I’m no historian, nor a political or military strategist, and these are my unbaked ramblings (I actually have a day job, and I just concocted this in my constantly diminishing spare time), so feel free to completely disagree with me and tell me I have no idea what I’m talking about… I welcome any insights on this others might have.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Interesting. So we can compare muslims with aryans, and the desire to destroy Israel with the concept of Lebensraum? That is a good analogy.[/quote]
Yes. That is a good analogy, and judging from this letter, those are the beliefs he defends – plus, clearly, totalitarianism, much like Hitler did.
What is quite amazing from this letter – at least, from my interpretation after reading it a few times – is how little new information it brings. I mean, it’s almost like a manifesto of their ideology, but we could already figure out what that is from other bits and pieces.
In regards to the stabs at Bush II’s policies and ideological incongruences, he is using them cleverly to make his ideology sound more legitimate ? basically, diverting attention like an illusionist. Unfortunately Bush II gave him PLENTY of material for that, and America’s reactions to those stabs are just piling up the material. We need to realize that if we are to fight the spread of his ideology, we need to clearly be the bastion of integrity and the “tough good guys” – basically, clearly take the high road, even while still being firm in our democratic beliefs – and honestly we’re doing a piss poor job at that: most Americans are either taking the ?low road? or not defending the foundations of our beliefs that they don?t subscribe to ? Democracy, Freedom, Equality.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Should we then ‘nip this thing in the bud’, as should have been done in the '30s?[/quote]
We’re very much past beyond the “bud” phase, and as I said before the geopolitical situation is very different. This is an extremely complex situation.
On one hand, Israel bought themselves this war and it is the belief on many in this world that Israel will be fighting Islam for eternity (or until the Second Coming, depending on who you chose to believe) – and yes, Methodists share this belief – and, honestly, it’s not like Iran is surrounded by bastions of Democracy. Their “Lebensraum” is, except for Israel, already established. In essence, if we decide to just let Israel go (which I know will have severe political consequences, but hey, so would have attacking Iran, right?), we could just not care. It might even be a good way to force us to reduce our dependency on oil. Maybe impose a few trade restrictions just to make our position clear and weaken their Economy. As I said before, they do not want to be part of the international community, so let?s just let them go on their merry way?
On the other hand, one can argue that they might want to take it up another notch eventually and go for Europe. However, he does not really give an hints in that direction in this manifesto, and I’m relatively certain that they will not do that militarily; Islam has already invaded Europe, and, truly, there’s very, very little we can do about it unless you make dramatic changes in laws there and do what Germany and Austria did with Nazis and Nazism for Islamism – essentially, make it illegal.
Finally, my wife?s grandfather (an Indian Muslim which ran away from Goa, India to Mozambique, due to religious persecution, and then married a Black Catholic lady ? my wife?s grandmother – and converted to Christianity ? pretty complicated life!), once said something that stuck with me forever: ?The best way to deal with Muslims is to leave them alone; each sect hates each other so much that they will be happy to exterminate each other; they do NOT need our help in doing so??
Now, you can say that most of these excuses were made for Nazi Germany too, and we cannot afford to sit back and relax, and you may be right – however, we could take a middle-ground and do something that would have worked against Nazi Germany – gather up allies, and obtain a STRONG commitment from them that the moment Iran makes an even small attempt at going for Israel, we will all unleash the full force of our Armed Forces – reminding them (our allies) about 100 times that if we had done that the day Hitler invaded Poland, we would have saved millions of lives, especially if we had the ability to get there as quickly as we can now get to Iran and Israel. At the same time, we should definitely and openly advise Israel that the moment Iran makes a move, they have the international blessing to defend themselves with whatever they have, including nuclear weapons.
Now, this does not prevent the possible destruction of Israel if Iran strikes them with nukes. But it does provide a strong statement, and it does protect us – and any strategy that is more aggressive will definitely be worse in terms of cost of American lives.
Again, just my ramblings. I’m not attached to them.