Let me begin by saying that there are certainly things that I would prefer to write about, but because “the war” is an issue that I’ve been thinking about a fair amount the last few days, in particular because of an email that my dad forwarded to me – I thought I would share.
First, the forwarded email – which in my understanding from urbanlegends.com was not actually written by Dr. Chong but was later mistakenly attributed to him – and then my thoughts.
You will note that I have not commented on the anti-Muslim slant from which the quoted message below is written – I really don’t know what to say about it.
My only hope is that someone wanting to generalize to the level of 1.5 billion people might also take time to consider all of the atrocities of history that have been attributed to the Christian tradition.
Anyway – here’s the forwarded email, followed by my own thoughts:
THE WAR
Please take the time to read the attached essay by Dr. Chong. It is without a doubt the most articulate and convincing writing I have read regarding the War in Iraq. If you have any doubts please open your mind to his essay and give a fair evaluation. I had no idea who Dr. Chong is or the source of these thoughts... so when I received them, I almost deleted them - as well-written as they are. But then I did a "Google search" on the Doctor and found him to be a retired Air Force Surgeon of all things and past Commander of Wilford Hall Medical Center in San Antonio.
So he is real, is connected to Veterans affairs in California, and these are his thoughts. They are worth reading and thinking about! (the same Google search will direct you to some of his other thought-provoking writings.)
Subject: Muslims, terrorist and the USA. A different spin on Iraq war. This WAR is for REAL!
Dr. Vernon Chong, Major General, USAF, Retired
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
To get out of a difficulty, one usually must go through it. Our country is now facing the most serious threat to its existence, as we know it, that we have faced in your lifetime and mine (which includes WWII). The deadly seriousness is greatly compounded by the fact that there are very few of us who think we can possibly lose this war and even fewer who realize what losing really means.
First, let's examine a few basics:
1. When did the threat to us start?
Many will say September 11, 2001. The answer as far as the United State is concerned is 1979, 22 years prior to September 2001, with the following attacks on us:
* Iran Embassy Hostages, 1979;
* Beirut, Lebanon Embassy 1983;
* Beirut, Lebanon Marine Barracks 1983;
* Lockerbie, Scotland Pan-Am flight to New York 1988;
* First New York World Trade Center attack 1993;
* Dhahran, Saudi Arabia Khobar Towers Military complex 1996;
* Nairobi, Kenya US Embassy 1998;
* Dares Salaam, Tanzania US Embassy 1998;
* Aden, Yemen USS Cole 2000;
* New York World Trade Center 2001;
* Pentagon 2001.
(Note that during the period from 1981 to 2001 there were 7,581 terrorist attacks worldwide).
2. Why were we attacked?
Envy of our position, our success, and our freedoms. The attacks happened during the administrations of Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton and Bush 2. We cannot fault either the Republicans or Democrats as there were no provocations by any of the presidents or their immediate predecessors, Presidents Ford or Carter.
3. Who were the attackers?
In each case, the attacks on the US were carried out by Muslims.
4. What is the Muslim population of the World?
25%.
5. Isn't the Muslim Religion peaceful?
Hopefully, but that is really not material. There is no doubt that the predominately Christian population of Germany was peaceful, but under the dictatorial leadership of Hitler (who was also Christian), that made no difference. You either went along with the administration or you were eliminated. There were 5 to 6 million Christians killed by the Nazis for political reasons (including 7,000 Polish priests). (see http ://www.nazis.testimony.co.uk/7-a.htm ) Thus, almost the same number of Christians were killed by the Nazis, as the six million holocaust Jews who were killed by them, and we seldom heard of anything other than the Jewish atrocities. Although Hitler kept the world focused on the Jews, he had no hesitancy about killing anyone who got in his way of exterminating the Jews or of taking over the world - German, Christian or any others. Same with the Muslim terrorists. They focus the world on the US, but kill all in the way -- their own people or the Spanish, French or anyone else. The point here is that just like the peaceful Germans were of no protection to anyone from the Nazis, no matter how many peaceful Muslim s there may be, they are no protection for us from the terrorist Muslim leaders and what they are fanatically bent on doing -- by their own pronouncements -- killing all of us "infidels." I don't blame the peaceful Muslims. What would you do if the choice was shut up or die?
6. So who are we at war with?
There is no way we can honestly respond that it is anyone other than the Muslim terrorists. Trying to be politically correct and avoid verbalizing this conclusion can well be fatal. There is no way to win if you don't clearly recognize and articulate who you are fighting.
So with that background, now to the two major questions:
1. Can we lose this war?
2. What does losing really mean?
If we are to win, we must clearly answer these two pivotal questions. We can definitely lose this war, and as anomalous as it may sound, the major reason we can lose is that so many of us simply do not fathom the answer to the second question - What does losing mean? It would appear that a great many of us think that losing the war means hanging our heads, bringing the troops home and going on about our business, like post Vietnam. This is as far from the truth as one can get.
What losing really means is: We would no longer be the premier country in the world. The attacks will not subside, but rather will steadily increase. Remember, they want us dead, not just quiet. If they had just wanted us quiet, they would not have produced an increasing series of attacks against us, over the past 18 years. The plan was clearly, for terrorist to attack us, until we were neutered and submissive to them. We would of course have no future support from other nations, for fear of reprisals and for the reason that they would see, we are impotent and cannot help them. They will pick off the other non-Muslim nations, one at a time. It will be increasingly easier for them. They already hold Spain hostage. It doesn't matter whether it was right or wrong for Spain to withdraw its troops from Iraq. Spain did it because the Muslim terrorists bombed their train and told them to withdraw the troops. Anything else they want Spain to do will be done. Spain is finished. The next will probably be France. Our one hope on France is that they might see the light and realize that if we don't win, they are finished too, in that they can't resist the Muslim terrorists without us. However, it may already be too late for France. France is already 20% Muslim and fading fast!
If we lose the war, our production, income, exports and way of life will all vanish as we know it. After losing, who would trade or deal with us, if they were threatened by the Muslims. If we can't stop the Muslims, how could anyone else? The Muslims fully know what is riding on this war, and therefore are completely committed to winning, at any cost. We better know it too and be likewise committed to winning at any cost.
Why do I go on at such lengths about the results of losing? Simple. Until we recognize the costs of losing, we cannot unite and really put 100% of our thoughts and efforts into winning. And it is going to take that 100% effort to win.
So, how can we lose the war? Again, the answer is simple. We can lose the war by "imploding." That is, defeating ourselves by refusing to recognize the enemy and their purpose, and really digging in and lending full support to the war effort. If we are united, there is no way that we can lose. If we continue to be divided, there is no way that we can win!
Let me give you a few examples of how we simply don't comprehend the life and death seriousness of this situation. President Bush selects Norman Mineta as Secretary of Transportation. Although all of the terrorist attacks were committed by Muslim men between 17 and 40 years of age, Secretary Mineta refuses to allow profiling. Does that sound like we are taking this thing seriously? This is war! For the duration, we are going to have to give up some of the civil rights we have become accustomed to. We had better be prepared to lose some of our civil rights temporarily or we will most certainly lose all of them permanently. And don't worry that it is a slippery slope. We gave up plenty of civil rights during WWII, and immediately restored them after the victory and in fact added many more since then.
Do I blame President Bush or President Clinton before him? No, I blame us for blithely assuming we can maintain all of our Political Correctness, and all of our civil rights during this conflict and have a clean, lawful, honorable war. None of those words apply to war. Get them out of your head. Some have gone so far in their criticism of the war and/or the Administration that it almost seems they would literally like to see us lose. I hasten to add that this isn't because they are disloyal. It is because they just don't recognize what losing means.
Nevertheless, that conduct gives the impression to the enemy that we are divided and weakening. It concerns our friends, and it does great damage to our cause. Of more recent vintage, the uproar fueled by the politicians and media regarding the treatment of some prisoners of war, perhaps exemplifies best what I am saying. We have recently had an issue, involving the treatment of a few Muslim prisoners of war, by a small group of our military police. These are the type prisoners who just a few months ago were throwing their own people off buildings, cutting off their hands, cutting out their tongues and otherwise murdering their own people just for disagreeing with Saddam Hussein. And just a few years ago these same type prisoners chemically killed 400,000 of their own people for the same reason. They are also the same type of enemy fighters, who recently were burning Americans, and dragging their charred corpses through the streets of Iraq. And still more recently, the same type of enemy that was and is providing videos to all news sources internationally, of the beheading of American prisoners they held. Compare this with some of our press and politicians, who for several days have thought and talked about nothing else but the "humiliating" of some Muslim prisoners -- not burning them, not dragging their charred corpses through the streets, not beheading them, but "humiliating" them. Can this be for real?
The politicians and pundits have even talked of impeachment of the Secretary of Defense. If this doesn't show the complete lack of comprehension and understanding of the seriousness of the enemy we are fighting, the life and death struggle we are in and the disastrous results of losing this war, nothing can. To bring our country to a virtual political standstill over this prisoner issue makes us look like Nero playing his fiddle as Rome burned -- totally oblivious to what is going on in the real world. Neither we, nor any other country, can survive this internal strife.
Again I say, this does not mean that some of our politicians or media people are disloyal. It simply means that they are absolutely oblivious to the magnitude, of the situation we are in and into which the Muslim terrorists have been pushing us, for many years. Remember, the Muslim terrorists stated goal is to kill all infidels! That translates into ALL non-Muslims -- not just in the United State, but throughout the world. We are the last bastion of defense. We have been criticized for many years as being 'arrogant.' That charge is valid in at least one respect. We are arrogant in that we believe that we are so good, powerful and smart, that we can win the hearts and minds of all those who attack us, and that with both hands tied behind our back, we can defeat anything bad in the world! We can't! If we don't recognize this, our nation as we know it will not survive, and no other free country in the world will survive if we are defeated.
And finally, name any Muslim countries throughout the world that allow freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, equal rights for anyone -- let alone everyone, equal status or any status for women, or that have been productive in one single way that contributes to the good of the world. This has been a long way of saying that we must be united on this war or we will be equated in the history books to the self-inflicted fall of the Roman Empire . If, that is, the Muslim leaders will allow history books to be written or read.
If we don't win this war right now, keep a close eye on how the Muslims take over France in the next 5 years or less. They will continue to increase the Muslim population of France and continue to encroach little by little, on the established French traditions. The French will be fighting among themselves, over what should or should not be done, which will continue to weaken them and keep them from any united resolve. Doesn't that sound eerily familiar? Democracies don't have their freedoms taken away from them by some external military force. Instead, they give their freedoms away, politically correct piece by politically correct piece. And they are giving those freedoms away to those who have shown, worldwide that they abhor freedom and will not apply it to you or even to themselves, once they are in power. They have universally shown that when they have taken over, they then start brutally killing each other over who will be the few who control the masses. Will we ever stop hearing from the politically correct, about the "peaceful Muslims"?
I close on a hopeful note, by repeating what I said above. If we are united, there is no way that we can lose. I hope now after the election, the factions in our country will begin to focus on the critical situation we are in, and will unite to save our country. It is your future we are talking about! Do whatever you can to preserve it.
After reading the above, we all must do this not only for ourselves, but our children, our grandchildren, our country and the world. Whether Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal and that includes the Politicians and media of our country and the free world! Please forward this to any you feel may want, or NEED to read it. Our "leaders" in Congress ought to read it, too. There are those that find fault with our country, but it is obvious to anyone who truly thinks through this, that we must UNITE!
Here's a website that provides a decent summary of my perspective, even though it's written by someone from another country: http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_whyusa_usa.html
Essentially the site shares many of the great things about the USA, but also lists some not-so-great things -- including many actions that I perceive to be quite hypocritical -- and has a link to US military interventions toward the bottom.
Personally, I have a couple of very significant problems with the war in Iraq.
First - when did the "war on terror" become the "war in Iraq"? We've missed a step here -- terrorism is not tied to a single country, and yet the focus of the war has been shifted to a single country... this is bad, as it takes our focus of where it should be -- terrorism -- and puts it on a single nation. Perhaps more importantly, the war that the US is currently engaged in is not part of a larger, articulated strategy for how the world moves forward. A good leader doesn't focus on what is good for him/herself for the short term. For the last several decades, all that the US has focused on is the short-term financial gains of the US. It can't continue to be that way. Period. As the world's only current super power, the US must focus on what is best for the world as a whole -- not losing sight of the US’s own interests, but not putting those interests in front of the rest of the world's. The problem with not having a larger/broader, articulated strategy is that the US does not know where it is trying to go, nor why it is trying to go there. Examples: Oil is not sustainable over the long term. We know that -- we disagree on whether we'll have sufficient supplies of it for 20 years or 100 years, but we know that at some point the world will run out if current consumption trends continue (or increase!).
If we are to be responsible, we have an obligation to preserve supplies and to pursue sustainable sources of energy. The environment is another example -- there are many things that simply are not sustainable that we are still doing, and it means that we won't have a world in which to live someday... whether it's one generation from now or 10 generations from now... our responsibility is to ensure that we leave things in the same or better condition than we found them. That isn't happening. Whether it's Iowa's topsoil washing down the river, CO2 levels in the atmosphere, water quality, landfills, or any number of other issues... we have significant issues that we ought to be focusing on finding ways to address them that are not simply going to cause more, bigger problems down the road.
How does this get back to the war? A couple of ways.
First -- allocation of resources -- Andy says it well: The following is a weekly 60 Minutes commentary by CBS News correspondent Andy Rooney.
I'm not really clear how much a billion dollars is but the United States — our United States — is spending $5.6 billion a month fighting this war in Iraq that we never should have gotten into. We still have 139,000 soldiers in Iraq today. More than 2,000 Americans have died there. For what? Now we have the hurricanes to pay for. One way our government pays for a lot of things is by borrowing from countries like China. Another way the government is planning to pay for the war and the hurricane damage is by cutting spending for things like Medicare prescriptions, highway construction, farm payments, AMTRAK, National Public Radio and loans to graduate students.
Do these sound like the things you'd like to cut back on to pay for Iraq? I'll tell you where we ought to start saving: on our bloated military establishment. We're paying for weapons we'll never use. No other Country spends the kind of money we spend on our military. Last year Japan spent $42 billion. Italy spent $28 billion, Russia spent only $19 billion. The United States spent $455 billion. We have 8,000 tanks for example. One Abrams tank costs 150 times as much as a Ford station wagon. We have more than 10,000 nuclear weapons — enough to destroy all of mankind. We're spending $200 million a year on bullets alone. That's a lot of target practice. We have 1,155,000 enlisted men and women and 225,000 officers. One officer to tell every five enlisted soldier what to do. We have 40,000 colonels alone and 870 generals. We had a great commander in WWII, Dwight Eisenhower. He became President and on leaving the White House in 1961, he said this: “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. …" Well, Ike was right. That's just what’s happened.
So we're spending $5.6 billion per month to fight a war in Iraq. But why? And the essay attributed to Dr. Chong -- doesn't answer that question because its premise is incorrect.
Our country is now facing the most serious threat to its existence, as we know it, that we have faced in your lifetime and mine (which includes WWII). I think that is a correct statement -- but the threat is not terrorism... the threat is ourselves. We're leisurely and wasteful to an extreme. We eat crap for food and have all sorts of health issues because of it. We laugh at education and encourage Ebonics. We do everything we can to maximize shareholder's financial value while turning a blind eye to the implications it has on the natural world and the people that are part of that natural world. We don't know what democracy means -- as evidenced by the fact that we think as an outside country we can turn Iraq into a democracy... (have we forgotten how hard we had to fight to gain our own independence 230 years ago? It has to come from within!!) We build houses that are intended to last 60-80 years... I come to Europe and am welcomed into a home with "Welcome to my home. It is older than your country" and I see churches that were built 900 years ago. It's easy to point a finger at terrorism as being THE issue, but in the big picture -- terrorism is the speck in our brother's eye; our own lethargy -- our wastefulness, our short memory -- is the log in our own eye.
Right now, the US is in its teenage years as far as a country goes... the self-centeredness and arrogance that go along with being a teenager are exemplified everywhere. It's a tough place to be, and a tough time to live -- not physically so much, but rather emotionally. The exciting thing is that we'll soon start to mature as a country -- and when we do, we'll be energetic enough and ambitious enough to do some really, really neat things that improve the quality of life for everyone in the US and the world. I'm more optimistic as I write this than I've ever been when discussing "the war" -- because as I write, I'm realizing how relatively unimportant it is. It's incredibly wasteful, and it's a shame that we aren't better utilizing our wealth...
