Wednesday, August 6, 2014
While the West Remains Leaderless, Terrorists Will Advance
John F. Kenbedy delivered his first inaugural address in January 1961. His words ring true today : "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge -- and more. To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United, there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided, there is little we can do -- for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder." ~~~~~ The West - Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Israel and the United States, and our friends around the world - has been given a heavy task but we have answered by building democratic nations, educating our children, developing our resources and defending liberty and human values whenever and wherever they have been challenged. The world has reckoned with our power and determination and has understood that if anyone would defeat human liberty, they must answer to us. ~~~~ But, today we, the West, are leaderless in the United States and that means that the West is leaderless.Britain and France were permanently weakened by two world wars fought by them in their own territories. A generation of young French and British men were killed during World Wars I and II. America and Canada and Australia came to their aid, fighting alongside them and for them. The long Cold War that followed 1945 was costly in terms of resources and military preparedness, but the West bore "the burden" and stood ready to defend liberty in the face of an inhumaine communist socialism. And finally, when Ronald Reagan challenged Mikhael Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," it was because the West had out-performed communism economically, militarily and politically that the Wall came down. A generation of children of the West born in the 1980s came to believe that peace and brotherhood would be universal and eternal. But, the keepers of human liberty had warned for centuries that "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance." ~~~~~ And we are now faced with yet another attack on humanity and its right to liberty. These terrorists are destroying Christian and Moslem and Jewish communities and holy places and churches and mosques and synagogues simply because they don't conform to the terrorists' view of the world. In place of democratic institutions, they behead and lob off hands and kill groups of men and toss their bodies into mass graves and make slaves of women and children. If we were to describe the complete antithesis of Western values, we would be describing these terrorists who hide behind the Islam faith but who denigrate and demean it at every turn. And so, we would conclude that the West is acting now to defend human liberty and values in the Middle East and Africa. ~~~~~ But, dear readers, it is not happening. The West is leaderless - a ship without a helmsman. And it seems that no amount of cajoling or demanding or pleading for help is being heard by US President Obama, upon whose shoulders rests the future of the West - until 2016 when a new American President will pick up the pieces and try to make up for lost time. Of course, we are sending supplies and some weapons and drones. But they have little effect -- because the West is not there. We are not in Syria or Iraq or Libya or Ukraine. We are leaving Afghanistan. Our failure to step up and answer "present" makes all Western absentee help less useful. It emboldens the terrorists to continue and to become more inhumaine. And they will advance until the West answers "present" and stops them. In the Middle East? In Israel? In Africa? In Europe? In America? It is really our call. Now or later, if the West truly wants to survive, it will have to do its job of defending humanity and human liberty. It will, as JFK said, have to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Casey Pops this is such a thought provoking piece. I have read it twice now and what you say is nearly indistinguishable from the JFK quote. A wonderful read loaded with facts and honesty - thank you much.
ReplyDeleteCommenting on this posting is difficult at best for one reason and one reason only – IT’S JUST ALL FACTS. It’s the hard cold truth of where we are and what lies in front of us.
DeleteThere is NO doubt that the Western world is leaderless right now and has been since the arrival of Obama. But another equally serious problem is the mindset of the citizens that this challenging situation with the Islamic terrorists will just go away some day and all will be OK again.
Narcissists dread the stigma of failure. Our self-admiring president is so fearful of ever being blameworthy that he reflexively shrinks from consequential decision making. Barack Obama’s aversion to making difficult decisions has left America effectively leaderless.
ReplyDeleteObama is a “blank screen” not because he was new on the scene, but because he had cultivated an inoffensive and unchallenging blankness. It was political camouflage. During his days in the Illinois senate, Obama had carefully avoided controversy by repeatedly voting “present” rather than taking a position on polarizing issues. Friends of Obama had spared him the rigors of vigorous campaigning in both the primary and general election phases of his run for the U.S. Senate by tarring Obama’s opponents with the details of their messy divorces. Obama arrived in the U.S. Senate without ever having taken a tough stand on any issue of consequence.
America desperately needs a mature leader. There will be another presidential election in 2016. Will a patriotic adult with some practical experience please step forward?
The movement of the Islamic terrorists is not only towards the West. If a sign if weakness or vulunability is sensed towards the North,East,or South then they'll move in that way.
ReplyDeleteAll points from where they are huddled lead towards where they want to be.
They have NO preference as to what city, state, country they controll next. They have NO master plan. There is NO hard and fast agenda that "A" must happen before "B" and so on.
Wherever and whenever the opportunity exists they move that way, figuring that eventually they will have it all.
So leaderless territory is like the smell of a wounded animal to a herd of Lions on the prowl.
The democratic nations just don’t seem to have a common approach to the problem of Islamic Jihad terrorism. I think that may be linked to the total lack of understanding of the Islamic thought process. These murderous gangs of terrorists that are traveling the Middle East to whatever destination their “leadership” deems penetrable are living a dream, much like the young men of the west want to be “doctors, lawyers, and such” (a borrowed phrase from Waylon Jennings recording of “mama don’t let your babies grow up to be Cowboys”). And dreams are hard to give up, let me tell you.
ReplyDeleteAll the democratic western nations need to be in agreement as to an action plan that leads in 7-10 years to the eradication of the Islamic terrorist’s movement. It will be costly in both dollars and lives. It will take fortitude to stick the quest out. But the alternative is for freedom to be a thing of the past.
WHAT WOULD RONALD REAGAN DO, or Winston Churchill, or Margaret Thatcher, or any of the people who stood up and took charge in the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WW I, WWII, Korean War, Cold War, etc?
The West is fumbling around with the fate of mankind right now because we are void on that one great voice that speaks to us all. A Mitt Romney type - someone who has our trust and is believable.
Obama’s reputation as a deep thinker is the fruit of tireless self-promotion and deception. Though he successfully campaigned for the presidency of the Harvard Law Review, Barack Obama never contributed anything of consequence to the Harvard Law Review or any other law review.
ReplyDeleteBut surely Obama’s masterful way with words is evidence of the richness of his intellect, right? Well . . . no. In truth, he’s more of an actor than an intellectual; Obama uses a teleprompter the way a cripple uses a crutch. Obama’s reputation for eloquence is rooted in the eloquence of others.
Obama is a performer, he’s not a leader or a President of the world’s most powerful nation, he’s not even a spokesperson for his own race, and the question still lingers if he is a “legal” president due to Constitutional qualifications. He is a schmoozer. He doesn’t have that “GO TO” quality for the rest of the world’s elected leaders to seek out in time of peril that we are going through now!
My, our way of life is being assaulted on all fronts. And the focal point of those attacking us is one multiple armed monster call Islamic jihad. The movement goes by nearly 100 other names. But when one boils the crusade down to its most common denominator that’s what we have – JIHAD (a campaign waged by Muslims in defense of the Islamic faith against people, organizations, or countries regarded as hostile to Islam).
ReplyDeleteThe word regarded is the crux of this Jihad movement. They simply hold all non-Islam/Muslim believers to be hostile towards them. So with that in mind our leaderless ship (when we get a replacement rudder for Obama) needs to accept this message and act accordingly. Negotiations, Concessions, Appeasement will not work. Rather it will strengthen their resolve to march on slaughtering and interning those infidels (somebody who does not believe in Islam) that stands in their way of returning civilization back to the early 10th century.
Major general Green is slain while on a secure post near Kabul, Afghanistan and Obama doesn't comment at all on the loss - that's the level of leadership theat the West has right now.
ReplyDelete