THIS IS HISTORY THAT HAS BEEN FORGOTTEN
By Wilson Crabtree

Some of you/us are not old enough to remember that nearly every family in America was grossly affected by WWII.  Most of you probably do not remember the rationing of meat, shoes, gasoline, and sugar.  No tires for our automobiles, and a speed limit of 35 miles an hour on the road.  Not to mention no new automobiles.
 

Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk more than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England and America for food and war materials.
 

 At that time the U.S. was in an isolationist, pacifist mood, and most Americans wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian war.
 

Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage, Congress   unanimously declared war on Japan.  And the following day on Germany, which had not yet attacked us.
 

It was a dicey thing.  We had few allies.  France was not an ally, as the Vichy government of France quickly aligned itself with its German occupiers.
 

Germany  was certainly not an ally, as Hitler was intent on setting up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe.  Japan was not an ally, as it was well on its way to owning and controlling all of Asia.  Together, Japan and Germany had long-range plans of invading Canada and Mexico, as launching pads to get into the United States over our northern and southern borders, after they finished gaining control of Asia and Europe.
 

America’s only allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and   Russia. That was about it.  All of Europe, from Norway to Italy, except Russia   in the East, was already under the Nazi heel.
 

America was certainly not prepared for war. America had drastically downgraded most of its military forces after WWI and throughout the depression, so that at the outbreak of WWII, army units were training with broomsticks because they didn’t have guns, and cars with “tank” painted on the doors because they didn’t have real tanks.
 

A huge chunk of our navy had just been sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor.  Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England, that was actually the property of Belgium, given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler (a little known fact).
 

Actually, Belgium surrendered in one day, because it was unable to oppose the   German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day just to prove they could.  Britain had already been holding out for two years in the face of staggering losses and the near decimation of its air force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later;  first turning his attention to Russia at a time when England was on the verge of collapse in the late summer of 1940.
 

Ironically, Russia saved America’s butt by putting up a desperate fight   for two years, until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany  Russia lost something like 24 million people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow alone, with 90% of them from cold and starvation, mostly civilians  Also more than a 1,000,000 soldiers.
 

Had Russia surrendered, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire war effort against the Brits, then America.  And the Nazis could possibly have won the war.
 

All of this is to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things.  And now, we find ourselves at another one of those key moments in history!
 

There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world. The jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs. –
 

They believe that Islam, a radically conservative form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world.  And that all who do not bow to their will of thinking should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated.  They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, and purge the world of Jews. This is their mantra.   
 

There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East -for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas.  Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation, but it is not known yet which will win:  the Inquisitors, or the Reformationists.
 

If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the  Middle East, the OPEC oil, and the US, European, and Asian economies.
 We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e. the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda and the Islamic terrorist movements.  We have to do it somewhere.  And we can’t do it everywhere at once.
 

We have created a focal point for the battle at a time and place of our choosing in Iraq.  Not in New York, not in London, or Paris or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we are doing two important things:
 

(1) We deposed Saddam Hussein.  Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in 9/11 or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades.  Saddam was a terrorist.  Saddam with deeds of torture and a weapon of mass destruction, was responsible for the deaths of probably more than a million Iraqis and two million Iranians.
 

(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq.  We have focused the battle. We are killing bad people, and the ones we get there we won’t have to get here.  We also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful nation.
 

World War II, the war with the German and Japanese Nazis, really began with a “whimper” in 1928.  It did not begin with Pearl Harbor.  It began with the Japanese invasion of China.  It was a war for fourteen years before America joined it.
 

It officially ended in 1945 — a 17 year war and was followed by another decade of US occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own again, a 27 year war.
 

World War II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year’s GDP adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars.   WWII cost America more than 400,000 killed in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.  The Iraq war has, so far, cost the US about $160 billion, which is roughly what 9/11 cost New York . It has also cost about 2300 American lives, which is regrettable.
 

We have four options:
1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.
2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may be as early as next year, if Iran’s progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is).
3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East, now, in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America.
4. Or, we can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed,  perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany.
 

The Cold war lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down   in 1989.  Forty-two years. Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany.
 

World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan.  World War II resulted in the death of more than 50 million people, maybe more than 100 million people, depending on which estimates you accept.
 
The US has taken more than 3,300 killed in action in Iraq.   The US took more than 4,000 killed in action on ONE morning of June 6, 1944,   the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In WWII the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week — for four years.  Most of the individual battles of WWII cost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.
 

But now stakes are at least as high.  A world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms . or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law).