THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VIII, Issue # 142, July 29, 2006
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
NO LIBERALS IN MY FOXHOLE!
By Alan Caruba
AMERICAN LIBERALISM DURING TIME OF WAR: THE LIBERAL TENDENCY TO TRY TO "UNDERSTAND" THE ENEMY &
EXCUSE HIS BAD BEHAVIOR -- LIBERALISM & THE ISLAMIST JIHAD -- THE LIBERAL POSITION REGARDING ISLAMISM, THE
ISEAELI-ARAB CONFLICT, & THE WORLDWIDE TERROR WAR THAT THE ISLAMISTS ARE WAGING AGAINST AMERICA & THE
WEST -- FAULTY LIBERAL ANALYSIS REGARDING THE NATURE & CAUSES OF THE FOURTH WORLD WAR & THE COURSE OF
ACTION ISRAEL, AMERICA, & THE WEST SHOULD TAKE IN DEALING WITH THE COMMON ENEMY IN THE CONFLICT
FULL STORY:
In times of war, the last person you want in the foxhole with you is a Liberal. Liberals are always desperately looking for a white
flag to wave. They are always trying to “understand” the enemy and excuse his bad behavior.
In late July, 2006, Eugene Robinson, a columnist for the Washington Post, penned a column that is quintessential
Liberalism. Normally, I just dismiss such twaddle, but it occurred to me that it serves as a good study guide to Liberalism. He
expressed himself on the subject of Lebanon and Israel. Let us dissect it.
The first two paragraphs were devoted to making fun of U.S. President George W. Bush as too dimwitted to understand the
world. By the third paragraph, Eugene was already at full throttle.
“Bush and his folks haven’t just blundered around and
created this dangerous mess. They’ve done it on
purpose. And they intend to make it worse.”
September 11, 2001. President Bush did not create the destruction of the Twin Towers, nor did he create Osama bin Laden,
Al-Qa'ida, Hezbollah, or Hamas. The attacks on the United States of America by Islamist Jihadists had been going on for
decades before Bush was elected. In 1983, Hezbollah killed 243 U.S. Marines in Beirut, to cite just one instance. In 1979, Iran
took U.S. diplomats hostage for 444 days.
To Eugene and his fellow Liberals, everything began with and can be blamed upon President Bush. This convenient loss of
memory is a common Liberal trait.
Another Liberal trait is to regard as wrong any U.S. military response to an attack on the United States or one of its allies.
Still ruminating about Lebanon, Eugene describes Israel’s response as “utterly disproportionate,” as if victory over those
raining rockets down on its cities, filled with civilians, is not the object of war. Eugene deemed Israel’s response to be
“seemingly indiscriminate carnage,” which he called “counterproductive.” War is about killing people and breaking things.
Now we get to the most Liberal notion of all. “The Israeli campaign is so intense and widespread that it is creating more
terrorists than it kills.” This is pretty much the same argument made for U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is a Liberal article of faith that, if only the Israelis or Americans would just stop existing, there would not be a problem
with Islamist terrorism.
No. The misnamed “War on Terror” is, in fact, a war against Islamic fundamentalism and the silent consent of more than a
billion Muslims who believe that Islam must rule the world and that the five billion Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and
persons of other faiths have no right to exist except as Muslims.
The problem is not the State of Israel, and is not the United States of America. The problem is a new world war that must be
fought to protect constitutional democracy, all the basic human rights and freedoms, and the scientific and artistic advances
of Western Civilization.
For Eugene, however, the problem is that “Hezbollah’s stature in the Arab world is growing, and its patrons in Damascus and
Tehran must be smugly satisfied.” Tell that to the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and even Saudi Arabia!
They all condemned Hezbollah’s kidnapping of Israeli soldiers and its subsequent rocketing of Israeli cities and towns.
“The role of any American president and secretary of state should have been to move quickly to bring hostilities to an end,”
said Eugene. How do they accomplish this when Hezbollah is not a nation to whom diplomats can be dispatched, but rather an
army funded and supplied by two nations, Iran and Syria, with whom we have virtually no diplomatic relations?
Isn’t this a job for the United Nations? Wasn’t it created to avert and contain wars, large and small? Eugene makes no mention
of it. Perhaps because of the outstanding role it played in containing Saddam Hussein after he waged war on Iran and Kuwait,
or the “interim” peacekeeping forces it has had in Lebanon for years? And who can forget its remarkable humanitarian efforts
with its “Oil for Food” program?
Liberals can and do forget anything that does not fit into their view that dictatorships are a necessary evil and that they need
to be understood, not condemned.
Instead, Eugene angrily upbraids the U.S. President and Secretary of State, declaring that they “have staked their Mideast
policy on a single incontrovertible idea — that terrorism is bad — and it has led them to the mistaken notion that Israel can
achieve longterm security by creating a kind of scorched-earth buffer zone in southern Lebanon.”
Well, Eugene, terrorism is bad. Perhaps you have forgotten — there’s that Liberal memory lapse again — about the recent
attacks in London, in Madrid, in Russia, and in India? Or the continuing carnage in Baghdad, where Islamists are determined
that 25 million Iraqis cannot have a constitutional democratic government?
A foreign policy based on destroying the Islamist movements that threaten Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the entire
Middle East, Africa, Europe, Russia, and the Pacific Basin nations seems to many people to be a perfectly reasonable and
rational policy.
Except for Eugene, who opined that “It’s hard to imagine a more unpromising course of action.”
Finally, for purposes of this examination of Liberal idiocy, Eugene concludes that, “Bush, Rice, et al. refuse to see that their
crusade against terrorism can never be won by military action alone, because a victory in the war of arms can also be a defeat
in the war of ideas.” It is this fascination with “ideas” versus the ugly facts on the ground that fogs the minds of Liberals like
Eugene Robinson.
Islam will not be defeated by a war of “ideas.” It has been around since the seventh century and has laid ruin to every land in
which it dominates. It glorifies death in a “holy war” against “the Crusaders and Zionists.” Hindus, too, get a special measure
of hatred. When not destroying the mosques of competing factions within Islam, it destroys the churches, temples, and
artifacts of all other faiths. It beheads people.
Eugene comments and asks:
“Americans are bogged down in a longterm occupation.
This is winning a war on terrorism?”
Short memory again. We waged a Cold War against Soviet Communism, with time out for a couple of hot wars in between, and
won that struggle by staying in Europe since 1945 and showing up with guns blazing in Korea and Vietnam. Ironically, we even
funded and armed the Islamists in their struggle to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan.
During all this time, since 1948, Israel has fought its own wars against the Islamists and no amount of concessions — the return
of land won in wars against them — has caused their enemies and ours to cease their crusade or changed their mind.
Eugene Robinson needs to Google some of the views of the current President of Iran, read a book about Osama bin Laden, and
take a longer look at Islam before he whines about Israel’s response to the latest outrages against its people or America’s
removal of a homicidal maniac named Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.
Libya’s dictator has changed his mind about pursuing terrorism and developing nuclear weapons. Saudi Arabia is glad Saddam
is gone and worries about Iran. Egypt continues its decades-long internal war against its Islamist terrorists. The Palestinians are
the object of ridicule and disdain among their fellow Arabs.
I’d call that progress.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Liberals, Statists, Socialists, & Other Leftists
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
The Israeli-Arab Conflict
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
The Middle East -- Lebanon as a Geopolitical Problem
The Middle East & the Problem of Syria
The Middle East & the Problem of Iraq
Page Two
Page One
The Problem of Rogue States:
Iraq as a Case History
National Strategy for Victory in Iraq
The Middle East & the Problem of Iran
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
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
-------------------------
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY & POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES:
COMPETING SYSTEMS OF POLITICAL THOUGHT
Conservatism
Traditional Conservatism: Questions & Answers
Conservatism: Attitudes, Types, & Present Status
Constitutional Conservatism: American & British
Liberalism
Classical Liberalism: Intellectual Foundations
Classical Liberalism: Conservative Liberalism
Manchester Liberalism & Social Darwinism
Modern Social "Liberalism": Statist "Liberalism"
Radical & Totalitarian Ideologies
Radicalism, Utopianism, & Totalitarianism
Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a
clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes a weekly commentary, "Warning Signs," posted
on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center, which is located at
www.anxietycenter.com.
© Alan Caruba 2006
Published with Permission of Alan Caruba
ACaruba@AOL.Com
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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