worsened since the beginning of the war? It has worsened by the fact that the Germans have conquered a large part of the coast line of Western Europe, and many small countries have been overrun by them. This aggravates the possibilities of air attack and adds to our naval preoccupations. It in no way diminishes, but on the contrary definitely increases, the power of our long-distance blockade. Similarly, the entrance of Italy into the war increases the power of our long-distance blockade. We have stopped the worst leak by that. We do not know whether military resistance will come to an end in France or not, but should it do so, then of course the Germans will be able to concentrate their forces, both military and industrial, upon us. But for the reasons I have given to the House these will not be found so easy to apply. If invasion has become more imminent, as no doubt it has, we, being relieved from the task of maintaining a large army in France, have far larger and more efficient forces to meet it.
If Hitler can bring under his despotic control the industries of the countries he has conquered, this will add greatly to his already vast armament output. On the other hand, this will not happen immediately, and we are now assured of immense, continuous and increasing support in supplies and munitions of all kinds from the United States; and especially of aeroplanes and pilots from the Dominions and across the oceans coming from regions which are beyond the reach of enemy bombers.
I do not see how any of these factors can operate to our detriment on balance before the winter comes; and the winter will impose a strain upon the Nazi regime, with almost all Europe writhing and starving under its cruel heel, which, for all their ruthlessness, will run them very hard. We must not forget that from the moment when we declared war on the 3rd September it was always possible for Germany to turn all her Air Force upon this country, together with any other devices of invasion she might conceive, and that France could have done little or nothing to prevent her doing so. We have, therefore, lived under this danger, in principle and in a slightly modified form, during all these months. In the meanwhile, however, we have enormously improved our methods of defense, and we have learned what we had no right to assume at the beginning, namely, that the individual aircraft and the individual British pilot have a sure and definite superiority. Therefore, in casting up this dread balance sheet and contemplating our dangers with a disillusioned eye, I see great reason for intense vigilance and exertion, but none whatever for panic or despair.
During the first four years of the last war the Allies experienced nothing but disaster and disappointment. That was our constant fear: one blow after another, terrible losses, frightful dangers. Everything miscarried. And yet at the end of those four years the morale of the Allies was higher than that of the Germans, who had moved from one aggressive triumph to another, and who stood everywhere triumphant invaders of the lands into which they had broken. During that war we repeatedly asked ourselves the question: 'How are we going to win?' And no one was able ever to answer it with much precision, until at the end, quite suddenly, quite unexpectedly, our terrible foe collapsed before us, and we were so glutted with victory that in our folly we threw it away.
We do not yet know what will happen in France or whether the French resistance will be prolonged, both in France and in the French Empire overseas. The French Government will be throwing away great opportunities and casting adrift their future if they do not continue the war in accordance with their treaty obligations, from which we have not felt able to release them. The House will have read the historic declaration in which, at the desire of many Frenchmen--and of our own hearts--we have proclaimed our willingness at the darkest hour in French history to conclude a union of common citizenship in this struggle. However matters may go in France or with the French Government, or other French Governments, we in this Island and in the British Empire will never lose our sense of comradeship with the French people. If we are now called upon to endure what they have been suffering, we shall emulate their courage, and if final victory rewards our toils they shall share the gains, aye, and freedom shall be restored to all. We abate nothing of our just demands; not one jot or tittle do we recede. Czechs, Poles, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians have joined their causes to our own. All these shall be restored.
What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.
Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'
Thirty years ago today, Margaret Thatcher, the daughter of a grocer, ascended to the position of Prime Minister. Britain was in economic disarray from Labour's post WWII socialist policies. PM Thatcher would be ushered out of office near a decade later by members of her own party, the Tories, over her refusal to countenance surrendering any more of Britain's sovereign powers to the EU. In between, she changed the fabric of her nation, leaving it far stronger than she found it.
For that, she is beloved by conservatives in Britain (a group not synonymous with the Tory Party). And for her capitalist policies and iron will to overcome all that the left could throw in her path, she is reviled by the socialists. Those feelings on both sides run as hot today as they did a quarter century ago. Her legacy in the short run has suffered from years of smearing at the BBC and a left who teach school children of the wisdom of Clement Attlee while giving short shrift to the likes of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.
You can see a range of opinions and retrospectives on the former Prime Minister in the UK papers today. I have collected some below:
This from the Times editorial board on Margaret Thatcher:
. . . Many of the arguments that dominated the political debate before Mrs Thatcher came to office now seem extraordinary. Did the Government really try to control inflation by setting the price of supermarket goods by committee? Did it really prevent citizens from spending currency abroad? Did it really try to settle national strikes by according union leaders semi-official status? That no mainstream politician would dream of advocating any of these things now is testament to her political success.
It is hard to recall that when Margaret Thatcher set her face against prices and incomes policy, union power and exchange controls it was she who was considered outlandish. It was regarded as inevitable that her policy of driving down inflation without an incomes policy would have to be reversed when unemployment became unmanageable. She would be forced to make a U-turn. And perhaps, had the Falklands conflict and the choice of Michael Foot as Labour leader not intervened, she would indeed have been forced to choose between a U-turn and political defeat. She would now be remembered as a political cautionary tale rather than as a political heroine.
Fortune, however, favoured the bold. Mrs Thatcher was able to see through her programme while enjoying fantastic political success. Even now the policies she pursued are hotly controversial. So is her extremely combative personality. But her answer to the critics is simple — what she did was necessary and overcoming resistance to it was hard. The social dislocation experienced by some was, however regrettable, hard to avoid. The pain felt during the medical procedure she undertook resulted from the extent of the injuries she was seeking to heal rather than from the callousness of the surgeon or the refusal to take an alternative course.
There are criticisms of Margaret Thatcher’s governments that stand more scrutiny than those that suggest a softer landing was possible for the British economy. It is unfortunate that she did not accompany her economic liberalism with more political and social liberalism. And the tone of her administration sometimes moved from being necessarily tough to being unnecessarily arrogant. There is also a criticism from the Right — that she did not do enough to reshape public services or reduce the size of the State.
Yet against these criticisms is another simple fact. It was not simply economically that the Thatcher governments achieved a transformation. Socially they challenged the elitism of closed institutions and the pessimism of the Establishment. Margaret Thatcher stood for modernisation, meritocracy and optimism about Britain’s future. . . .
And from London's colorful Mayor Boris Johnson, writing in the Telegraph, a very thoughtful essay on the life and legacy of PM Thatcher:
In the course of researching this article I approached an intelligent 15 year-old girl. She had been born three years after Margaret Thatcher left office. She had never seen her in action. She had no personal memories of any of the great controversies of the Thatcher epoch. And, therefore, she struck me as a perfect source for an understanding of the full semiotic range of the words "Margaret Thatcher" in the minds of young people today. This schoolgirl had been taught by good left-liberal teachers. She had read the papers and listened all her life to the BBC, and she had the normal British teenager's range of cultural references. I tried a word-association test. "So what do you think," I asked her, "when I say the words 'Margaret Thatcher' "? She paused, and then she said: "Billy Elliott." [For we across the pond, that was a movie which used PM Thatcher's breaking of the unions as its backdrop and portrayed PM Thatcher in an unflattering light]
And there, my friends, you have the cultural war that continues to this day – 30 years after she came to power – over the legacy of Britain's first female prime minister. Not since Napoleon has a nation been so divided over the merits of a former leader. For millions of young people who have watched Billy Elliott, Thatcher is the evil, boss-eyed termagant whose disastrous economic philosophy was responsible for the break-up of ancient Hovis-ad mining communities, and whose awful blurtings of right-wing dogma inspired all that was basest in human nature. She was a semi-ludicrous mixture of Boudicca and Queen Victoria, who whipped up her folk to ecstasies of cretinous Brussels-bashing. She was the creator the Yuppies and Essex Man, and the spiritual godmother of all the red-braced spivs and champagne-guzzling wide boys who have done so much damage with their greed and their recklessness – and it is a measure of her totemic status that people manage to blame her for the credit crunch almost two decades after she left office.
You try going on the BBC's Question Time and announcing that you are a Thatcherite. You will see the audience scratching and raging and panting like flea-ridden gibbons because Thatcher is a boo-word in British politics, a shorthand for selfishness and me-first-ism, and devil-take-the-hindmost and grinding the faces of the poor. . . .
. . . It is very hard to explain to young people the atmosphere of morbid self-pity that used to hang over Britain in the Seventies. British brands that had once been the envy of the world – machines whose manufacturers had out-engineered the Wehrmacht – had been reduced to laughing stocks, their reputations destroyed by a lethal combination of management inertia and union militancy. The country had so drifted from an understanding of free-market economics that Tony Benn actually tried to revive the motorbike industry with a sort of crazed commie collective at Meriden. There were endless strikes, and three-day weeks, and power cuts, and looming over it all was the Cold War – and the constant anxiety that we would somehow be embroiled in a conflict with the nasty, militaristic and totalitarian Soviet Union, a horrible place of gulags and lawless persecutions. Our food was ranked among the worst in Europe – by the British middle classes themselves.
Our children's teeth were ruined by a diet of Spangles, Curly-Wurlies and Tizer, and our weather was lousy. Mrs Thatcher set about changing virtually everything, except possibly the weather. . . .
[As regards the Falkland Islands, the] Argentinian junta had taken by violence a British protectorate, in clear contravention both of international law and the wishes of the islanders. It took fantastic balls to send the antiquated British Navy half-way round the world, and risk disaster on those desolate beaches and moors. It took nerves of steel to sink the Belgrano, and, frankly, I don't think there were any other Tory politicians who would have done it. She showed a streak of absolute ruthlessness in defence of British interests, and, as the Eighties went on, it was clear that she was broadly right about the economy as well. Together with Norman Tebbit, she did what Barbara Castle had tried and failed to do – to dethrone the union bosses and give British industry a chance.
By the time Arthur Scargill took the miners out on strike, I was firmly on her side. He was simply increasing the difficulties of a declining industry, and what the script of Billy Elliott will not tell you is that Scargill never held a proper ballot. By the end of the Eighties, she had cut taxes and the economy was roaring away; and it wasn't just that the country as a whole seemed to have recovered some of its confidence and standing in the world. Individuals were able to take control of their destiny in a new way. They were no longer completely beholden to local authorities for their housing: they could buy their own homes, and to this day, as any Tory canvasser will tell you, there are people across Britain who will always vote Tory in thanks for that freedom alone.
She gave people the confidence to buy shares, to start their own businesses, to move on and up in society – and there was more social mobility under Margaret Thatcher than there has been since. She was a liberator, and she gave the Labour party such an intellectual thrashing that they ended up changing their name. In some ways, the most significant political legacy of Margaret Thatcher is New Labour (now being abolished by Gordon Brown). Yes, she was provocative, and there are huge numbers of people who will never forgive her for saying that "there is no such thing as society. There are men and women, and there are families." It sounds frighteningly atomistic and strident, and does not seem to reflect the duty we all owe to each other.
But she believed she had to shatter the post-war consensus that the solution to every problem was always an expansion of the state. Indeed, she did not think much of the word consensus itself, since it was not only too Latinate for her taste but also because it probably masked a conspiracy by cowardly politicians to dodge the hard questions, and, if you look at the consensus that now exists around, say, academic selection, you can see that she is right.
Margaret Thatcher will always divide the British people, not least since we are ourselves divided. There is a part of us that will always dislike the acquisitive, appetitive instincts she seemed to espouse, and yet we also recognise that they are essential for economic success. More than any leader since Churchill, she said thought-provoking things about the relationship between the state and the individual. Some of them were unpalatable, some of them were exaggerated. But much of what she said was necessary, and it took a woman to say it.
Interestingly enough, I found no such retrospective in the Guardian, the unabashedly left wing paper in Britain that has long enjoyed the sport of Thatcher bashing. I hesitate to speculate as to the motivation for their silence.
At any rate, history, it is said, is written by the victor. It may well be that Margaret Thatcher's legacy in the British history books awaits the outcome of the campaign that Thatcher, like Churchill before her, waged against socialism. That is a battle still very much at issue. Churchill lost that battle. Thatcher won some major battles, mostly on the economic front. It is in the social and cultural arenas that the battleground now lies - and in the halls of the EU.
Obama turns to Winston Churchill to support his policies. He would be better advised to turn to Sir Winston for guidance on what policies to follow in the first instance. __________________________________________________________
"The British, during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, we don’t torture—when the entire British—all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat. And the reason was that Churchill understood you start taking shortcuts, and over time that corrodes what’s best in a people. It corrodes the character of a country."
That was Obama's attempt to justify his decision to, as Michael Sheuer described it, elevate "his personal beliefs" to a position of greater importance than "protecting [our] country, . . . homes and . . . families." Except that Obama - whose knowledge of western history, at least outside of Marx and Engels, appears to be paper thin - got it wrong. It seems that he lifted these lines from not Churchill, but excitable Andy Sullivan. Churchill never said that, and by all accounts, Churchill was willing to do whatever he thought necessary to win at war, including fire bombing entire German cities and arguing for the summary execution of Nazi officers.
That said, at least Obama is at last turning for inspiration to one of the towering icons of Western Civilization.
And that is indeed what Sir Winston Churchill is. He was a unique man of amazing intellect, prescient vision and brutal wit. He appeared on history's stage just as three major threats to Western Civilzation were forming. He saw each clearly and urged action before they could metasticize. As I wrote some time ago:
In 1919, Churchill wanted to fully invest the White Revolution and end Boshevism before it took hold and became the communist state of the Soviet Union. In 1933, Churchill argued strongly in favor of threatening military force against Nazi Germany to stop their rearmanent, [thereby aborting WWII]. In between, he argued against backing Ibn Saud and the Wahhabis to take over Arabia, seeing in them and their poisonous Wahhabi Islam a threat to the entire Western World. Amazing, that this one man clearly saw the three greatest threats to Western Civilization of the past century, and had we but listened to him at any of those junctures, how many tens of millions of lives would have been spared?
Indeed, if Obama is to look for inspiration anywhere, he could do no better than Sir Winston. For example, Churchill could hold the key to explaining to Obama that his Marxian view of capitalism is supremely misguided. As Churchill once said,
Some regard private enterprise as if it were a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look upon it as a cow that they can milk. Only a handful see it for what it really is - the strong horse that pulls the whole cart.
And Obama would do well to understand that his populist rhetoric damning capitalism and "obscene profit" is utterly backward. Churchill once stated, after listening to another damn the profit motive:
The substance of the eminent Socialist gentleman's speech is that making a profit is a sin, but it is my belief that the real sin is taking a loss.
And as to Obama's plans to tax the wealthy in order to fund his world record out of control spending - and to tax all of us indirectly to bring us into his vision of a new era of green prosperity - Churchill would no doubt tell Obama that such an effort is nothing if not counterproductive:
. . . [F]or a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
Indeed, Chuchill would undoubtedly tell Obama that the socialism he seeks to impose on us in America has already been tried and that it failed at every turn. As Churchill pointed out, it is a utopian ideology, doomed to failure in all but two locales:
There are only two places where socialism will ever work - in Heaven, where it is not needed, and in Hell, where it is already in practice.
Further, there is little doubt that Churchill would have harsh words for Obama and his handling of the growing threat to the West by Iran's mad mullahs. He would no doubt explain the inevitable outcome of attempting to placate an aggressive menace rather than standing up to it early on.
Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonor. They chose dishonor. They will have war.
But alas, I think Obama's brief foray into an examination of the life and wisdom of Winston Churchill is not to be. Other then his superficial look at Sir Winston through the deeply distorting lens of Andy Sullivan, it would appear that Obama lacks any interest in Churchill. We can gather that from, if not else, his decision to have the White House's bust of Winston Churchill returned to Britain.
Nonetheless, the rest of us can take heart from the words of Churchill as we contemplate the fact that we elected Obama and now must live through his attempts to radically change our country. As Churchill observed of our forebearers:
The Americans will always do the right thing . . . after they've exhausted all the alternatives."
Given the current alternative we have chosen, I do hope that Churchill's words still ring true.
To my British friends, I wish you a happy St. George's day. May it be celebrated in each and every corner of your lands.
From Wikapedia: St. George was lived in the third century A.D. He "was, according to tradition, a Roman soldier in the Guard of Diocletian, who is venerated as a Christian martyr. . . . Saint George is one of the most venerated saints in the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches . . . He is immortalized in the tale of Saint George and the Dragon and is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. . . . [H]e is regarded as one of the most prominent military saints."
The fine blog, Brits At Their Best, gives a brief history of the importance of St. George to England - ending with the present resurgance of festivities under London's Mayor Boris Johnson to celebrate this central symbol of English nationalism. May the dragons of political correctness be slain.
For my money, Britain also needs to celebrate a Richard the Lionheart day.
At any rate, though not dealing with St. George, you might also want to see this post by Bookwormroom, comparing the leadership of Churchill with Obama. It is a stark contrast.
The Tory victory in the UK's local elections, discussed in the post below, has not made Britain's conservative columnist Peter Hitchens a happy camper. He sees the modern Tory party, led by David Cameron, as a light version of the socialist/marxist Labour party - a criticism that you will find repeated often on this blog. Given the existential challenges Britain faces, I suspect the revitilization of the Tories or the mark of their demise will come in the next few years when they retake control of Britian and have to choose what to do about the EU.
This from Peter Hitchens writing in the Daily Mail:
. . . What I am in favour of is, above all, national independence in which we choose our own destiny. Without it we would just be the serfs of whoever ruled these islands from far off and it would be pointless to discuss politics because we couldn't affect our destiny. We are rapidly approaching this point as the EU increases its powers over us, and no seriously patriotic party can continue to avoid the issue of withdrawal from the EU.
Next, I am favour of the liberty of the subject in a society governed by the rule of law, in which law-abiding people (who have made their own laws to supplement the force of conscience) are able to live freely according to their consciences.
I believe that these conditions are only possible in a country where the married family is strong and the state is weak, except in the matters of national defence and criminal justice, where it should be strong. They also rely on adult authority over children and a strong, generally accepted morality based on Christianity. That's what I'm in favour of, and I judge all political actions by these tests.
. . . [T]he most urgent and important task, before all else, [is] to get rid of the Tory Party. I learned from discussions with leading Tories that they loathed and despised my views and did not share my objectives. I realised that neither I, nor anyone who shared my views, had any chance of entering Parliamentary politics as long as the Tory Party occupied the position which ought to be held by a properly conservative, pro-British political formation. there is no mechanism in the Tory Party for reform or policy change, so there was no possibility of working within it. If I was serious, then my first task must be to destroy it.
. . . Patriotic? [The Tory's are] the party that got us into the Common Market, that actively supported staying in, in the 1975 referendum, that agreed the 'Single Market' and the 'Single European Act' that ended our national veto, that rammed Maastricht through Parliament. This is the party that devastated the armed forces with cuts at the end of the Cold War. And, I might add, it was the party that failed hopelessly to rearm until the last minute, in the face of the German threat in the 1930s, and which tried to dump Winston Churchill as an MP when he objected to this. Patriotic, my foot.
Law and Order? I could go on for hours (see my book 'The Abolition of Liberty' , where I do go on for hours). But the Tories have been specially useless on this. They did nothing to save or reinstate the death penalty, and many of their MPs have always voted against it. They did nothing to reverse Roy Jenkins's abolition of foot patrols in the 1960s. And this is the party that passed the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act, which subjected the police to a spider-web of politically correct codes of practice, designed by Guardian-reading liberal lawyers, which are the source of most of the 'form-filling' everyone pretends to be against.
Then there are prison sentences. It was the Tories, in the 1991 Criminal Justice Act, who first thought of defrauding the public by automatically halving almost all prison sentences, letting voters think that the Burglar Bill was going down for four years, while Burglar Bill knew perfectly well that he'd only serve two. Labour have been adept pupils in this game, but it was the Tories who thought of it.
The family? What did the Tories ever do for the family? The 1989 Children Act, a body blow to all types of adult authority, was once again a Tory Bill, inspired by United Nations Marxoid piffle about 'Children's Rights' (which mean social workers' rights to poke into private matters). And have you noticed the Tories trying to make divorce harder, or reforming the Stalinist laws that mean a man who wishes to stay married to his wife can be told he is divorced whether he wants to be or not, dragged from his own home by the force of law, denied access to his children and deprived of his rights in his own property?
Have you seen any Tory opposition, since the sad death of Janet Young (whose brave, honest conservatism was loathed by much of her party), to the spreading of anti-marriage propaganda in schools? On the contrary. the Tories now proudly endorse the entire agenda of the sexual revolution. You might also have noticed that it has been Tory local authorities which have persecuted people who protested against homosexual propaganda in public libraries, Tory authorities which have enforced politically correct rules to prevent conservative-minded parents from adopting, Tory local authorities which have snooped on the private lives of parents.
If there's a moral, cultural or political battle to be fought anywhere in this country against the revolutionary left, it will be the Tories who won't be fighting it. Office is all they want, and they'd promise to guillotine the Queen if they thought it would get them back into Downing Street.
. . . I defy you to tell the difference [between Labour and Tory] in practice. Sure, the slogans on the posters are different, but in reality, the only function of the Tories in our system is to continue to implement Labour policies while pretending to be against them, so providing a safety valve to vent discontent, whole leaving Labour policies untouched. The pattern of our government since the war has been intense revolutionary periods of Labour rule (1945-51, 1964-70 , 1997-????) succeeded by long years of do-nothing Toryism in which the Labour revolutions were not challenged, and the clock not put back by a single second. (the 1974-79 period is really just a mess of drift, since nobody had a proper majority, but Labour still managed to do quite a bit of damage).
This isn't the place to argue in depth about the Thatcher period, but even she failed to reverse the huge growth of the public sector, merely diverted it from the productive (coal, steel, gas, electricity, telecoms) to the unproductive (the NHS, armies of social workers, state education, local authorities) and she completely failed to challenge its egalitarian campaign to destroy proper learning and authority in schools, or to challenge its revolutionary social and moral agenda, undermining personal responsibility and family life - and eventually threatening liberty too.
Anyway, to the extent that she did challenge any of this, Margaret Thatcher was furiously opposed by her own party - and when she began to see the danger of the EU, which she had till then supported, the Tories savagely dumped her - as they would again dump any leader who took a genuinely pro-British position on anything. The myth that she was scuppered by the 'poll tax' is just that, a myth. It was her Maastricht speech and her 'No! No! No!' to Brussels rule that brought out the assassin's knives. Her replacement, John Major , was the first New Labour Prime Minister. The policy gap between Major and Blair in 1997 was minimal.
What's more, that gap has become even more tiny since 1997, as the Tories have done what they always do, and agreed to accept Labour policies as the condition of being allowed back into office ( see my last week's blog for a rare case of this brutal fact being stated in public) .
. . . I don't want a Brown government any more than I wanted a Blair government, and I am on record as about the longest-lasting and most consistent opponent of this lot in British journalism, from the days when some surprising people (you know who you are) were making their peace with New Labour and having drinkies at Downing Street. But if you do vote Tory you (and I ) will get five more years of Gordon Brown policies, and quite possibly five more years of Mr Brown too. The Tories are still a very weak party, and it will take an electoral miracle for them to win a working majority. They are, as they have been since 1997, the only opposition Labour (whose own vote is also shrivelling) can beat.
The Blairite media are now running a campaign to turn Mr Brown into a sort of political Jade Goody, a national hate figure so loathed that he has to go round with a bag, or a blanket, over his head. This is interesting in itself. Ask why the very people who put Mr Blair in power ( and never turned on Blair on this way, though he is just as responsible for it) now want Mr Cameron in office? Is it because they want a change? Or is it because they want things to stay the same, only to employ the safety valve and so ensure that a real re-examination of the way we are governed does not take place? A Cameron victory would mean the final crushing of all remaining conservatism in the Tory Party, and ten more guaranteed years of what we have now - universal political correctness, a bulging welfare state, gargantuan taxation and of course continued absorption into the EU and unending lawlessness and disorder.
. . . [I]f the Tories collapse there'll be a new party. . . . It's the best hope there is. The alternative is just years of the same, until the country, riven by crime and disorder, sinks beneath the waves of welfare bankruptcy and becomes a wholly subject province of the EU state, governed largely by force. Or we might get some kind of thug-nationalist government, swept to office by desperation. You want that? Stick to the Tories.
I suspect that what people don't like about this idea is that it is so harshly realistic, and requires too much of them.
. . . The British seem to need to face almost total defeat before they are interested in fighting to save themselves. Dunkirk has to come before D-Day. Well, think of the collapse of the Tories as a necessary political Dunkirk. I can't guarantee that victory will follow. That will be up to us. But I can guarantee that, as long as the Tories occupy the place which should be taken by a proper opposition, there's not the slightest hope of real change for the better. So please don't vote for them. It only encourages them.
The interesting news and posts of the day, below the fold.
Art: The Feast of Herod, Reubens, 1633 ____________________________________________________
At Vast Rightwing Conspiracy, a great post on McCain and some comparisons, including a fascinating one to Churchill.
At JammieWearingFool, the story of McCain’s limited tolerance for fools, particularly tendentious ones.
Heh. The Conservative Cat has a true test for Obama to prove his ability to sway America’s enemies with his rhetorical and negotiating skills.
Blonde Sagacity takes a serious look at Obama’s foreign policy positions and reaches much the same conclusions I reached here. And Confederate Yankee notes that Obama has reasserted his intention to withdraw from Iraq at any cost. TNOY delivers their own verdict, fit for mugs and t-shirts.
As Soob notes, the "Democratic party would seem to be headed, full steam, pedal to the metal, ass over tea kettle, toward a vigorous stage of infighting that might make even Ann Coulter seem a moderate, Undecided Sap."
At BlueCrab Boulevard, more on Hugo Chavez’s ties to narco-terrorist FARC. As Gaius says, and I agree, "[i]t is past time for the US Congress to send a message of support to Colombia. Pass the free trade agreement with that country - it may avert a war." And This Ain’t Hell has a good updated round-up.
From the Barking Moonbat, a story about how RAF personnel in Britain face abuse wearing their uniforms in public. And more thoughts at Samizdata. Then do read this post at Classical Values, as the Code Pinko’s in San Fran call the Marines for help when challenged by a civilian during their protest in front of the Marine Recruiting Station.
The RAF story is understandable in Britain of today, where the socialists are teaching the country to be ashamed of its history and traditional values. See the concluding paragraph of my post here.
While at Dinah Lord, the local Islamists try their hand at milking Britain’s welfare system.
From the Elder of Ziyon, Wafa Sultan rocks. She really does. If you haven’t read the transcript of her debate with an Islamist on al Jazeera, do so. She is an eloquent and acerbic critic of the Salafi Islamist movement.
From Seraphic Secret, the best and most comprehensive coverage of an Islamist’s barbaric massacre of unarmed teenagers in Jerusalem. See here, here, here, here and here. As to those animals that celebrated this slaughter, you are not deserving of taking another breath on this earth. There is no nuance, nor is there any moral relevance. Nor is there any difference between those animals and the one’s described by Ironic Surrealism in her post on "the barbarian’s strike again."
At Crusader Rabbit, the latest in "reach out and touch someone" technology. And at MK’s Views, the story of gallantry under fire.
At the Jawa Report, it is clear why moonbats should not be made judges.
At Q&O, a zealous member of the global warming clique breaks ranks based on new climate prediction models that correct for decades old error in the thickness of earth’s atmosphere.
At Political Insecurity, Kuwait is putting political demonstrations to good use. They are taking not of the foreigners involved in the protests and then deporting them.
How do we deal with a religion that causes mothers to encourage their son's to commit murder and suicide in furtherance of that religion? Alan Dershowitz asks the question in today's WSJ.
Alan Dershowitz writes a very thoughtful essay in the WSJ today, posing very troubling and potentially existential questions that we in the West fail to address at our peril:
Zahra Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber.
. . . Zahra Maladan represents a dramatic shift in the way we must fight to protect our citizens against enemies who are sworn to kill them by killing themselves. The traditional paradigm was that mothers who love their children want them to live in peace, marry and produce grandchildren. Women in general, and mothers in particular, were seen as a counterweight to male belligerence. The picture of the mother weeping as her son is led off to battle -- even a just battle -- has been a constant and powerful image.
Now there is a new image of mothers urging their children to die, and then celebrating the martyrdom of their suicidal sons and daughters by distributing sweets and singing wedding songs. More and more young women -- some married with infant children -- are strapping bombs to their (sometimes pregnant) bellies, because they have been taught to love death rather than life. Look at what is being preached by some influential Islamic leaders:
. . . "The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death," explained Afghani al Qaeda operative Maulana Inyadullah. Sheik Feiz Mohammed, leader of the Global Islamic Youth Center in Sydney, Australia, preached: "We want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam. Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid." Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech: "It is the zenith of honor for a man, a young person, boy or girl, to be prepared to sacrifice his life in order to serve the interests of his nation and his religion."
How should Western democracies fight against an enemy whose leaders preach a preference for death? . . .
Mr. Dershowitz never answers that question, but there is an answer as to how to begin that fight. The first defense is knowledge and mobilization of public opinion throughout the West against Ms. Maladan and the doctrinaire branch of Islam that holds her in thrall, both within our shores and without. That branch of Islam has a name – Wahhabi / Salafi Islam, and the branches of Islam it has infected, Deobandi Islam and Khomeinist Shia’ism. This proliferation of Wahhabi / Salafi ideology is a modern occurrence.
Until recent times, Salafi Islam was confined to the hinterlands of Arabia. Winston Churchill, who observed Islam throughout the Middle East during his time in the military and later in his various official capacities, described Salafi Islam nearly eighty years ago as bearing, "roughly speaking, the same relationship to orthodox Islam as the most militant form of Calvinism would have borne to Rome in the fiercest times of [Europe's] religious wars."
Yet now Wahhabi / Salafi Islam is gaining dominance throughout the Middle East and the West on the basis of billions of Saudi petrodollars and the silence of Western governments to take any sort of principled stand against it. The language Ms. Maladan speaks is the language of Salafi Islam. Former Salafi terrorist Tawfiq Hamid, in another context, explained the Salafist religious motivation that is fully apparent in the words of Ms. Maladan:
Jihad against non-Muslims seemed to me to be a win-win situation. The following verse, commonly cited by Jamaah members, validated my duty to die for Allah: "Allah has purchased the believers, their lives and their goods. For them [in return] is the garden [of paradise]. They fight in Allah's cause, and they slay and are slain; they kill and are killed... it [paradise] is the promise of Allah to them" (Koran 9:111).
We are not at war with Islam. But let there be no doubt that for the Salafists and the Salafi influenced schools of Islam - primarily Deobandi and Khomeinist Shia'ism, we are in Dar al Harb - the house of war.
The goal of Salafi Islam is "complete Islamic dominance." Salafi dogma holds that the duty of every Muslim is to wage "jihad against non-Muslims and subdue them to Shari'a - the duty of every true Muslim . . . [It is] to engage in war against the infidels, the enemies of Allah.
. . . The civilized world ought to recognize the immense danger that Salafi Islam poses; it must become informed, courageous and united if it is to protect both a generation of young Muslims and the rest of humanity from the disastrous consequences of this militant ideology.
Yet as to information, our governments in the West have failed us completely. The most important thing that we can do is shine a light on Wahhabi / Salafi Islam, mobilize Western public opinion in criticism, and bring our government policies in line with the fact that Wahhabi / Salafi Islam is an evil that must not be allowed to metasticize in the dark. Yet that is what is happening in the West and throughout the Middle East.
We tolerate this lunacy without condemning it utterly and completely. Saudi funds have been used to build and maintain over 1,500 mosques, 202 colleges, 210 Islamic Centers wholly or partly financed by Saudi Arabia, and almost 2,000 schools for educating Muslim children in non-Islamic countries in Europe, North and South America, Australia and Asia." The North American Islamic Trust - a Wahhabi Salafi organization owns between 50% and 80% of all mosques in North America. Salafists are, in many cases, taking over existing Mosques throughout the world. Examples abound, such as Belgium, Somalia, and Indonesia.
And on top of this, we fund a UN that has become little more than a mouthpiece for Salafists. We tolerate Saudi dissimulation within our borders, at our grade schools and at our universities. We send aid from the West to the PA which is a blackhole of terrorism while in Gaza - an area that also receives humanitarian aid - Hamas is using its television programming aimed at the youngest ages to teach them to hate the West, to hate Israel, and to embrace jihad and martyrdom. And our MSM, dominated by the left, is complicit – as amply demonstrated during the Mohammed al Dura affair and the coverage of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in 2006.
We have no chance of stopping the spread of the ideals Ms. Maladan is teaching her son until our government begins to educate the populace of the West on those ideals and their origins. That is step one.
Step two is to try cause a reexamination and reinterpretation of Islam to challenge directly the 7th century form of Salafism that has infected Ms. Maladan. Islam as a whole has suffered tremendous stagnation since the "gates of ijtihad" were closed nearly 8 centuries ago at the behest of Muslim rulers who wanted no challenge to their rule. There has been no significant reinterpretation of the Koran, the Hadith or the Sunna in the intervening centuries – and Salafi Islam even rejects the more 'modern' centuries old interpretations in favor of a return to an Islamic utopia of 7th century Arabia.
This lack of a period of Enlightenment or a Reformation is critical. We need to empower and give voice to those who would reject these ancient interpretations of Islam – which includes the majority of Muslims in the West. There are individuals in the West whom I have named before who propose such reinterpretations, Tawfiq Hamid and Zhudi Jassser among them. We should be supporting them, not enabling those organizations that in fact want to spread Salafi Islam in its current form.
Iraq is of critical importance in this regard also. The Sunni population of Iraq accepted the champions of Salafi Islam – al Qaeda - into their midst, and have now rejected them. The NYT reports today on how that rejection is exhibiting itself in Iraq. This could potentially reverberate throughout the Middle East if we are able to stabilize Iraq as functioning democracy, allowing the message and success of Iraq’s Sunni’s to exist as an example in contrast to the Salafi vision. Likewise, to show al Qaeda as defeated by the West is of critical importance to the ideological struggle against further spread of the Wahhabi / Salafi ideology.
And lastly, there seems to be good news out of Turkey. Turkey has announced its intent to sponsor the first major reinterpretation of Islam since the gates of ijtihad were closed near a millenium ago. This may well be momentous - and it is a direct challenge to the 7th century Wahhabi / Salafi interpretations. This is something the West needs to watch carefully. It may be the key to putting the mother son relationship of Ms. Maladan on a more traditional and civilized keel.
To continue with Mr. Dershowitz’s essay:
The two basic premises of conventional warfare have long been that soldiers and civilians prefer living to dying and can thus be deterred from killing by the fear of being killed; and that combatants (soldiers) can easily be distinguished from noncombatants (women, children, the elderly, the infirm and other ordinary citizens). These premises are being challenged by women like Zahra Maladan. Neither she nor her son -- if he listens to his mother -- can be deterred from killing by the fear of being killed. They must be prevented from succeeding in their ghoulish quest for martyrdom. Prevention, however, carries a high risk of error. The woman walking toward the group of soldiers or civilians might well be an innocent civilian. A moment's hesitation may cost innocent lives. But a failure to hesitate may also have a price. . . .
As more women and children are recruited by their mothers and their religious leaders to become suicide bombers, more women and children will be shot at -- some mistakenly. That too is part of the grand plan of our enemies. They want us to kill their civilians, who they also consider martyrs, because when we accidentally kill a civilian, they win in the court of public opinion. One Western diplomat called this the "harsh arithmetic of pain," whereby civilian casualties on both sides "play in their favor." Democracies lose, both politically and emotionally, when they kill civilians, even inadvertently. As Golda Meir once put it: "We can perhaps someday forgive you for killing our children, but we cannot forgive you for making us kill your children."
Civilian casualties also increase when terrorists operate from within civilian enclaves and hide behind human shields. This relatively new phenomenon undercuts the second basic premise of conventional warfare: Combatants can easily be distinguished from noncombatants. Has Zahra Maladan become a combatant by urging her son to blow himself up? Have the religious leaders who preach a culture of death lost their status as noncombatants? What about "civilians" who willingly allow themselves to be used as human shields? Or their homes as launching pads for terrorist rockets?
The traditional sharp distinction between soldiers in uniform and civilians in nonmilitary garb has given way to a continuum. At the more civilian end are babies and true noncombatants; at the more military end are the religious leaders who incite mass murder; in the middle are ordinary citizens who facilitate, finance or encourage terrorism. There are no hard and fast lines of demarcation, and mistakes are inevitable -- as the terrorists well understand. We need new rules, strategies and tactics to deal effectively and fairly with these dangerous new realities. We cannot simply wait until the son of Zahra Maladan -- and the sons and daughters of hundreds of others like her -- decide to follow his mother's demand. We must stop them before they export their sick and dangerous culture of death to our shores.
Read the entire article. People like the son of Ms. Maladan will always have the first step. There are no rules we can change that would allow us to shoot first and ask questions later short of an embrace of genocide. The question of rules Mr. Dershowitz leaves hanging in the air run afoul of the Judeo-Christian ethic and, indeed, amongst the majority of Muslims who have not been infected with Salafi Islam. Not long ago, a Deobandi Islamist held up a baby wired to explode near the car of Benazir Bhutto in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate her. To stop that will require good intelligence on one hand and a determined attack upon the ideology leading to that barbarous act on the other.
Thus the most important fight against the likes of Ms. Maladan and her son is on ideological turf - the war of ideas of which I spoke of earlier. Indeed, as Zhudi Jasser has noted, that war is just now beginning. We need our governments in the West to engage in the war or it will never be won.
That said, and although the fight will begin and end on ideological turf, in the middle there is the practical reality of defending ourselves, and that means taking the fight to those who would attack us. And Mr. Dershowitz is correct, that we need at least some new rules. Consider this report from Iraq last year at the start of the surge:
At first they are ghost figures in the weapons' system monitor, glowing with body warmth and two-dimensional. From inside the American Bradley fighting vehicle approaching Burhiz, an insurgent neighbourhood of Baquba, you quickly acclimatise to the reality of this representation of human life.
Boys on bikes cycle backwards and forwards on a footbridge over a small canal lined with houses and groves of date palms. Women in headscarves look anxiously in groups from windows. Men walk with shopping bags. A gunman, clutching an AK-47, bobs his head around the corner of an alleyway close to a school.
Once. Twice. On the third occasion a child, a boy seven or eight years old, is thrust out in front of him. The gunman holds him firmly by the arm and steps out for instant into full view of the Bradley's gunner to get a proper look, then yanks the boy back and disappears.
"That is really dirty," says Specialist Chris Jankow, in the back of the Bradley, with a mixture of contempt, anger and frustration. "They know exactly what our rules of engagement are. They know we can't fire back."
A few minutes and a few hundred metres later the performance is repeated. A woman and three small children emerge uncertainly from behind a building, little more than a shack. They stare at the approaching armour. After a few seconds they retreat from view; then the process is repeated. The third time they emerge, a fighter is crouching behind them with a rocket-propelled grenade aimed at Jankow's Bradley. The group disappears.
There is a long pause, a moment of excruciating moral conflict for the soldiers and for the gunner in particular.
Not to shoot would be to imperil their own lives or those of their colleagues, both American and Iraqi. To shoot would be to risk killing civilians who have been shoved in front of their guns to shield insurgent fighters.
Suddenly, the decision is made, announced by the Bradley opening fire with four rounds from its 25mm gun, blasting a large hole in the corner of the building. Three bodies fall into view.
For a sickening few seconds it seems inconceivable that the woman and her children are not among the dead. A silence descends on the vehicle. But the bodies are those of men.
"This whole human shield thing is all fucked up," says Specialist Orlando Garcia, sitting in the Bradley's back. "You know, if I heard a Bradley [coming at me], I would be under my house. I wouldn't be out here."
This is the horrible reality of a brutal and unconventional war in Iraq's north - where jihadi fighters use human shields and force children to run weapons for them. . . .
Read the entire article here. This was an exceptional article in the Guardian, and I have not seen its like in our leftist MSM. Which brings us to the first "change in the rules" that we need.
Our MSM and leftist organizations are wholly unrealistic - whether deliberately so I do not know - in setting the standards for how we are to prosecute warfare. The reality of warfare has not changed over the millenia, but what has changed is the rise of the socialist left over the past half century in America and their impact on our warfighting capability. They hold the West to an impossible standards as regards non-combatant casualties while, at the same time, they wholly gloss over the fact that Salafists and Khomeinists do all they can to make such casualties inevitable if we are to defend ourselves. Further, they dwell on collateral damage - or assert that such casualties were targeted - and are quick to condemn our soldiers first. And some on the far left, an example of which is George Soros's Lancet study, are not above grossly exaggerating the number of civilian casualties in order to undermine the war in Iraq. No wars in the last two millenium were ever fought to the standards the left would hold our military to today. Nor will any be won by holding us to those standards. In a comment to a post at The Belmont Club, Wretchard wrote:
The brilliance of the new barbarism is that you cannot fight it without destroying your own value system into the bargain.Traditionally the solution has been to consider wartime a discontinuity, when civilization's rules are suspended. It becomes possible, for example, to lay waste to the Monte Cassino Abbey. Berlin was bombed without regard for its buildings, churches or people.
The alternative is to create methods of fighting so discriminating that we can literally shoot between the raindrops. But that creates a different problem, for we will need an intelligence system so comprehensive that it will become intrusive.
Either way, the war cannot be won without cost. And the fundamental fraud foisted on the public is to claim we can have war without horror, conduct an intelligence war without dishonesty and cunning and obtain victory without sacrifice.
So the first thing that must be done is to push back against this insanely utopian standards that the left is hoisting upon the West. That is not to say that we need not attempt to limit civilian casualties whenever possible. Moreover, if we are ever to gain the support of the populace – which is critical to a counterinsurgency – than we absolutely must take reasonable pains to limit civilian and non-combatant casualties.
What has allowed the U.S. to be at least somewhat surgical in Iraq – the fact that a substantial portion of the populace that supports the US or at least supports it more than the Salafists of al Qaeda – does not exist in Lebanon or Gaza. Terrorists in areas abutting Israel are supported by their populace, thus making total reliance on surgical strikes by Israel to defend itself impossible. This is truly problematic for Israel because the MSM, the UN, and other leftist organizations ignore the daily attacks on Israel and hold Israel to account for all collateral damage. Israel will not survive beyond a few decades more if it does not strike back against Hamas's daily bombardments with all of the ferocity necessary to force an end to such attacks. It cannot frame its attacks on the shackles the MSM and the UN would place on it. And it will not long survive if it fights Hezbollah in Lebanon with one eye on public opinon driven by a leftist media.
And here again our government is failing us. Our government continues to fund the UN whose ridiculous barbs are aimed at both the U.S. and Israel while providing cover for the Salafists. They are a major component in the left’s effort to hamstring Western nations ability to defend themselves. Indeed the UN has become, in many ways, an apologist and propagandist for Salafi Islam.
We must not bow to the Salafist or their apologists else the price we pay in the long run will be dear indeed when the son of Ms. Maladan arrives at our shores. Nor can we ignore it – either in terms of pretending it does not exist, as Britain has now adopted as official policy, nor in terms of simply failing to educate the populace about the threat and how it has manifested in many forms. Appropriate rules that will allow us to neutralize Ms. Maladan and her son will only develop when the problem is no longer being ignored.
I will give the last word to Dr. Sanity, who wrote eloquently on a similar topic some time ago:
I am confident that we in the West are not in danger of losing our fundamental values; and that our overall moral heading can be recovered should we need to temporarily deviate from the course of the moral compass that guides us. Because, in order to combat and defeat this new barbarism, we must confront it directly and be willing to do whatever it takes to defeat it.
If we appease or ignore it, it will continue to menace everything we hold dear; and sooner or later, it will sink us--no matter how moral we are or how much restraint we demonstrate to their provocations. Moral virtue and saintly restraint will not win this conflict, at least not without the help of pure, unadulterated brute force to back them up.
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