(I had originally intended this as a comment to a post from Cassandra here, but it kept getting bigger. I figured it would be better suited as a post. I hope, Cassandra, you’ll forgive my putting my thoughts here instead of on your fine blog.)
You know, sometimes I honestly despair.
I listened this morning to C-SPAN’s Washington Journal – to the call-in portion of the show. I heard caller after caller after caller spouting absolute drivel until I finally had to turn it off. It actually made me angry. My hands were shaking. That bothered me because I’m not a man given to physical displays of anger.
What made me so angry was not that those callers were in possession of the facts and drew a different conclusion than I. It was that their facts were so wrong. Not just that, but they were wrong about things that any elementary-school kid who can use Google could find out. They were wrong about facts that were so easy to verify, if they had only put forth a basic amount of effort.
It was like listening to people condemning the voyage of the Queen Mary because they just knew it would fall off the edge of the world.
I hear that and I despair because I can only draw two conclusions: 1) that they have heard the facts and choose not to believe them; or 2) that they’re too damned lazy to find out the facts themselves.
How in God’s name can we ever fight a war when so many of our people can’t be bothered to make sure they have their facts straight before they condemn how we’re fighting it? I mean, how could we have posibly won World War II if so many of our population believed, for instance, that the President had engineered Pearl Harbor just to get us into the war, or believed that the Nazis were fighting solely because of Versailles?
We couldn’t have. There’s no way we could have done the brutal but necessary things we did in Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or Tokyo unless we believed our cause was just. We couldn’t have endured the horrible casualties we did at Normandy, Okinawa, or Iwo Jima had we not believed as a nation that we were fighting not only for our own survival but also for the survival of liberty. We would never have triumphed had our will been anything less than pure tempered steel. Our British brothers in arms would never have given the Germans the beating they did at the Battle of Britain, would never have survived the Blitz, had they been one whit less resolved to see the war through to victory, no matter what it took.
Prompted by a post from FRW, I read a couple of Winston Churchill’s speeches, and one section of his famous “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat” speech struck my heart. Here’s what he had to say, before the House of Commons, on May 13, 1940:
We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind, We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.
You ask, What is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory – victory – at all costs, victory, in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realised; no survival for the British Empire; no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, ‘Come, then, let us go forward together with our united strength.’
Can you imagine a politician today making a speech with that much power and conviction? Can you imagine, if President Bush had stood before the American people two weeks ago and given that speech, what the headlines would have been the next morning?
“Bush Breaches First Amendment with Invokation of God”
“President Refuses to Give Timetable for End of War, Promises War will Last “However Long”
“Bush Preaches Optimism Despite Bleak Outlook”
Why is that? Are the stated goals of the Islamicists any different than those of the Nazis? Do Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zaraqawi want to dominate the world with any less of an implacable iron hand than Adolf Hitler and Emperor Hirohito? Are their dreams of forcing the infidels into submission, or killing them by the millions really any different than the genocidal fantasies of Hermann Goehring or Joseph Goebbels?
We are in a war, whether we like it or not. We didn’t ask for it. We’d rather be enjoying the blissfully ignorant halcyon days of the 1990s much in the way our Grandfathers and Grandmothers enjoyed the unbridled verve of the Roaring 20s. Who wouldn’t?
We weren’t given that choice. War is here and our enemies are waging it against us every single day. We have two choices – to fight it, as Churchill said “…with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us…” or we can surrender and consign our children and grandchildren to a life of slavery and submission to the tyranny of bin Laden’s Islam.
If we decide to fight – to really fight with everything we have – we’re going to have to put aside statements like this:
Violence rarely gets us anywhere; the PLO, the IRA, the SLA, among others have achieved so little with their terrorism. If the London bombings are the work of an Al Qaeda offshoot, then you have to fairly say, in the same way we condemn other’s terror, this is in part the result of Bush’s War on Iraq.
And this:
The lesson should be that Bush has put the West, including the American people, at life-and-death risk by going to war for fabrications. We will never be “safer” as long as we invade and occupy Iraq, prop up the Saudi dictators, and crawl towards only a token Palestinian state. We will be safe when we no longer forcibly occupy Muslim lands in the oil-driven search for dominance.
Before more attacks and more deaths, it is time for Congress to take the initiative from the Bush Administration and hold hearings on an exit strategy from Iraq. It is not acceptable for Donald Rumsfeld to scorn an exit strategy in favor of a victory strategy any longer.
We are going to have to turn our backs on these people. We are going to have to say plainly that they are foolish, that they are wrong, and that their unpatriotic drivel and obsession with hating our President and our nation means defeat and death and slavery. We are going to have to be blunt and plain and say that their words are as deadly to our freedoms and liberties as any car bomb or subway attack.
If we can’t manage to do that much, then we do not deserve the America our brave and stalwart grandparents gave us. If we can’t muster enough energy to make sure our facts are right before we denounce our nation on national television, then we’ve lost this war, we’ve lost our country, and we ought to hang our heads in shame.
Today, I despair that too many of us have already decided to surrender.
As Americans we are too spoiled. It’s hard for many to envision a life where the average American lives in fear for his or her life on a daily basis or where our freedoms would be taken away by force by an outsider intent on doing so. Even though I wasn’t born yet, I’m guessing the last time any of the above would even come close to applying was the cold war…where people thought the USSR could just nuke us and we’d be done with forever. People believed that. So doing things to prevent such a thing from occurring was perceived as necessary (for awhile anyway).
I see moonbattery as a side effect of freedom. We are so good at fighting the bad guys (and thereby preventing fear and terror from overtaking our country) that some have become blind as to what could be. Everything’s fine and it has been my whole life, so why stir something up?! The association between fighting bad guys and living in bliss isn’t made by many, even though it seems obvious to me. It’s hard to justify preventing the ill that we can’t even see in many’s minds. If that made any sense.
So next time you hear some incoherent moonbat blaming America, just think that freedom is alive and well…especially freedom from experiencing the bombings, terror, death, and destruction that would even get them on our side.
I wonder, Feisty, if we’re really that spoiled. After all, we lived in relative peace for a couple decades after World War I. The Roaring 20′s were perhaps the most carefree years in our nation’s history.
But Pearl Harbor woke us up.
Why aren’t we awake now? More people died on 9/11 than at Pearl, and remember that those were civilians – folks just like you and me. They weren’t soldiers and sailors. Yet we’ve barely managed ot rouse ourselves.
Perhaps the real reason we haven’t really wakened to the threat is because our media refuses to tell us that there is a threat. We can pick up a newspaper on any given day and read how Islamicists have killed another bunch of innocent civilians, or how yet another Muslim cleric has declared a fatwa against us. It ought to be crystal clear to us that these people mean to conquer us because they tell us so constantly.
Yet we also read in those same stories how these folks aren’t the enemy because they’re just a teeny tiny minority of Muslims and that they don’t speak for Muslims (except that you never seem to hear the Muslims condemning that and I’ve yet to see a Muslim street protest condemning the attacks here or Madrid or London). They play down the Islamicist declarations and tell us that there’s no real problem there. Of course, Americans read that and figure that the newspapers must be telling the truth – after all, if three was a threat, they’d let us know, right?
Except they’re not and the average American has no idea that they’re not because the average American isn’t looking past the MSM to find out what’s going on in the world. They’re being told every day that the killers aren’t really the killers and that their supporters aren’t really their supporters.
How can we even begin to fight a war when we can’t even get our own media on our side?
the MSM is obviously part of the problem, not part of the solution. I happen to think the cushy lifestyle of the average journalist is just an example of the phenomenon I described. Has the average journalist ever went eye-to-eye with a Muslim extemeist in action, or has he only met the articulate leader of his city’s Muslim group who says “not all Muslims are bad”? Has he lived in a war torn country where his family, friends, and half his village were killed because they opposed the thugs-in-charge? Probably not. Cushy. Freedom.
Statistically speaking, he is a democrat, which means he would probably show restrain in writing an article that’s pro Bush or shows Bush or anything he’s doing in a positive light, much like I’d have a hard time writing anything good about Howard Dean since I think he’s a nut job.
Churchill was not universally beloved; he put up with a lot and was kicked out of office after the war. We can do what needs to be done with the amount of support we have now.
The most important thing is not what ill-informed people chatter on about, it’s what our government does. So far, they’re holding up. So far, so good.
Let’s make sure that we war mongers prevail here.
I’ve been exactly where you are emotionally several times over the last few months. Fortunately, the feeling passes and I go back to simply being depressed rather than despairing.
I think that major difference between us and our grandparents is a question of faith. For more than 30 years, the left has kept up a constant drumbeat of ant-americanism. Our country is evil, they say. Our history is a sham, our morals, corrupt, our ideals a pretense. From every media outlet in every classroom, in movies, in song, in novels – everywhere – the left has sought to destroy the US.
What they’ve suceeded in doing is destroying faith in the rightness of America. And without that faith, there’s a very good chance we will lose this war.
I don’t know what the solution is except to soldier on as best we can and hope that we can absorb the coming calamity of a WMD attack without coming apart as a nation. Because once that nuke goes off or the biological attack happens, all bets are off.
Jimmie, I thought about all that could be written on the Hate America First left had been said. Then I read your post (via TWC) and the comment thread. Grimm, but such an important reminder. Thanks.
My experience with Washington Journal is that the Kool-Aid sipping call-in audience is no better than, I suppose, Air America’s. The callers are always so drenched in moonbattery acid that I refuse to listen anymore. But really, they’re a minority. (They’ve GOT to be… I have faith in that!)
Rick, while you are likely correct regarding the eroding faith in America for America, I believe that:
(1) 9-11, for all its horror, has done much to get America to wipe that evil 30-y.o. unguent out of her eyes. (Great literary/cinematic image: in LOTR, good king Theoden waking up from evil Saruman’s mind-numbing trance and then banishing from his own court the traitorous Grima Wormtongue.) America was asked to stand and fight, and for the most part, we have.
(2) Even if this faith in “the rightness of America” been weakened among us, there is a higher faith that steps in at times like these. And, I firmly believe it has.
I guess I am cautiously optimistic. And this post/thread helped me to realize that, to even see the good past the bad in us. Indeed, in the wake of Election 2000, I firmly believe that Al Gore did NOT win for a very big reason: however overly zealous it sounds, I believe that W had God’s work to do. Likewise, Kerry’s loss. (Granted: each victory was uncomfortably close!)
Not to sound too Pollyanna-ish, but it’s so hard for me to not see the hand of God in all of this.
I recommend to all Tom Friedman’s column in today’s NYT. Finally, someone with wide readership isn’t hiding behind the “Islam has been hijacked smokescreen.”
See my post at (with a link to his column) at
http://americanfuture.typepad......tom_f.html
I, too, have been dismayed at the ignorance displayed by callers to C-SPAN. Unfortunately, all too often, I have cringed at calls from “Bush supporters” or supporters of “the right” in general who display just as much ignorance as the callers from the left. This is the first time I have visited your site and wanted to let you know I found this post to be excellent!
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As a ex-C-SPAN junkie, I have to totally agree! I have also muted or turned off the TV due to the ignorant callers. I just keep hoping that it’s only the uninformed 5% that are calling in…else we are lost!
[...] As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher’s Council hold a vote every week on what they consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around… per the Watcher’s instructions, I am submitting one of my own posts for consideration in the upcoming nominations process. Here is the most recent winning council post, here is the most recent winning non-council post, here is the list of results for the latest vote, and here is the initial posting of all the nominees that were voted on. [...]
[...] Last week’s results were sort of surprising, for me at least. It turns out that my post “I Despair” won in the first category. That surprised me mostly because the post that finished second, an insightful look at how necessary it is for our nation to have a clear view of the nature of evil by the always-readable Gates of Vienna, was so very strong. It most definitely deserves your attention. [...]
if the war is so honorable and right. why so many different objectives WMD. nukes over San Fran, democracy etc. you Sunshine Patriots slay me. let’s fight terrorism but with your kid’ ,not mine. If it’s such a noble cause, get you own sorry ass over there.. Marty Sammon ,101st airborne
you say you have all the facts, really define “facts’ you arrogant —–
Ah…reasonable debate at last.
Do you have an actual point to debate or are you just here to call names?
Ah, Marty, I’m sure your 101st Airborne buddies love working with you with all your pro-American sentiments. Volunteer army, my friend. You may leave when you want (although dishonorably, but it’s your choice).
So delinquent with Watcher posts
So neglectful of my Watcher’s Council obligations, here are some recent results. From July 8: Votes Council link 1 2/3 Border Freebies: Using the Race Card To Get an Education The Education Wonks 1 Happy Independence Day e-Claire 1…