Rob at Wizbang linked to a Chicago Tribune piece by someone called Eric Zorn who takes Paul Harvey to task for uttering some simple truths. It is impossible for us to understand what someone who is Paul Harvey's age understands only too well. Wars are not cricket matches, the loser doesn't simply pack up his bags and return home to watch a synopsis of his failures on 60minutes. Perhaps the memories of Vietnam, Somalia and Korea have implanted this false idea into our minds but it is worth remembering what the results of losing wars are to most.

Consider what the cost of losing the war was to Poland, death mayhem, murder, genocide, rape, destruction on a massive scale, being enslaved for years and years....and that was a relatively mild result compared to losses by other nations. Ask some Chinese who were there just what happened after they lost the war to the Japanese? Rape of Nanking anyone? Consider just how bad things might have to be in New York City for you to consider consigning your family to a raft and setting off into the Atlantic? Then remember the hundreds of thousands who did just that after the South Vietnamese lost the war after we failed in our promises.

We do not have the option of losing this war. If we lose this war people who believed it ok ot blow up the Buddha Statues will have nothing between them and controlling the better part of this world. It is us or it is no one who will defeat them.

It is foolish to quibble about what we will do to win the war as if one way of killing people is more humane than other ways. The best way is to kill them in such a fashion that their brethren have no doubt of the result of continued war with us. That way at least they might reconsider and so save their own lives and those of their families. By going halfway we allow them the illusion that they might just need to try harder.

In a piece I did back here I ended with this line and it is very much applicable here.
To our backs lie our children and our elderly, all of our riches, our homes and our lives, to our fronts lies an enemy driven to madness by a religion gone corrupt. Exactly which rules are you willing to abide by in your effort to win and prevent our destruction?

Here is the bit that Eric Zorn pulled out of Paul Harvey's piece.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill said that the American
people…he said, the American people, he said, and this is a direct quote, “We
didn’t come this far because we are made of sugar candy.”

That was his
response to the attack on Pearl Harbor. That we didn’t come this far because we
are made of sugar candy.

And that reminder was taken seriously. And we
proceeded to develop and deliver the bomb, even though roughly 150,000 men,
women and children perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With a single blow, World
War II was over.

Following New York, Sept. 11, Winston Churchill was not
here to remind us that we didn’t come this far because we’re made of sugar
candy.

So, following the New York disaster, we mustered our humanity.

We gave old pals a pass, even though men and money from Saudi Arabia
were largely responsible for the devastation of New York and Pennsylvania and
our Pentagon.

We called Saudi Arabians our partners against terrorism
and we sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq, and we kept our best
weapons in our silos.

Even now we’re standing there dying, daring to do
nothing decisive, because we’ve declared ourselves to be better than our
terrorist enemies -- more moral, more civilized.

Our image is at stake,
we insist.

But we didn’t come this far because we’re made of sugar
candy.

Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and into this continent
by giving small pox infected blankets to native Americans.
Yes, that was biological warfare!

Yup would have been had it happened.

And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever. And we grew prosperous.

And, yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves.

And so it goes with most nation states, which, feeling guilty about their savage pasts, eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded, and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry and up and coming who are not made of sugar candy.

Wizbang

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