A NATION OF WARRIORS

All of the greatest civilisations have been unafraid to go to war. At times it is unavoidable and this is clearly one of those times. It's vital that those of us willing to fight for freedoms don't allow the cowardly amongst us to undermine our resolve. It's also vital to have a certain philosophy of war to adhere to. Here's an interesting quote:

WAR is the serious business at hand, and it poses existential questions for us and for our enemies. War must be waged humanely, to be sure-civilians may not be deliberately targeted, gratuitous torture must not be sadistically performed, and prisoners must not be starved to death or raped (the Bush administration restated these points on Friday with an executive order interpreting the applicability of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions to detentions by the Central Intelligence Agency). But waged war must be, and the goal must be nothing less than the destruction of the enemy by rendering him, in Clausewitz's terms, "politically helpless or militarily impotent." To this end, when the enemy insinuates himself among civilians, we may kill that enemy even if civilians also die-the Doctrine of Double Effect correctly assigns moral responsibility for such deaths to the enemy who cynically shields himself behind non-combatants. Indeed, if civilians tolerate enemy combatants, even sheltering them as has often been the case in Gaza and on the West Bank, the civilians bear equal responsibility for their fate.
Our Israeli friends went through the same type of war-denial we are apparently currently experiencing. As the distinguished historian Michael Oren has noted, the "Intifada" bloodshed that began in September of 2000 was in fact the "seventh Arab-Israeli war," "as much a war as any that had come before" in that "one side sought to annihilate the other." Oren explained how then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon held his fire again and again, in order to gain the support of both the Bush administration and the Israeli left. By the spring of 2002, after the devastating Netanya Passover Seder bombing, "Israel and [George W.] Bush...finally understood" the nature of the war Israel was facing, and that it "wasn't about settlements."

At that point Sharon launched a major military counteroffensive operation, and "terror began to fall precipitously," Oren writes. The success of the operation made "Ariel Sharon the first leader in history to prove you could win a war on terror." Sharon did so by using "only a fraction of military power" at his disposal to isolate that terrorist par excellence, Yasir Arafat, rendering him "politically helpless" and "militarily impotent" by cooping him up in his demolished headquarters, from whence he exited only to fade away ignominiously in a French military hospital.
Israelis, on the left and on the right, now apparently understand that their country is at WAR.

But is it madness at this stage for us to be contemplating war being as tied up as we are in Iraq? One expert says that not only is it not madness, it is essential and unavoidable:

"After the false intelligence that led America into Iraq ... it may seem hard to believe that America or Israel are pondering an attack on a much bigger Muslim country," says the Economist. "But they are -- and they are not mad. This time, after all, there is no question of false intelligence: The world's fears are based on capabilities that Iran itself boasts about openly. Nor would there be another invasion: This would be an attack from the air, aimed at disabling or destroying Iran 's nuclear sites. From a technical point of view, launching such an attack is well within America 's capabilities ( America has lately reinforced its carrier fleet in the Persian Gulf) and perhaps within Israel 's, too."

Many of America's allies, apart from Israel think that even contemplating such a thing is sheer lunacy, but do we have a choice? The players are lining up. We know Syria and Iran have recently been armed to the teeth by Russia and of course both of these nations are itching to not only wipe out Israel but to go for the throat of the U.S. Now it looks like Hamas, after the skirmish with Fatah, have risen to ascendancy while Olmert dithers on the side. It's widely believed now that the pull-out from the Gaza Strip in 2005 ordered by Olmert was a huge mistake and was not in Israel's best interests to say the least. Lately, Hamas has been arming up and consolidating its considerable, well-trained army of 13,000 men. The simmering tensions in the region are becoming impossible to ignore.

With the stormclouds gathering, now is no time to be listening to appeasers. Remember Churchill, the great warrior rather than PC Chamberlain.

SOURCES: 'American Thinker' and 'Dogs of War' (See post links)
Cross-posted here