I was working on some notes about Ron Paul’s lack of a moral compass in foreign affairs, and it dawned on me that two of the finest democracies in the world emerged only after the Second World War. At mid-century Japan and Germany represented two of the most vile systems of xenophobic, war-mongering tyrannies the world had ever seen.
And we defeated both of them. No, that’s not quite right. We didn’t just defeat them, we beat them so decisively we were able to demand unconditional surrender. They didn’t just hand us their swords, they fell prostrate at our feet. We humbled them.
Some even say we humiliated them, as the brightest bulb in the room, President Obama, suggested, by our forcing “the emperor of Japan” to bow and sign surrender documents (can anyone pick Emperor Hirohito out in this photo?) on the USS Missouri in 1945.
Obama thought that was a bad thing and used this gaffe to support his statement that “victory” is not necessarily our goal in Afghanistan.
And that is precisely the point here, for Obama is very wrong on this, for this kind of victory is exactly what we need fighting Al Qaeda and other Islamist terror groups…and those who support them.
You see, it was from this humbling, that within seven years both Germany and Japan would do a complete about face, and emerge as two of the strongest democracies in the world.
There is a great lesson here, for had the United States and its allies sat down with either Japan or Germany and agreed to a negotiated “honorable” peace with those ignoble adversaries, neither Germany nor Japan would be the democracies they are today. Instead they would be some shade of their old nasty selves.
Obama, once again, is wrong. America is a magnanimous and moral nation, and he only sees us behaving as he would behave if total victory were to ever to someday come his way.
It was the act of utterly defeating the Axis, then acting magnanimously in their reconstruction and revival that completed the trek back to civilization and democracy.
Hasten the Day
I mention this only by way of pointing out that ten years after the Al Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the Enemy, Al Qaeda, still stands defiant.
True, we killed bin Laden, and they are hiding in caves. But in truth they look upon that sort of life as a kind of noble existence. We have not humbled Al Qaeda. They are still unafraid. And they still believe they are on offense, which likely they are.
Far too many people give them safe haven, money and encouragement, and many of those people are in the finer salons of Europe and America.
Nor have we bruised Islamic radicalism and terrorism at its root, who does more chest-thumping with each passing day. Even Taliban, on the run, knows only to bide its time.
We have not brought any of them to their knees. Mothers still give their sons over to become suicide bombers instead of wailing in the night at their sons’ loss, or hiding them from recruiters’ grasp. Or threatening them with a frying pan.
We need to hunt these people down like dogs, and kill every last one of them, until they come out from their caves carrying a white flag, throwing themselves at our feet.
We need to offer no mercy, so to let them be surprised when we deliver it anyway, as the Japanese and Germans in the western zone were once surprised.
But first we must hasten the day.
In the lands of all Islamist terrorist, Hamas, Hezbollah, Fatah, Taliban, we need to make it clear to every mother, brother, cousin; we will kill them all if need be. We will torch every house that gives them shelter, fire very field that feeds them. We will set their families adrift in the streets to fight with dogs over table slop thrown from doors.
I know many of you don’t believe the Islamists can be humbled in this way. To do what I suggest will bring us generations of retribution, I’m told. But for the willingness to commit suicide for their cause, they can’t match the Japanese. For cruelty against innocent people, they can’t match either the Japanese, whose code was as ancient as their own, or the Nazis, whose sheer joy in murder and torture was unsurpassed. For fealty to a code they can match neither the Bushido nor the Nazi.
Yes, they can be drawn from their caves carrying white flags. Yes, they can be humbled. Of course they can be beaten.
Both Japan and Germany proved that even the cruelest, most haughty and arrogant people will surrender and change when it is met by against an relentless, irresolute force. (There is actually some science on this.)
It is the cruelty that must be purged from all the other Islamist terror groups, but especially, first and foremost, the men who killed 2977 Americans 10 years ago. And the only way to do this is by relentless, remorseless death and carnage to them and all they hold dear until no one will dare give them food or shelter. Make them pariah even among the dogs. Cause every mother to say, “This is not worth it for my son to die” and deny them, cause villagers to spit at them as they walk by.
The Code of Bushido still exists in secret places in Japan. There are also closet Nazis, but most of those are in Cairo or Russia these days. Like the Thuggees they may some day arise in some small province, but never again will they take over a country, and proudly stride through towns taunting America, and secretly plotting to kill its citizens.
They must made to be afraid, terribly afraid. It should be our one resolve to hasten the day this happens.
