Essay/Term paper: The world's longest war

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Religion

The World's Longest War


Where We Are

Journals practice a laudable self-censorship of criticism of religions. The most
vicious devil worship is mentioned with little comment and then only in crime
reporting of the atrocities committed. This is a good thing. Religious hatreds
are so easily inflamed, and there is so much history of religious persecution,
that we are much better off with this self restraint. Furthermore the separation
of church and state is spelled out in our constitution and is practiced in most
countries of the world, even in the former USSR and China. In democracies it is
legal for a political party to yearn for religious domination, but in all
democratic countries such parties are very small and never reach the stage of
challenging their constitutions. The name "Christian Democratic Party," common
in Europe, refers to moral roots, not to theocratic ambitions. The consequence
of this separation of church and state is that political contention is not
poisoned by religious hatred.

There is one exception, Islam, a theocracy which has savaged the world for over
a thousand years. Its religious doctrine is that church and state are one and
that canon law and civil law are one. It periodically believes that unbelievers
must be converted or conquered and that hating infidels is a virtue and killing
an infidel is a ticket to heaven. In many of the faithful this religious
fanaticism has merged with the secular fanaticism of Marxism-Leninism to make a
witch's brew of hate and savagery against Christendom and capitalism. ('America
is the Great Satan.')

The demise of Marxism-Leninism in Europe does not extend to the Middle East.
Russian and Chinese weapons continue to be sold for Arab oil money. During
centuries of warfare the western countries have become democracies. Even Eastern
Europe is avalanching into democracy. But, except for present day Turkey and
some Far Eastern countries which practice a mild form of Islam, the Moslem world
is run by military dictators, theocratic oligarchies, or a combination of both.
A short list of these contemporary dictators (most entitled "President" or
"King") includes: Ghadaffi of Libya, Assad of Syria, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, the
Mullahs of Iran, Fahd of Saudi Arabia, Hussein of Jordan, and the competing
warlords in Lebanon and the PLO.

This theocracy has conquered or converted much of the civilized world. It's
conquests have been impeded more by internal factional wars, murders, and
schisms than by resistance of its victims. It is now on the rising slope of its
next onslaught. It can not yet attack the superpowers in open warfare. Israel is
a salient of the West in the Middle East so open warfare has been repeatedly
waged against it, so far unsuccessfully.

Instead Islam fights on six fronts and prepares for more.

The first front is terrorism. Moslems blow up airplanes and buildings. The car
bomb is a favorite weapon. When the hand carried American Stingers from
Afghanistan, and Russian SAM 7s from all over, are deployed near airports within
the next few years, air travel will be utterly disrupted. Moslems hijacked
airplanes until we installed, and continue to operate, expensive security
equipment at airports. They kidnap hostages. They murder with guns and with
bombs. Since killing infidels is entree to heaven, they are today's suicide
Kamikazes.

The second front is armament. Conventional warfare capability in guns, tanks,
rockets, and airplanes from the former USSR and China, in large armies of men,
now exists and is growing. Mustard gas and nerve gas are made in their own
factories with equipment bought from European and American companies. (Lenin
said 'The capitalists will sell us the rope to hang them with.')

The third front is the development of nuclear bombs and the missiles to deliver
them. (Kamikaze airplanes will do as well, as will smuggling.) Large, long range
missiles are bought from China to deliver present poison gas, germs, and the
future "Islamic bomb. "What will any American or European government do when
threatened with a destroyed city? Cave in to the blackmailers, of course.

The fourth front is the oil weapon, invented in 1973, and used on us ever since
by OPEC. It drains the world economy, it finances terrorism, armament
acquisition, and nuclear bomb development, and it is a continuing blackmail of
western diplomacy under threat of restoring the panic of 1973-74.

The fifth front is diplomacy, incremental conquest by the "Peace Process." It is
based on the American internal political benefits of appearing as peace maker.
We coerce Israel to retreat in stages and reward the Moslem countries with
subsidies and debt cancellations to appear on the White House lawn and sign
papers. The consequences will appear only after the American incumbents are
safely out of office.

The sixth front is immigration, legal and otherwise, into most of the Western
democracies.

How We Got Here

Please examine this brief resume of the continuing war and then let us consider
our options. The war started with the explosion of Mohammed's armies of conquest
out of Arabia in 632 AD. In the west the theocracy, carried by its original Arab
converts, spread across North Africa, which had been Christian, through Spain,
and up into Europe as far as Tours in France. There it was stopped in battle by
Charles Martel in 732. Ferdinand and Isabella drove it back down through Spain
to North Africa in 1492, and then financed Columbus' search for a trade route to
the East Indies which did not pass through Islamic control. In the Middle East
Islam conquered all the land from Arabia to the Mediterranean by 635, it
conquered and converted Iran from Zoroastrianism by 641, and it gradually
conquered the Christian Byzantine Empire until it captured and sacked
Constantinople itself in 1453.

Christian slavery became an institution until the 19th century. Egyptian
Mamelukes and Turkish Janissaries were slave armies of Christian children
drafted and raised as Moslems.

The black slave trade in the interior of Africa was always an Arab monopoly;
black slavery in Arabia ended only after World War II. (American blacks have the
dilemma of turning to Islam for salvation and knowing that Islam enslaved their
ancestors for transportation to the Americas. Cognitive dissonance.)

In the north the Turks conquered the Balkans and twice reached Vienna, first in
1529 and again in 1683 when it was turned back by King Sobieski of Poland and
Duke Charles of Lorraine who literally galloped to the rescue with their armies.
(The Turks left bags of coffee beans in their abandoned camp, whence our current
beverage.)

Forced conversion by the Turks left behind the tragic Bosnian Moslems now
suffering a counterattack by the Eastern Orthodox Christian Serbs. During most
of the Islamic conquests there has been both a religious and an ethnic
difference between conqueror and conquered. In Bosnia there is no ethnic
difference, the war is one of religious hatred only.

In the east Islam reached the Indus river in India in 674 and gradually
conquered northern India until the British drove them back and took India for
themselves in the 18th century. North India was permanently converted, however,
and the result was Pakistan and Bangladesh. Missionary conversion continued in
the British and Dutch empires, which were tolerant of religions but not of
hostile governments, with the result that a more benign form of the religion
covers much of the Far East.

The Moslem Conquest was not entirely one sided. The Crusades between 1096 and
1291 recaptured Jerusalem for brief periods, the longest being from 1099 to 1187.


Between 1219 and 1258 the Mongol horde invaded and destroyed most of Arabic
Islam before returning to Asia. They destroyed the civilized culture which had
developed there and returned the area to the third world, where it remains.

In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson sent Stephen Decatur with the USS
Constitution to suppress the Moslem Barbary pirates of North Africa. He
succeeded, although we were not exactly a superpower at the time.

In the 19th century Britain incorporated Egypt into it's empire and in 1917 the
British army under Allenby captured the Middle East from Turkey. England and
France, in order to promote alliances in a desperate war not yet won, created a
new set of Arab countries over the area, promising a good deal of the same land
to different parties. The consequences are being fought out ever since.

The islands of the Mediterranean, including Crete, Sicily, and Rhodes have been
bloody battlegrounds for centuries, passing back and forth between Christendom
and Islam. To this day, Cyprus is divided between Turkish troops and Greek
troops. Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, the Balkan countries, and
portions of the USSR have had alternating wars and peace treaties with each
other, beyond counting, for centuries, punctuated with massacres of Armenians,
Kurds, Jews, Greeks, etc.

If there is any lesson to be learned from this bloody history it is the utter
futility of peace treaties, "peace processes," and "international guarantees" in
the presence of religious and ethnic hatred. Islam continues its attacks on the
two eastern enclaves of the Judeo-Christian world, Israel and Lebanon. Israel
defeated its invaders in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973 but Christian Lebanon has
been largely overrun by the army of Syria and by the terrorists of the PLO and
the Iran backed Hezbollah. Preparations for the next onslaught against Israel
are in high gear today in Syria and in Iraq; terrorist attacks continue by the
PLO supported financially by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

The principal limiter of Moslem conquest has always been the internal wars,
murders, and schisms among Moslem sects and countries: Shi'ites vs. Sunnis, Iraq
vs. Iran, etc. Moslems hate other Moslems as much as they hate Christians and
Jews. (In Christianity, hatred is a sin; in Islam, hatred is a virtue.)

Isn't it time to recognize history and to establish a policy other than impotent
bluster at the latest murders? With the collapse of totalitarian communism in
Eastern Europe, it is a current half joke to ask who the next enemy is. In the
military, it is the serious question of what do they prepare for, next. The next
enemy is the oldest enemy. It was wildly successful for 900 years and it
conquered much of Europe; then it was stopped and became dormant for a few
hundred years; and now it has awakened with a howl of millions of fanatics
backed by billions of petro-dollars. It is totalitarian Islam and its holy war
against unbelievers. It is the ultimate theocracy. There is no difference
between civil and religious law. Where mullahs do not rule directly, as in Iran,
military dictators rule, as in Syria, Iraq, and Libya. "Moderate" Islamic
countries have hereditary kings or sheiks; they do their fighting with petro-
dollar contributions to the overtly violent countries and the PLO. There is not
a single democracy in the Islamic Middle East.

The war is now at the guerrilla level: terrorist attacks on commercial aircraft,
military ground installations, and random car bombing of civilian targets. The
time bomb and the suicide bomb are the principal weapons at the moment.
Meanwhile they are acquiring shoulder fired missiles to attack passenger
airplanes, they manufacture poison gas, and disease germs, they are developing
the "Islamic bomb" in Iraq and Pakistan, and they buy and develop long range
missiles for their present poison gas and future nuclear warheads. Enormous
armies with thousands of tanks and aircraft have been built and are still
building, paid for by petro-dollars. These may be lunatics in our eyes, but
there are too many of them to be called a lunatic fringe. When do we act and
what should we do?

How We Can Save Ourselves

I suggest the following five point plan:

1. Recognize that Lebanon and Israel are the fighting fronts and reinforce them.
Arm and support the Lebanese Christians. Stop the phony "peace process" pressure
on Israel to give land to Islam "for peace." (There has been peace since 1973
when Israel defeated the last Arab attempt at genocide. It was created by the
Israeli army and is maintained by fear of the Israeli army.) Establish an
American naval base in Haifa and air force and marine corps bases elsewhere in
Israel. Sign mutual defense treaties with Israel and a Christian government in
Lebanon.

2. Destroy the poison gas, germs, and atom bomb factories and warehouses in
Syria, Iraq, and Libya. Cruise missiles will do the job nicely. Warn them that
if they release any poison gas or germs their cities will follow.

3. Establish a permanent military base on the Persian Gulf in conquered Iraq to
guard and control the oil supply. (Saudi Arabia will revoke permission as soon
as the Iraq threat ends. Ignore them.)

4. Explain to the Islamic governments that giving either money or shelter to
terrorists will have physical consequences much more severe than enduring the
terrorists' displeasure.

5. Quarantine and blockade Iran. Eliminating their oil from the world market
will have only a small effect on the world price and none on the world supply.
Poverty will neutralize their poison without casualties.

6. Recognize that the directness of these measures is offensive to diplomats,
but failure to execute these measures will bring death and tyranny to
populations.