The following can be found in full at Go-Patriots.com:
MIDDLE EAST IMPERATIVE
BY JIM CASH
I wrote recently about the war in Iraq and the larger war against radical Islam, eliciting a number of responses. Let me try and put this conflict in proper perspective.
Understand, the current battle we are engaged in is much bigger that just Iraq. What happens in the next year will affect this country and how our kids and grandkids live throughout their lifetime, and beyond.
Radical Islam has been attacking the West since the seventh century.
They have been defeated in the past and decimated to the point of taking hundreds of years to recover. But they can never be totally defeated.
Their birth rates are so far beyond civilized world rates that in time they recover and attempt to dominate again.
There are eight terror-sponsoring countries that make up the grand threat to the West. Two, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, just need firm pressure from the West to make major reforms. They need to decide who they are really going to support and commit to that support. That answer is simple. They both will support who they think will hang in there until the end, and win. We are not sending very good signals in that direction right now, thanks to the Democrats.
The other six, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya will require regime change or a major policy shift. Now, let's look more closely.
Afghanistan and Iraq have both had regime changes, but are being fueled by outsiders from Syria and Iran. We have scared Gaddafi's pants off, and he has given up his quest for nuclear weapons, so I don't think Libya is now a threat. North Korea (the non-Islamic threat) can be handled diplomatically by buying them off. They are starving. That leaves Syria and Iran. Syria is like a frightened puppy. Without the support of Iran they will join the stronger side. So where does that leave us? Sooner, or later, we are going to be forced to confront Iran, and it better be before they gain nuclear capability.
In 1989 I served as a Command Director inside the Cheyenne Mountain complex located in Colorado Springs, Colorado for almost three years.
My job there was to observe (through classified means) every missile shot anywhere in the world and assess if it was a threat to the US or Canada. If any shot was threatening to either nation I had only minutes to advise the President, as he had only minutes to respond. I watched Iran and Iraq shoot missiles at each other every day, and all day long, for months. They killed hundreds of thousand of their people. Know why? They were fighting for control of the Middle East and that enormous oil supply.
At that time, they were preoccupied with their internal problems and could care less about toppling the west. Oil prices were fairly stable and we could not see an immediate threat. Well, the worst part of what we have done as a nation in Iraq is to do away with the military capability of one of those nations. Now, Iran has a clear field to dominate the Middle East, since Iraq is no longer a threat to them.
They have turned their attention to the only other threat to their dominance, the United States. They are convinced they will win, because the United States is so divided, and the Democrats (who now control Congress and may control the Presidency in 2008) have openly said we are pulling out.
Do you have any idea what will happen if the entire Middle East turns their support to Iran, which they will obviously do if we pull out? It is not the price of oil we will have to worry about. Oil will not be made available to this country at any price. I personally would vote for any presidential candidate who did what JFK did with the space program---declare a goal to bring this country to total energy independence in a decade.
Yes, it is about oil. The economy in this country will totally die if that Middle East supply is cut off right now. It will not be a recession. It will be a depression that will make 1929 look like the "good-old-days".
The bottom line here is simple. If Iran is forced to fall in line, the fighting in Iraq will end over night, and the nightmare will be over.
One way or another, Iran must be forced to join modern times and the global community. It may mean a real war---if so, now is the time, before we face a nuclear Iran with the capacity to destroy Israel and begin a new ice age. I urge you to read the book "END GAME" by two of our best Middle East experts, true American patriots and retired military generals, Paul Vallely and Tom McInerney. They are our finest, and totally honest in their assessment of why victory in the Middle East is so important, and how it can be won. Proceeds for the book go directly to memorial fund for our fallen soldiers who served the country during the war on terror. You can find that book by going to the internet through Stand-up America at www.ospreyradio.us or www.rightalk. com.
On the other hand, we have several very angry retired generals today, who evidently have not achieved their lofty goals, and insist on ranting and raving about the war. They are wrong, and doing the country great harm by giving a certain political party reason to use them as experts to back their anti-war claims.
You may be one of those who believe nothing could ever be terrible enough to support our going to war. If that is the case I should stop here, as that level of thinking approaches mental disability in this day and age. It is right up there with alien abductions and high altitude seeding through government aircraft contrails. I helped produced those contrails for almost 30 years, and I can assure you we were not seeding the atmosphere. The human race is a war-like population, and if a country is not willing to protect itself, it deserves the consequences...
And he has SO MUCH MORE to say about the Bush administration, the Clinton administration, all the way back to the Nixon administration; it's an incredible read, and gives the insights of an incredible mind.
The bottom line is this: he's right on target with the things that he says, and he backs up the opinions of many Middle East analysts and observers. By his own admission he has nothing to gain politically by stating his observations, and his credentials are more than sufficient to back up what he says.
This is the difference between a general who is a warrior and one who is a politician. George Patton, at the end of World War II, had the foresight to realize that the United States needed to deal with the Soviet Union RIGHT THEN, but the politicians would have none of it. The result of not listening to one of our warriors was decades of "Cold War" between the U.S.A and the U.S.S.R.
Who will we listen to this time? The warriors, or the politicians?
Once and Always, an American Fighting Man
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