Back to Gaffer's Philosophy
Archives.
The Gaffer's Philosophy:
Part 116: Democracy and Terrorism III:
August 16, 2004:
In essay 115 I outlined my ideas for democratizing the world. That is all well and good, but it is a long term endeavor. It does not address our immediate problem of dealing with the terrorist threat. In order to deal with that, we must begin to take it seriously. Terrorism is not just an inconvenience, it is a threat to the very survival of Western civilization. Too many of us don't seem to get that.
The point is, we cannot just continue with business as usual. We cannot continue our hedonistic activities. We cannot just create a bogus department of homeland security, put a political hack in charge, and pretend the problem has been addressed. The problem still exists. We are at war. Our enemies fully intend to destroy us. To prevent that we must actually mobilize for war.
The fools in Washington should start to read history. They should understand what happened to Athens. The should study what happened to Rome. They should study very seriously what FDR did when the free world was under siege. The threat at that time was very overt and direct. We knew who and where our enemies were. It was a conventional situation of warfare. It was not the much more dangerous methods we are facing now where we do not even know who or where our enemies are.
The big thing that FDR did was to take his enemies seriously. He did not underestimate them. He did not continue business as usual. He did not say, go out and spend money to help America. He said, tighten your belts and toughen up folks. He treated our enemies as deadly adversaries. He mobilized the entire nation against them. The citizens were not invited to participate. Participation was demanded. He was right to do so. It is not right or sane to trivialize the threat of people like Hitler, Bin Laden, or any other madman. Study history and you will find the people who failed soonest and most often were those who did not respect their adversaries.
There is one very important thing FDR did as soon as WWII began. He eschewed political solutions and brought the best minds of America to bear on the war effort. He shamelessly raided the major corporations and educational institutions and literally drafted the people he found there. He brought them to Washington and put them to work. He did not ask about their party affiliations. He just told them they had a job to do and they did it.
You can say that was just FDR's style, but it is, in fact, the style of a power dominant. He simply takes charge of everything he needs in order to do what needs to be done. Of course, FDR was not a con man. He could play the con man to get elected. Once elected however, he became what he truly was, a single minded power dominate. You may like him or not for that, but he did lead the free world to victory.
These things FDR did are very similar to the things we need to do now. First we need to get someone in power to take our enemies seriously. We cannot hope to have a power dominant like FDR, but we must have someone who can at least understand the threat. Then, he must act to mitigate that threat. To do that, he must eschew politics and employ the very best minds in America toward our national defense. To defend America, we must become proactive.
Proactive does not mean going off half cocked and heaving munitions and troops all over the arab world. It means employing our best people to begin to think like our enemies, We must ask the key question, how would I attack America? We must ask the questions, where and how would I hide my operations, my headquarters, my operatives? We must ask, where and how would I recruit operatives, where and how would I train operatives. We must ask, who would I seek out as allies against America? Finally we must ask, what targets would I pick and what would my strategy be?
We must ask those questions and we must answer them. These are not the kind of questions military brass can even conceive, let alone answer. Nor are they the kind of questions that will be answered by listening to the static on the internet. They must be asked and answered by top level industrial strategists and philosophers, the best planning brains of America. We must shamelessly raid Americas corporations and educational facilities and, if necessary, draft these people. They are the ones who must ask and answer those questions and many more like them.
Once we have asked and answered these questions, it is time to formulate a plan of action. We must answer our own questions of where and how. Where should we act? How should we act? What methods should we use? Who are our allies in this? We must also mobilize with a universal draft as I pointed out in previous essays. We must have the people and equipment in place to carry out whatever plan evolves. We cannot waste any more time. Disaster is looming on the horizon. Our enemies are not wasting time. They are planning and they are accumulating the tools of terrorist warfare.
In addition to not wasting time, we must stop wasting our resources, including our military resources. There is no good reason to have troops scattered all over the world. We cannot continue to disperse troops, helter-skelter to whatever hot spot crops up. We must decide what is and is not necessary to defeat terrorism. We must have a plan and we must follow our plan. To change our plan as the situation evolves may be necessary, but that should be carefully thought out.
Now in looking at the threat of terrorism we cannot ignore the religious madness which underlies it and lends the cloak of legitimacy to it. There is and has been a religious war in the world ever since the time of Abraham. It has been an ongoing war between Muslim extremists on one side and the Jewish Christian extremists on the other side. It is a form of religious insanity that is promoted by both groups. We must treat honestly with the fact that there is enough evil to go around. None of these extremists are innocent.
One of the problems mankind will continue to face is how to
mitigate the effect of these few madmen on the world. I personally
believe that can only be finally resolved through the nurturing
of children. When we begin to nurture the creative genius in our
kids instead of instilling religious bigotry and conformity, we
will begin the road to resolving that particular evil. Until then,
we must act to control the madness on both sides. We must stop
pretending the evil is all on one side. We must get honest about
our own religious fundamentalist madmen. To do that, we cannot
have a leader who believes he is the agent of God on earth.
Back to Gaffer's Philosophy
Archives.
|
|
|
|