Some elements in the American government still have hope

Submitted by Ken Besig (Israel), Nov 15, 2007 at 10:31

It is by now obvious that at least some elements in the American government still entertain hope of not having to fight the Islamic terrorists and believe that appeasement will eventually either win them over to the side of the West, or at least reduce their appetite for aggressions against the West.

This of course flies in the face of reality; negotiations or appeasement with Islamic terrorists only leads to greater and more unreasonable demands by the terrorists, or are seen as weakness and lead to more and more lethal attacks by them.

And yet given the American ethos, that is, to reach for a checkbook before, and rather than, reaching for a gun, this approach would seem to make perfect sense. And it would make perfect sense if these Islamic terrorists were rational, willing to compromise, and self interested. The Islamic terrorists however want to destroy what little of the West they cannot turn into an Islamic caliphate, and murder those infidels who remain and will not convert to Islam and all the money or other financial or diplomatic inducements will not change that.

Indeed, the perfect example of this sort of failure to understand the enemy can be found in the American Civli War, when the Union Chief of Staff, a General McClellan, deliberately failed to follow up his victory at Antietam by destroying Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in 1862. It seems that General McClellan fully believed that the South could be induced into returning to the Union if the Union did not inflict too much damage or too many casualties on the South with it's more powerful military forces.

Of course, he was mistaken, but many Union military leaders apparently felt the same way, in fact many of them were former close friends and associates with the Confederate military leaders, and until U.S. Grant was appointed Chief of Staff, tended to fight either slowly or badly. Grant and W.T. Sherman of course understood the South differently, saw them as traitors conducting a military rebellion of the worst kind, and savagely killed and burned the South to her knees.

The best example of this failure to understand the reality is the upcoming Annapolis conference, sponsored by President George Bush, and to be presided over by his Secretary of State, Condaleeza Rice. The President's and his Secretary's joint belief that the Palestinian/Israeli conflict can be settled by compromise is as badly mistaken and uninformed as is their belief that the Palestinian/Israeli conflict drives and influences all the other problems of the Middle East.

The Palestinians have made it eminently plain that they will accept no compromise with their hated State of Israel which has murdered their men, raped their women, stolen their wealth, pillaged their land, and poisoned the entire Middle East with it's presence. For the Palestinians, the Israelis can either commit national suicide, make a national exodus to Europe or America, or allow the Palestinians to murder them. For them the very existence of democratic and Jewish Israel is a catastrophe, or their words, Al Naqba.

And most if not all the problems of the Middle East, Islamic terrorism, poverty, ignorance, human rights abuses, lack of representative democracy, freedom of movement and expression, have nothing to do with the Palestinian/Israel conflict, but are part and parcel of the monarchical/dictatorial spirit of the Koran and thus are endemic to the Arab and Moslem countries.

The only way to break the liberal American mindset that appeasement and compromise with Islamic radicals will stop their aggression may unfortunately be the WWII model, that is, a horrific and bloody war set off by the inevitable Iranian acquisition of nuclear arms and that rogue regime's palpable threat to use them.

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