We've lost the war: Now recall the troops
"This sham must end. So long as we remain unwilling to challenge the ideology of jihad, let us admit defeat and retreat."
Tarek Fatah
The National Post
Eight years after 9/11 and over a trillion dollars later, with tens of thousands dead and Iraq and Afghanistan devastated, it is time to come to terms with the writing on the wall: We have lost the war. The Islamist jihadis have won it. We must acknowledge defeat and bring our troops home.
In a war between those who desire death and those who treasure their RRSPs and IRAs, the outcome is predictable. Canadian soldiers are professional, but mission-less armies have never fared well on the battlefield. American soldiers, who enlist primarily with the objective of obtaining a college degree, will never be able to defeat their counterparts, who view their freshman year as starting in paradise on the banks of rivers of milk and honey surrounded by 72 virgins.
There were times when the West faced tyrants with vigour and bravery, ready to sacrifice its sons so that freedom and equality would not be compromised. Tens of thousands of young Canadian men died fighting the Nazis and their parents and citizenry held back their tears. Today, only 130 men have died, but Canadians are reacting as if it were 130,000. A people unwilling to make sacrifices do not deserve to fight wars, let alone win them.
Mohamed Atta and his boys must be laughing at us, mocking us from heaven. They were sent to attack us, armed with an ideology financed by Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood. And who did we attack? Not Saudi Arabia. No, we made it worse by declaring our sworn enemy as our ally and then pounding on Afghanistan and then Iraq.
Today we lie at the mercy of the Taliban on one hand and are threatened by the infiltration of extremist Islamists at all levels of government and civic society in the U.K., U.S. and Canada on the other. The great Anglo-Saxon alliance that helped defeat the Nazi war machinery in less than four years is abandoning the battle ground of ideas, quietly surrendering its own heritage of European Enlightenment, secular liberal democracy and universal human rights to the seemingly harmless doctrine of post-modernist multiculturalism that has embraced Islamism.
Today, as British troops fight the Islamist jihadis in Helmand province, one of their own Cabinet Ministers, Shahid Malik, makes the public claim that within five years, Britain will have 16 Muslim MPs, and within 30 years, the country will have a Muslim Prime Minister. In the U.S., a bumbling President who knows the threat of Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood ideology very well still bends over backwards and welcomes the bearers of this doctrine into his inner circle.
Imagine fighting the U.S.S.R. without confronting the ideology of Stalinism. Could we have won? Not a chance. Today we are fighting Islamist jihadism, yet neither Obama nor the British PM nor Harper or Ignatieff dare utter one word against the ideology that attacked us all on 9/11. So what is this war for? To sustain the 60,000 private corporations that feed what Eisenhower referred to as the American Military-Industrial complex?
What is our professional Canadian army doing in Afghanistan if Obama is reaching out to accommodate the very ideology that created the Taliban and al-Qaeda? This is insanity. Bring back our troops, not because I do not wish to inflict a defeat on the jihadis, but because we are being betrayed by NATO and the U.S., who sent them there.
If we and our American-British allies do not have the spine to challenge the Islamist doctrines, send our soldiers home. To fight malaria, we need to drain the swamp, not kill individual mosquitoes, one at a time. Our young men and women must not be gun fodder for the profiteers who befriend the Saudis, but bomb the Afghans while trading with the Iranian ayatollahs.
This sham must end. So long as we remain unwilling to challenge the ideology of jihad, let us admit defeat and retreat
The National Post
Eight years after 9/11 and over a trillion dollars later, with tens of thousands dead and Iraq and Afghanistan devastated, it is time to come to terms with the writing on the wall: We have lost the war. The Islamist jihadis have won it. We must acknowledge defeat and bring our troops home.
In a war between those who desire death and those who treasure their RRSPs and IRAs, the outcome is predictable. Canadian soldiers are professional, but mission-less armies have never fared well on the battlefield. American soldiers, who enlist primarily with the objective of obtaining a college degree, will never be able to defeat their counterparts, who view their freshman year as starting in paradise on the banks of rivers of milk and honey surrounded by 72 virgins.
There were times when the West faced tyrants with vigour and bravery, ready to sacrifice its sons so that freedom and equality would not be compromised. Tens of thousands of young Canadian men died fighting the Nazis and their parents and citizenry held back their tears. Today, only 130 men have died, but Canadians are reacting as if it were 130,000. A people unwilling to make sacrifices do not deserve to fight wars, let alone win them.
Mohamed Atta and his boys must be laughing at us, mocking us from heaven. They were sent to attack us, armed with an ideology financed by Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood. And who did we attack? Not Saudi Arabia. No, we made it worse by declaring our sworn enemy as our ally and then pounding on Afghanistan and then Iraq.
Today we lie at the mercy of the Taliban on one hand and are threatened by the infiltration of extremist Islamists at all levels of government and civic society in the U.K., U.S. and Canada on the other. The great Anglo-Saxon alliance that helped defeat the Nazi war machinery in less than four years is abandoning the battle ground of ideas, quietly surrendering its own heritage of European Enlightenment, secular liberal democracy and universal human rights to the seemingly harmless doctrine of post-modernist multiculturalism that has embraced Islamism.
Today, as British troops fight the Islamist jihadis in Helmand province, one of their own Cabinet Ministers, Shahid Malik, makes the public claim that within five years, Britain will have 16 Muslim MPs, and within 30 years, the country will have a Muslim Prime Minister. In the U.S., a bumbling President who knows the threat of Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood ideology very well still bends over backwards and welcomes the bearers of this doctrine into his inner circle.
Imagine fighting the U.S.S.R. without confronting the ideology of Stalinism. Could we have won? Not a chance. Today we are fighting Islamist jihadism, yet neither Obama nor the British PM nor Harper or Ignatieff dare utter one word against the ideology that attacked us all on 9/11. So what is this war for? To sustain the 60,000 private corporations that feed what Eisenhower referred to as the American Military-Industrial complex?
What is our professional Canadian army doing in Afghanistan if Obama is reaching out to accommodate the very ideology that created the Taliban and al-Qaeda? This is insanity. Bring back our troops, not because I do not wish to inflict a defeat on the jihadis, but because we are being betrayed by NATO and the U.S., who sent them there.
If we and our American-British allies do not have the spine to challenge the Islamist doctrines, send our soldiers home. To fight malaria, we need to drain the swamp, not kill individual mosquitoes, one at a time. Our young men and women must not be gun fodder for the profiteers who befriend the Saudis, but bomb the Afghans while trading with the Iranian ayatollahs.
This sham must end. So long as we remain unwilling to challenge the ideology of jihad, let us admit defeat and retreat