I learned as a very young child that “wait ‘till your father comes home” meant that there was no escaping the inevitable. It didn’t matter if I was awaiting a punishment or a reward, once my mother pronounced those words, my fate was sealed. It was a sure thing. All that I had to do was sit and wait; all that I could do was sit and wait.

By the time I had reached adulthood, the United States Government was busily engaged in losing a war in Paris that the Army was busy winning in Vietnam. The “great” Henry Kissinger, who had already proved himself as the most able negotiator in the art of “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” was busy guaranteeing an American defeat in South-East Asia with his clever negotiations. To clarify a bit, some of you may not remember that Henry Kissinger was the man single-handedly responsible for Israel releasing the Egyptian Sixth Army in Sinai at the end of the Yom Kippur War. He got Israel to do this “unilaterally” with no concessions of any kind from the Egyptians. Enough, though, about Israel’s history with people who “are looking out for Israel’s best interests.”

In the negotiations in Paris with the People’s Republic of Vietnam, Kissinger, and Nixon did something that the United States had never done before. The proper diplomatic phrase describing what we did is “Sue For Peace.” It is what the losing party in a war does. Henry Kissinger and Richard M. Nixon taught us how to do that. But it really wasn’t all their fault. Kissinger, just like any other Secretary of State, was an employee of the President, serving at the President’s will, doing what he was told to do as well as he could. He was pretty good at it, as I said.

President Nixon was also not surrendering the U.S.’s long history of victory of his free will. He was operating under duress; or more correctly, caving to the pressure. Nixon had already caved before his re-election, and he campaigned on a platform of ending the war. Nixon had given his word that he would end the war in Vietnam. He did not give his word that he would lead us to victory in Vietnam.
The war in Vietnam was lost on the streets of American cities, and on the television screens in American homes. The Vietnam War was the first war in which parents, and family could watch their children dying in real-time half a world away. It was not a pretty sight. I am sure that many family dinner was ruined by watching the news and seeing a loved-one being shot or blown –up to death in front of them, “in living color,” so to speak.

The lefties, liberals, etc., myself included, all wanted us to “end the war” as quickly as possible. The general feeling was that “it wasn’t OUR war, and there may be some truth to that thought. We entered into the conflict in South-East Asia as the French were pulling out of French Indo-China. The French had suffered massive losses as they attempted to extricate their elite troops from their former colony; now split into several pieces. The youthful liberal left in the United States had very little stomach for “going far away to get killed for nothing.”

We watched as Hanoi Jane [Fonda] went to Vietnam and gave comfort to the enemy. We watched as the likes of John Kerry went before Congress and testified that U.S. forces regularly engaged in “War Crimes.” Crimes which he confessed to participating in (with little or no detail), and our stomachs were turned, though not enough to try Mr. Kerry for those War Crimes. Congress attacked the President for the war. Congress attacked the war as a way to attack the President. Congress suffered some legislative amnesia by not remembering that this war was John F. Kennedy’s War, and Lyndon Baines Johnson’s War; it became Nixon’s war.

While our troops suffered casualties in Vietnam, we were arguably well on the road to winning the war militarily, when the Peace movement and Congress robbed America of the will to win, and Mr. Henry Kissinger stepped forward to “end the war” with America as loser. The most significant part of the Peace Agreement signed in Paris with the People’s Republic of Vietnam was the Agreement that American Forces would be out of Vietnam no later than January 28, 1973.

When the North finally finished the conquest (reunification) of Vietnam on April 30, 1975, it had all been over for the U.S. for years already. On that day, accepting the surrender of the south, Col Bui Tin said: “… Only the Americans have been beaten. If you are patriots, consider this a moment of joy.”

What are the Democrats preparing for us in the Middle East? More of the same humiliation!
As I lived the last few years of the Vietnam War in Israel, I was beset by the same question over and over; “will the Americans give Israel away like they gave Vietnam away?” This question is being asked in the cities of our allies today. Will America continue to cut and run, and will the Americans do it when it is our lives on the line? The big difference this time is that if we cut and run the enemy which chose us will continue to work toward our destruction in every way and every place that they can. We, on the other hand, will be accustomed to losing, and each time we do it it will be easier to do. Pity the paper tiger that the Democrats are fashioning with their little scissors.

I had a pleasant enough conversation with a friend today. It was a beautiful day here in North Florida. We were standing out in my driveway and talking about nothing; what we call al ha ve’al da in Hebrew. We have a lot in common, and shared some experiences. As I said, the conversation was not particularly noteworthy, but pleasant enough.

It was pleasant until somehow, we started talking about Al Gore and global warming. That was when we found out that we didn’t quite agree. It seems that my neighbor buys into the idea of global warming, or is it Global Warming? I am a bit more skeptical, you might say; or you might say that I just don’t believe that BS. I am not arrogant enough to believe that WE are destroying the earth. I am old enough to remember the first Earth Day, and even then I was talking about how it just didn’t seem plausible that we were doing much more than participating in the ecosystem. I used to argue then that the first time man buried his waste, or his dead family members “man irrevocably changed the ecosystem.” We changed it, and we haven’t turned back since. I simply cannot believe that The Creator created us in such a way as to interact with the system and change it, here and there, and didn’t intend that we do that. Yes, I know that we are to protect the earth and make it prosper and protect the animals and then eat them; but just by being here we change the ecosystem and we can’t stop that.

We are agents of change. We change the world and we colonize in ways that no other animal on the planet colonizes. We move other plants and animals as we move and we cause them to acclimate to our new surroundings. We have propagated new species and breeds of many of our favorite animals and plants, and I am not speaking about the last fifty or even the last hundred years. We carry diseases with us and decimate indigenous populations of flora and fauna as well as humans who are not particularly adept at resisting our new microbial enemies. We do this all willy-nilly which, of course means, whether we chose to or not.

So Al, “where’s the beef?” Al Gore, who has put himself up as front man for the effort to “do something about Global Warming,” is promulgating two lies, at least. I am not even going to deal with whether or not we are responsible for the miniscule changes in climate which Al is quoting as “proof” that “we are destroying the planet;” at least not at this moment. I am going to deal with another two questions, or as I see them errors:

1. “We really have to do something before it is too late,” and its corollary, “we must act now; five years from now will be too late.” Neither of these arguments is much more than screaming “fire” in a movie theater in 1950, when smoking was allowed and the guy next to you lit up. If we are destroying the ecosphere, than as far as I can tell, no matter what we do short of at least decimating (in the classic meaning, reducing to one tenth of its current size), the world’s population, we won't have much of an effect. We are all breathing and growing, and doing all those things which make for more of us on a planet which, for all we know may have a sign somewhere which reads in part “maximum occupancy . . . .” In the past we have been able to cull the human population by war and epidemic, but these days we desire to have wars which kill no one and are busily destroying all the normal predatory organisms which used to kill us off. As for the other part of the warning, about five years; please note that in a geologic time frame, five years is no time at all. If we only have five years, we might as well just sit down and drink some of Jim Jones’ Kool-Aid.

2. The second spurious thought in the Gore platform is “we have to do something; because anything is better than nothing.” Just think about that for a second. If the forest near your house is on fire and if anything is better than nothing, then it should be better to set your own house on fire than to just sit there and let the firemen do their jobs in the forest. It’s as simple as that; there are lots of things that we could do that would make “the situation” worse. Doing nothing is IS “doing something,” and it often is the proper thing to do. As I said, I remember the first Earth Day, when the scientists were worried about the impending next ice age. They were warning us then that we had to do something about it or we would all die.

If you don’t mind, I will go back now to my conversation with my friend. She said that she didn’t remember the numbers, but they were convincing. She was sure that Al was right and that he proved it in his movie. The real numbers; and especially the numbers of dissenting scientists are convincing that Al is wrong. Al is screaming that “Global Warming” is stare decisis; he says that there is consensus, and that is just plain untrue. Worse than that the numbers don’t really make sense either, the global warming is a cyclical thing, and has been on this cycle for a very long time. I hate to say forever, or to quote a number of years so that I don’t offend the religious sensibilities of the reader, but for as long as we can tell the cycle has been freezing, warming, freezing, etc. What would happen if WE interfered with this cycle? I don’t know, but I am sure that it is not “good.”

As I tried to explain to my friend, his numbers don’t work, she changed her position to “well what if he is right?” “He might be right; and we ought to do something just in case he is, it couldn’t hurt.” I am sorry but I wasn’t alert enough during the conversation to mention Chicken Licken. What would happen if we believed Chicken Licken when he shouted, “the sky is falling!” we would all be in our caves, grunting and fighting over the scraps of the little animals that wandered into the cave. This is not my dream of a rosy future.

The analogy between the little chicken and the big one is very important to remember. Al, Chicken Licken, Gore, could set humanity back millennia, like all the other apocalyptic messianic nuts who have stood on hilltops baying at the moon praying for redemption. I, for one, refuse to buy into it.

I have a friend who is a fairly well-known University Teacher, (he hates being called a Professor). In various discussions over the years, he has clearly stated his opinion about the struggle for the State of Israel. His position, distilled down to its essence is that “no land is worth fighting over, or dying for.” To give him the credit due him, it is not really a position, nor is it just about the struggle for Israel; it is a principle, or a principled stance. In his philosophy, it is not appeasement. It may even extend in his mind, at least, to his willingness to forsake his life rather than defend it. Knowing him all these years, though, I don’t believe that it extends to the life of his beloved wife; that he would defend, even at the cost of his own life.

In ordinary circumstances, he is not an “appeaser,” but rather a seeker of peace and truth. He is the tree that bends in the wind and does not break. The prevailing winds about him have indeed caused him to lean a bit to his left, but all things considered, he is a very decent man who believes personally in laissez faire as his guiding light.

I, for my part, respect his intelligence, and education. I also know of some of the magnificent accomplishments he has achieved in his own life and in the lives of those he taught/teaches. In an academic sense he is something of an alchemist; making academic gold out of lead. As a student of students, and as an inspirational figure I hold him high.

But, he has this one fatal flaw; he loves nothing enough to defend it but his wife. He is, indeed, ideologically symbolic of the West.

We in the West, and especially we Americans, only want to get along and continue our [fat and] happy lives. We sit happily in surfeit, complaining loudly when gas prices go up, but continue to consume the gallons. We claim that it is necessary so that we can go to the gym on the other side of town, and then to the upscale restaurant twenty miles from there, to gobble out of season fruits and vegetables as well as the flesh of animals grown hundreds or even thousands of miles away. We watch TV while we lounge or even while we exercise and watch the commercials pitching the panaceas of our culture; food, diet and more luxury.

I am sure that my friend, the Teacher, firmly believes that we can defeat those who wish to destroy our civilization by “inviting them in” and having them succumb to that same lifestyle. I don’t believe that this is possible.

We can start with this thought – they are led by religious beliefs and religious leaders who decry our lifestyle as decadent. They are not attempting to gain our wealth. Though they are poor, their leaders tell them that poor is good. It is almost as if they are fulfilling the Christian idea of “the meek shall inherit the earth.” They wish to take over the world so that we can all live the simple life of the nomadic shepherd, stopping five times a day to pray. They want this so strongly that they are willing to conquer the world an inch at a time, and they are willing to slowly nibble away for as long as it takes, and they mean hundreds of years.

The Jihad is the never-ending struggle to bring the world to Allah. It doesn’t matter if you personally live to see that day on this earth, as long as you are in the struggle actively throughout your life. How do I know this? I know this because they tell us this every day. In Israel they accepted the piece of land called the Gaza Strip. This land had been cultivated and built up over the course of thirty years. Millions of dollars worth of flowers and vegetables were grown there and exported throughout the world. After a long debate, the government of Israel decided to leave the greenhouses, and the infrastructure. The Palestinian Authority [PA] demanded that the government of Israel destroy the houses, as the land was turned over, lest the poor Palestinians fight with each other in envy over the insufficient numbers of houses. What has happened to those greenhouses and to that infrastructure, you might ask. The PA and the citizens of Gaza destroyed them all. The Gaza Strip was returned to its pre-1967 state; it is now a wasteland teeming with people who have no jobs, no industry [other than rocketry], no infrastructure, and most of all no hope.

Speaking of hope, the Israeli people had hoped that this gift would appease the PA and allow the PA to begin building an independent state with an independent economy. The citizens of Sderot and of other Israeli towns are being daily reminded that there is no hope in that direction.

What went wrong? The western-style representative democracy called Israel imputed to the PA its own values. The Western culture of materialism and technology blinded the government of Israel to the knowledge that it should have had about its enemy. The PA, and the people they represent* aren’t interested in land as an end. They are not interested in the possession of that land or in building up a state, an economy, or a nation. Their interest is, to quote Mahmoud Ahmadinijad, “to wipe Israel off the map.**”

Since their intent is destruction of what is and not construction of what isn’t, but could be, they are also not bound by any pressing timetable. They also are philosophically inclined to believe that each small advance is a major victory. In short the PA is fighting a war, while Israel is fighting battle after battle. This may be too subtle of a difference for the Western mind to completely understand, but I will try to explain it:

In historic terms, Hitler was intent on conquering the world. The Allied powers were intent on ending the war. If after the first Nazi incursion, the Third Reich had told the world that it had had enough, and then stood down its armies for a year, the Allies would not have armed. If the Third Reich had repeated that procedure, small incursion after small incursion, it would have been all over and Germany would have won even before the British could mobilize.

Today we are looking at a diffuse global war being waged against Western Civilization by the Moslem world. Make no mistake, “the silent majority of peaceable Moslems” cheers and swells their collective chest with pride each and every time the Jihadists even wound a single person. If they didn’t they would have spoken up a long time ago. They may not want a Sha’ria state in the U.S. because they have had a taste of freedom and techno-bountiful living, but they are still rooting for “the other side.” The West, on the other hand, is culturally and morally confused by the Moslems. The West has a culture of plenty and we know that ninety-nine per cent of the people on this planet would be willing to sacrifice body parts to share in that bounty. We cannot get our heads around the thought that there is a whole philosophy which labels us infidel, or more correctly kafir, and therefore, less worthy of life than dogs or pigs.

In short, then, we can’t blame the appeasers, we must understand them. We must understand that they are doing what they think is right based on their own spiritual philosophical upbringing. We must then, if we wish to survive, educate them to the truth about the enemy who has chosen us. We must remind them that the enemy has chosen us and that we did not chose them.

In the wrong-headedness of the goodhearted left-leaning citizens of the West, they express concern for the members of our Armed Forces whom they feel “should not be put in harm’s way.” What then, is the job of the military, if not to save their sorry posteriors?

WAKE UP and go knock on your neighbors’ doors and wake them up too!!

Or just go learn Arabic.

* The PA and all versions of the “Palestinian” resistance are an outgrowth of the united Arab world’s disdain for the idea of Israel. The financial support of the PA and all its predecessors and cohort to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars per year comes from those countries. The support offered is given with the condition of “millions for weapons, but not a penny for infrastructure, or industry.” The supporting nations include Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf States as well as Syria, Egypt, Libya, and of course, the Sudan.

** When quoting Ahmadinijad, one must be careful to understand that there is no way to translate Arabic [or Farsi] into English with any consistency. Whatever you quote back to him, or to most other Arab or Persian spokesperson, will be denied on the grounds that it was mistranslated, and that it couldn’t have meant that in Arabic or Farsi. Be that as it may, the important thing to remember is that the above mentioned [mis]quote is only partial, in that the thought continued to the destruction of the Great Satan and sponsor of Israel; the United States.

In a press conference held at the close of discussions between the President of the United States of America and the President of Mexico, most of the canned remarks were full of yawns for me, but as could be expected the non-scripted Q & A held some surprises. My biggest surprises came from the mouth of the Mexican President, Calderon.

Speaking about “the border” President Calderon mentioned a specific phrase that woke me up more than a Vente-Quad, and quicker too. The Mexican President spoke of a comprehensive border agreement which would lead to “family re-unification.” I heard that phrase before. Let’s see, isn’t that the same phrase often used by the Arabs as a justification for their insistence on virtually open immigration into Israel?

This grand idea lead to a practice of Arab men in Israel going outside of Israel to marry, and returning to Israel and starting the proceedings for family re-unification” and the naturalization of their new brides as Israeli citizens. It has also been used to bring countless “brothers and sisters” as well as “parents” and “children,” as well as other close relatives into Israel from [hostile] neighboring states.

I do not in any way claim that Mexico is a hostile neighboring state. It does seem, though, as if President Calderon was asking the U.S. to allow, -- oops, I can’t use the now banned term, “illegal aliens,” lest I offend someone – Mexicans currently residing and working peacefully within the United States, (that’s better), to bring their relatives over; in an attempt to ease the burden of the excessive postage needed for them to mail their pay back to Mexico to support their families.

Since I saw that President Calderon was willing to plagiarize ideas from such political stalwarts as Yasser Arafat, it came really as no surprise that he plagiarized the unpublished book idea of that pillar of morality and respect for Law and Order, O.J. Simpson. In the last question in the press conference, he was asked if his alleged relatives who were currently residing in the U.S. were here legally. His response began, “If I had relatives” working in the United States, I assure you that they are working peacefully in the fields and on the farms of the U.S. and sending money back to their families here in Mexico. He continued, “We hope that they will soon return.” Of course, their return rests on the U.S. building the Mexican economy to the point that it would be better for them to work in Mexico than for them to remain in the U.S.

My guess is that if that time ever came, and the jobs in Mexico paid as well as jobs in America, the good President of Mexico would favor a border fence to stop the stinking Gringos from crossing over to wrest the “good jobs” from the “poor Mexicans.”

Of course, we must all get used to the newspeak of “migrants” replacing “illegal aliens,” and “migration” replacing “illegal border crossings.” I guess we need to get used to “comprehensive migration reform” as mouthed by President Bush, replacing “Border Security,” too.