THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VI, Issue # 121, June 10, 2004
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE NEW CRUSADE FOR HUMAN FREEDOM:
THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY'S FIRST GREAT WAR
By Alan Caruba
FULL STORY:
In 1948, Dwight David Eisenhower, the former Allied Supreme Commander of the European theatre of World War II, published a
book, Crusade in Europe. The book’s dust jacket shows that the price was $5.00. My late Father’s friends had gotten
together to buy him the book. I picked it up a few days ago to get a sense of what it was like when I was just a child of seven on
June 6, 1944.
Eisenhower would go onto become President of the United States, hold that office from 1953 to 1961, and see the American nation
through an early phase of World War III -- the half-century “Cold War” with the Soviet Union, the conflict that was to determine
whether Communism and Soviet-style despotism would triumph over Capitalism, the rule of law, and liberty under law. Not until
the 1990s would the “evil empire”, as Ronald Reagan called it, finally come to an end.
Eisenhower finished his retelling of the war in Europe saying:
“The democracies must learn that the world is now too small for the rigid concepts of national
sovereignty that developed in a time when the nations were self-sufficient and self-dependent
for their own well-being and safety. None of them today can stand alone.”
What Eisenhower could not have anticipated, however, was that the United Nations, founded in 1945, would, like its predecessor,
the League of Nations, consistently fail to deter war as a means by which nations would advance their agendas, whether it was
independence or the looting of their neighbors.
The recent U.S., British, and allied military victory in Iraq and the occupation that has followed, along with the first tentative steps
toward creating a constitutional democratic nation where none ever existed before, is an object lesson in --
(1) The inability of the UN to serve any useful role to deter war;
(2) The need for the military power of the United States and its allies to end the threat of rogue nations.
The UN is a charade, a façade, a useless doppelganger of the need to end gangster regimes by force of arms.
Focused on the threat of Soviet-style Communism, Eisenhower wrote:
“We believe individual liberty, rooted in human dignity, is man’s greatest treasure. We believe that men,
given free expression of their will, prefer freedom and self-dependence to dictatorship and collectivism.”
If you listen to any speech President Bush gives these days, you will find the exact same view expressed when he speaks of the
liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Is anyone listening?
In the very last paragraph of his book, Eisenhower wrote:
“If they (the men and women of America) can retain the moral integrity, the clarity of comprehension,
and the readiness to sacrifice that finally crushed the Axis, then the free world will live and prosper,
and all peoples, eventually, will reach a level of culture, contentment, and security that has never
before been achieved.”
This is a noble vision, but it is far from achieved. Despite the increase in the number of nations that have embraced constitutional
democracy, much of the world remains in the grip of a mere handful of men, about twenty, who rule over the lives of two billion
people. They include Red China, most of the African nations, nation-states of the former Soviet Union, and, of course, all of the
nations of the Middle East, with the exception of Israel and Turkey.
It is no accident that, when America has had to confront a threat and dispatch its Armed Forces in recent decades, it has been to
the nations which, ruthlessly disconnected from the modern world, continue to pose a threat to global peace.
To end this threat, by might or by diplomacy, those nations and their political regimes must be transformed. That is the great
crusade of the 2lst century. It must be the central goal of the side of human freedom in World War IV, the first great war of the
new century.
There will always be defeatists and appeasers. It’s a good thing that men like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and
General Dwight D. Eisenhower were not among them on D-Day 1944.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Middle East & the Problem of Iraq
Page Two
Page One
The Problem of Rogue States:
Iraq as a Case History
The Middle East & the Arabs
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, Communications Director of the American Policy Center,
and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes a weekly
column, "Warning Signs," posted on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center
(www.anxietycenter.com). A compilation of his past columns, entitled Warning Signs, is published by Merril Press. In addition
to Warning Signs, Caruba is the author of A Pocket Guide to Militant Islam and The United Nations vs. the United States,
both of which are available from the National Anxiety Center, 9 Brookside Road, Maplewood, New Jersey, 07040.
Copyright 2004 Alan Caruba
Published with Permission of Alan Caruba
ACaruba@AOL.Com
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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