Tim Daneliuk wrote:
wrote:
...
To even raise the issue of 'annihilation' is asinine.
It is not. In the early days of what would become WWII, the Left argued
as you have - "There's no serious threat to us. It's just asinine to
worry about it.
If, by "The Left" you mean the Republican Isolationists
who opposed any American involvment in the struggles
of Europe what does that make FDR who struggled to
get American involved, a reactionary?
" Fast forward 15 years. Hitler and Stalin are
responsible for something on the order of 100 *million* deaths in total.
History is full of other such examples of what happens when you
ignore evil.
By 1930 Stalin was the absolute dictator of the largest nation on
Earth, second largest by population, and the largest in Europe.
The Soviet Union had vast natural resources, a large industrial base
and an enormous Army.
Hitler was, or soon became the absolute dicatator of the second
largest nation in Europe, also a technologically sophisiticated one.
To compare either man to Saddam Hussein, or either nation to
Iraq in 2003 is asinine.
Iraq had failed to adequately prosecute its boreder war with the
technologically inferior, demoralized, and disorganzed Iranians,
and then had it's Air Force totally destroyed and its armed forces
in general grippled more than a decade befor and never rebuilt
either.
Iraq never reached the point where it was a threat outside of the
region and had waned to where it was no longer a threat in its
region.
If instead you make analogy between the totalitarian political
philosophies of the early 20th century with violent jihadis today,
the comparison is similarly asinine.
Islam has been around for a millenium and a half. The violent
jihadis today are the last vestiges of the ultra-conservatives
who reject secular government and civil authority. They are
pariahs in every Muslim nation, but Iran and even there only
one variety is tolerated. Perhaps Lebanon too, but steps
are being taken that, if carried to its logical conclusion, will
disarm the paramilitray wing of Hezbollah there.
Iran is a more logical choice should you want to draw an
analogy to pre-WWII Europe. Iran and Hezbollah have
been growing in power. But Iran is a stronghold of a
minority branch of Islam that is barely tolerated in
most of the rest of the Muslim world. Hezbollah and
the Iranians will not be able to build an empire in the
Middle East, let alone anywhere else.
As far as diffusion of Islam outside of the Middle East,
that is inevitable but the notion that Muslims will not
adapt to the secularism that is responsible for creating
the very societies they seek to join is reminiscent, of
the fears that Chinese Immigrants on the West Coast
or Catholics on the East would coopt American Society,
rather than vice versa.
--
FF