Posted by Tony from ? (167.88.192.30) on Wednesday, December 11, 2002 at 12:23PM :
"You Americans have such odd ways!" the Baroness declared.... "We Americans are very polite",
said Acton, whose national consciousness had been complicated by a residence in foreign lands, and
who yet disliked to hear Americans abused. "We don't like to tread upon people's toes."
-- Henry James, The Europeans
October 18, 2002
The June issue of Policy Review has an outstanding article by Robert
Kagan entitled "Power and Weakness", in which Kagan demonstrates that
the European rejection of military action against Islamic terrorists and the
concomitant embracing of diplomacy, appeasement and capitulation, is
behavior typical of weak nations. Nations that are militarily strong have an
inclination to seek permanent solutions to problems, whereas weak
nations are satisfied containing problems rather solving them.
I believe that it is a good thing that Europe is weak and that the United
States should use the model of how we changed European behavior in the
20th century as the basis for our soon-to-come transformation of the
terror nations of Islam.
During the Civil War, General Sherman remarked that the North would be
victorious after it killed 300,000 Southerners. He was referring not to any
random grouping of Southerners, but the 300,000 young men of the South
who were fully committed to the slave economy and who made up the bulk
of the Confederate Army and supplied that military force with its fighting
spirit and elan.
General Sherman was right. People who are fighting for an evil cause,
who are true believers of a hideous ideology, will continue to fight for as
long as their belief in the cause remains. Once that faith is removed,
capitulation soon follows.
In World War II, America and her allies were committed from the start to a
total defeat of the Axis Powers. We began planning for the
transformation of post-war Europe and Japan long before the outcome of
the war was certain. Germany and Japan kept fighting until the very end,
and the Germans especially managed to keep producing vast amounts of
war materiel until the day of surrender. Japan surrendered because it got
a nuclear wakeup call; Germany surrendered because she started to run
out of Nazis.
In both cases we made the Germans and the Japanese pay such a high
price for their innumerable crimes against humanity that they lost faith in
their ideologies, or at least that was the case with most of the Nazis and
Japanese militarists who were buried in the rubble of Dresden or
incinerated at Hiroshima.
The countries of Europe are now weak, pusillanimous and cringing
shadows of their former imperial selves. This is all to the good. Europeans
have never been able to live in peace or to solve their own political
problems, that is, until the United States, fed up with having to rescue
Europe twice from itself in the past century, imposed a Pax Americana
upon that arrogant continent. The Pax Americana is simple in design and
utterly effective. America leads; Europe complains with the high-pitched
squeal of the court eunuch; America ignores European complaints and
does what is morally right; and Europe eventually follows along, resentful
and arrogant as ever, but too weak to once again wreak havoc.
Indeed, it appears sometimes as though almost all Europeans have had
their backbones surgically removed or have been cloned from the DNA of
Neville Chamberlain. The Germans are a good case in point. I have
argued elsewhere (Hitler's Children) that the Germans are still as
anti-Semitic as they were during the Nazi era, but that this manifests itself
primarily in the form of anti-Semitism-by-proxy, whereby Germans
overwhelmingly support both politically and financially the enemies of
Israel. But when it comes to putting their own lives on the line, even for
defensive purposes, the Germans today are a far cry from their Wilhelmine
or Nazi former selves.
For example, the other day I was having a discussion in Munich with a
group of German colleagues, all highly educated and rather pleasant folks.
The discussion turned to the horrific Islamic terrorist bombings in Bali and
Finland. I posed this question to the Germans: What would be your
reaction if this happened in Berlin? The response was: It would be a
shame, but Berlin is so far from Munich. I then asked: What would be
your reaction if this happened on the Marienplatz in Munich on a warm
Saturday afternoon and 10,000 Germans were killed? The response was
that people would insist on a greater police presence. I then upped the
ante and asked what would be their response if Islamic terrorists dropped
an atomic bomb on the Reichstag and 100,000 Germans were killed. The
response was that Germans do not have a sentimental attachment to the
Reichstag building. I then inquired about the 100,000 dead Germans.
Would this finally force the Germans to seek military action against the
perpetrators? The response was—and I'm quoting verbatim here—No, but
if a second atomic bomb was dropped on Germany and a clear pattern
could be established, then many Germans would demand the expulsion of
all foreigners from Germany.
Finally, I asked what if Islamic terrorists hijacked some Lufthansa jets,
crashed them into the skyscrapers of Frankfurt—Germany's financial
center—and this brought about the collapse of the German banking and
manufacturing sectors leading to massive unemployment. The response
was a reluctant, well, I suppose there would be some businessmen who
would want to take military action ... but we wouldn't call it a war like you
Americans. After that, one of the Germans, who is normally very calm,
erupted into a diatribe about how George W. Bush is insane and the
biggest war criminal in the world today.
This goes to show you just how wretchedly craven and pusillanimous the
typical European is, even to the point of being unable to conceive any
scenario in which he would defend himself. It's one thing to turn the other
cheek; it's another thing entirely to grab your opponent's hand and help
him slap you.
But if we have to choose between a Europe of Nazis and Communists or a
Europe of socialist mama's boys, I opt for the latter. What Europeans
need to realize is that, having wisely accepted the Pax Americana in place
of European totalitarianism, the price they must pay is to remain by the
sidelines as America takes care of the world's business. Europe lost its
ability to influence or even to comment upon foreign policy because of its
moral failings. And Americans must realize that we need to ignore the
whinings of the Europeans. We cannot allow ourselves to be diverted from
doing what is right by the caterwauling of the resentful and still arrogant
Europeans.
The War on Terror will be won when the Muslim equivalent of General
Sherman's 300,000 dead Southerners is achieved. The righteous justice
that will be meted out by America needs to be so overwhelming, so
devastating, that Muslims worldwide began to question not only their
politics, but their faith as well. The evil spirit of Islam, the blood-lusting
elan of its true believers, needs to be broken once and for all. The War on
Terror will be truly won when Abdul lies bleeding to death in his cave,
surrounded by the corpses of his fellow true believers, and looks to
Heaven and exclaims, "Allah, why have you forsaken me?"
In other words, the War on Terror will be won when the typical Muslim is
as docile as the typical European—that is, displaying less warlike
tendencies than a suburban soccer mom—and possesses less religious
convictions than an Episcopal bishop.
The key to peace is, simply put, American hegemony, a weak Europe and
an even weaker Islamic world.
Vivat Pax Americana!
-- Tony
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