GLOBAL WAR (NOT WARMING)

By Greg ‘Gadfly’ Doyle

PACOVILLA Corrections blog
August 17, 2014

The prevailing winds of recent political storms around the world do not bode well for anyone living on planet Earth in the very near future. Unless a decisive change in American and allied response is forthcoming, freedom will falter, fade, and fail while tyranny threatens, tests, and triumphs. Whether you like it or not, believe it or not—global war (not warming) is on the horizon. Politicians are helpless to prevent it because of their lack of resolve and complacent constituencies. History bears this out. It happened earlier in the previous century under Nazi fascism and Japanese imperialism, and later under Soviet and Chinese communist expansion.

Some living now were small children at the onset of World War II. America was reluctant to get involved. Her leaders stood idly by, watching in the comfort of oceanic-isolation while tens of millions of souls became helpless captives overseas. British and European appeasement of Adolf Hitler only made him stronger, more calculating, daring and dangerous. Politicians had drawn lines in the proverbial sand in hopes to dissuade Hitler through diplomacy. They failed to appreciate the nature of a true tyrant: an insatiable thirst for absolute power.

Adolf Hitler continued to cross those drawn lines. He challenged his enemies’ collective resolve to do something to stop him. They blinked as he moved deftly forward. In other words, he ignored their bluster by calling each bluff. Like dominoes, Nazi Germany annexed one neighbor after another until Hitler felt strong enough militarily to conquer the rest of Europe. By 1944, when the war drastically turned against Germany’s favor, surrender was not an option until Hitler was dead and Allied boots were standing over the ashes of his ruined Germany.

Similarly, Japanese leaders refused to surrender in the face of numerous military setbacks and economic failures. Not until two unimaginably destructive bombs, atomic in nature, were dropped on her major cities did Japan capitulate. Just like her Axis ally Germany, Japan was in rubble and ruins before surrender was possible. That is the lesson of history in dealing with tyrants.

Several million non-combatants died in suffering and slavery as the result of unchecked Nazi and Japanese expansion. Ethnic cleansing and genocide fed the engines of both military machinations. After America had been attacked and drawn into the global conflict, thousands upon thousands of Americans died trying to help our English allies put an end to the threat. Unfortunately, the successful triumph over Japan and Germany in World War II (1945) merely suppressed the spread of tyranny for a season.

Meanwhile in the 1950′s, Chinese and Soviet communism spread to their surrounding neighbors. Eastern Europe fell under the heavy boot of Soviet communism and walled off its inhabitants from the free world with an Iron Curtain of containment. Chinese communism spilled over in military conflict to the Korean peninsula, eventually tearing one country in two segregated halves: those who would live free and those who never will.

The lives of thousands of Americans and their allies were sacrificed holding the drawn line between communist North and free South Korea. South Korea thrives economically while North Korean communism starves its citizens. American troops still hold that dividing line in 2014. Today, if you had no other choice, which of those two countries would you rather live in?

In the 1960′s Southeast Asia fell victim to Chinese and Soviet communist expansion. The Viet Nam war resulted in hundreds of thousands of American casualties and thousands of deaths. Due to political unrest at home and the increasing unpopularity of the war, America withdrew and abandoned the fight. In the vacuum of American intervention, millions of Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, and Burmese citizens were brutalized by thuggish communist regimes, while thousands of escaping refugees died crossing the Pacific in boats to get to Canada and the United States, and freedom.

Today, our geo-political landscape is changing and devolving. For several years now, the former American Cold War nemesis, Russia (formerly the catalyst and controller of the satellites of the Soviet Union), has begun the prospect of resurrecting the Iron Curtain among its closest neighbors. Using Hitler-esque bullying tactics of pre-World War II, Russian leader Vladamir Putin has begun the annexation of parts of the Ukraine while the rest of the world (in the interest of avoiding military conflict) does nothing offensively to stop it.

Does anyone who remembers the former Soviet Union and its tactics believe Russia will stop at the Crimea because of some imposed financial sanctions? Ask the citizens of neighboring Georgia if Russia has been hands-off with Georgian sovereignty since 1991 (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17301647.) Hardly. The cancerous spread of Russian influence (in Soviet-style dominance) is crossing the borders and entangling itself among its former satellite states unchecked.

Contrary to the political rhetoric of our current president Al Qaeda is not on the run. If you haven’t noticed, the Middle East is on fire with terror! From the Arab Spring to Benghazi, from Syrian upheaval to Iraqi collapse, Al Qaeda is alive and thriving. The premature withdrawal of American forces from the region has left non-Muslims, non-Sharia Law Muslim minorities, and peaceful sectarians without a deterrent against Islamic extremism and radical fanaticism. In the wake of an American withdrawal, barbarism and jihad-inspired genocide is sweeping away the last vestiges of hope for fledgling democracies too weak to hold onto their short-lived freedoms.

Global war (not global warming) is what everyone in the world should pray against. Instead of railing against Israel for defending her citizens against daily rocket attacks from Gaza, America should support her ally, Israel. Palestine is no friend of America when Hamas is in control. If the Palestinians really want Israel to stop killing their people, they should purge Palestine of Hamas. And if peace-loving Muslims really want every non-Muslim to not look at them suspiciously, they too should purge peace-loving Islam of all radical jihadists and extremists.

The application of history, my friends, really boils down to show and tell. During World War II, were there Germans who were not Nazis? Very likely there were many. In Imperial Japan during the same war, were there many Japanese who were not out to rule the world and enslave their inferiors? I am certain there were. The problem was (and remains today) that those good people were ruled by bad men (tyrants) so convincingly that it was impossible to distinguish between the good and the bad without bullets and bombs. In other words, because of the terrorizing show those tyrannical regimes gave the world, few could tell who was good among all the bad.

War brought down the leadership of tyrannical governments. And while diplomacy may have led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union in 1991, it did not take out its corrupt and tyrannical leadership. We are still dealing with communists who rule Russian interests in 2014. We nearly destroyed Al Qaeda in Iraq. Then we failed to secure it. Now it is overrun with jihadists.

Another history lesson has been lost on those leaders who think they are smarter than the tyrants they attempt to appease. Appeasement of tyrants leads to war. And we stand on the brink of all out war for lack of historical perspective. I wish history taught a different lesson, but it does not.

Pray for a decisive change in American foreign policy before the world blows up in all of our faces. Our president can continue to bluff and back away, and give up a lot of territory in the next two years, Still, a fight is coming. The longer we wait, the weaker we become and the worse it will get. History bears the warnings and lessons.

May God help us all.