
Today is a rather unusual Memorial Day, in that as we remember those who have fallen to preserve the American Republic, the new President is proceeding for the most part according to the assumption that conflicts never need to be solved with wars. All we need to do is understand each other a little better, show the opposition a willingness to give, to compromise, build a few schools, teach our children not to hate, show some respect, and antagonisms and furious hatred will melt away, and all manner of thing will be well.
Unfortunately, sometimes an antagonist may understand his enemy quite well, and receive his largesse, and note his respect, and yet still want to kill or subjugate him for reasons of one’s own — reasons that don’t proceed from the Kumbaya-singer’s actions at all.
Barack Obama has never shown any sign of having considered this possibility. And he is by no means alone in his apparently unshakable conviction that all conflicts can be solved through negotiated concessions. This is so much a part of the air they breathe in Washington and in all the other capitals of the West that it would be unthinkable even to question it. It isn’t even a matter of daring — no one would ever even get the idea to ask, “What if we offer the opposition everything they have ever demanded and more, and implement state-of-the-art aid and infrastructure packages, and conform to all their foreign policy and cultural demands, and they still hate us?”
They would regard this is an impossibility. The Muslim on the international stage — be he Ahmadinejad, or Khaled Meshaal, or Abu Qatadah, or any other — is as far as Obama and the rest are concerned just a reactor, not an actor. He has no power to act apart from the West. He just reacts to what we do. He is, ultimately, at our mercy, and it is up to us and us alone to pacify him. Could he hate us for reasons that are quite independent of what we may be doing or not doing to him? Inconceivable!
The unconscious paternalism of this is ironic, coming as it does from the most besotted of relativist multiculturalists, but in any case, the fact of Memorial Day, and the reality of those who died in this nation’s conflicts, shows it all to be false. Sometimes there are disputes between peoples that can’t be smoothed over by any amount of negotiation, any package of concessions, anything. And in that case, a nation thus attacked has to fight. If it cannot or will not do so, it will cease to exist.
Today Obama and others who believe we have moved beyond wars, beyond fighting, control the nation’s policymaking and decision-making apparatuses. They control the mainstream media. And they have declared the conflict with the global jihad to be essentially over. However, the jihadists themselves have not gotten that memo. We still face a foe, a foe found in virtually every corner of the globe, who believes war and fighting, and the subjugation of those who believe differently, is his religious duty. He will not be pacified. He will fight on as long as he is able. And wherever he succeeds, he will destroy the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, the equality of rights of women with men, and the equality of rights of all people before the law. He will destroy the principle of non-establishment of religion, and will establish a state that denies people essential rights on the basis of their religious beliefs.
A huge adjustment in our political and military culture is called for if we are going to defend ourselves effectively from this scourge. It is a matter of will. And part of the the will that we must summon to fight and defend ourselves involves remembering that we are only here to fight this battle today, and only free, because others fought and died throughout history for our nations, our peoples, and the principles of genuine freedom for which we stand.
So let us not just honor them today, but, each in our way, seek to emulate them.