Appease or Fight; There Is No Third Way

Two editorials caught my eye this afternoon-- One because it echoed my own thoughts on the unintended consequences of Olmert's war failure, the other because of the sheer madness of western governments and their peoples inability to accept the reality and necessity of this war.

In Hoping Israel Can Be Defeated by Uriel Heilman of the New York Post we get a very clear picture of what peace treaties actually bring and why, and what they don't bring.

Why are Arabs with business and political ties to the West, and even to Israel, jumping on the Hezbollah bandwagon? Because their moderation derives not so much from an acceptance of the Jews' historical right to a homeland in the Middle East, but from the Arabs' repeated inability to defeat Israel - shown in a series of crushing defeats like the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel held off invading Arab armies and captured the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank from Jordan and Gaza and the Sinai from Egypt.

Treaties-- or so it seems in this case --bring national respect, borne out of a national fear of losing more than what is already lost, or losing altogether. But it's a grudging respect, not the kind of respect that comes of genuine love and admiration. And this is where much of Israel's old enemies are today. Sure, they do business with Israel, some have good honest relations with her, but deep down, given the knowledge that Israel could be defeated in armed combat? How quickly would their good honest relations be shed were it honestly believed that Israel could be conquered?

Many said Israel was fighting Hezbollah for the West and western interests; She was doing the work for us. But the fact that Israel undeniably lost that war, how does that mirror the West's chances of winning on its own fronts? As long as the media hypes the tragic for the sake of ratings and revenue, we don't stand a chance. Freedom of the press is often-- of late --over-rated. We sacrifice our rights everyday to employers, government, judges and prosecutors, yet we balk at muzzling the press. They have become America's golden calf, and little good will come of it.

The UK Telegraph says... Five years on, this war must intensify, though it should go without saying; how else will the West win? And win we must, for...

...the West [has] only two choices: to appease the terrorists or to fight them.

[...]

In the conflict between the terrorists who wish to impose their vision of a "just and righteous society" by force on the rest of us, there is nothing to talk about: they are not interested in compromise or negotiation, and there is no common ground between their vision of the future and ours. The terrorists themselves have stated their position clearly: "We are not," one of them has insisted, "trying to exact concessions from you. We are trying to eliminate you."

Why there is such a huge number of people who seem to think these freedom-fighters can be appeased is seemingly beyond comprehension. To me, at least. We know what they want-- they have said as much, but the appeasement crowd chooses instead to parse the rhetoric and believe there is a different meaning hidden somewhere within... "We are trying to eliminate you"... One that says just leave the middle-east and we'll leave you alone. Would that it were true. America has forgotten how to win a war, because, with the advent of modern media and endless pleasures and diversions, America has forgotten how to think for itself.

And Britain is no better off that we. America will at least prosecute the ones we find and capture, Britain can't seem to find the stomach to even prosecute the purveyors of hatred on their own soil. Freedom of speech is all well and good, in terms of society as a whole, but Americans sacrifice their freedom of speech every day they punch the clock at work, and willingly allow hate-speech arguments to abridge their free speech rights further.

But not all hate speech... It's perfectly fine to allow certain people more freedom of expression of others, provided the target of such expression has earned it... ("Death of a President" leaps immediately to mind. A fake documentary about the assassination of President George W. Bush, and its resultant aftermath. But then, why should the President of the United States be exempt from exploratory free-speech in the form of an assassination plot? It's not like they're actually doing it, let alone advocating it, right?)

But even if it were true that the [British] Government's foreign policy is a catalyst for terrorism, it would clearly be quite wrong to change it in order to appease the terrorists. The terrorists will never be appeased. If Britain's foreign policy is wrong, politically or morally, it should be changed for that reason: it should not be changed to capitulate to terrorist blackmail.

[...]

It was the failure to act decisively against the preachers of hate that helped to incubate Islamic terrorism in Britain. The continued reluctance to prosecute those preachers can only exacerbate the mortal danger we face.

I believe Solomon said it best... "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."

Perhaps this is a time for wielding swords.