The Case for War, Part I

World War II in Europe should have ended on March 7, 1936. On that day Adolph Hitler committed his most flagrant violation of the Treaty of Versailles to date. Since assuming the office of chancellor, Hitler made it his goal to transgress the treaty article by article. Against the advice of his officer corps, who argued correctly that the German army was far too feeble to defend the territory if challenged, Hitler ordered his army into the Rhine River Valley. He firmly believed that whatever superiority the French possessed in men and materiel would be cancelled by a deficiency in French courage.
The Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I inflicted humiliating terms on Germany. The French and their allies did not believe that a strong Germany could ever be trusted as a good neighbor. The treaty required that this borderland with France be kept as a demilitarized buffer zone. The treaty obligated Britain and France to enforce that provision.
Hitler considered that article an infringement upon Germany’s national sovereignty. And he also recalled that previous actions by France and Britain to enforce the treaty had been condemned by the international community and had created worldwide sympathy for Germany. Hitler believed that international pressure would combine with crumbling allied resolve and allow him to scrap the treaty entirely.
Hitler’s generals nervously complied with Hitler’s order, but privately agreed to abandon the Rhineland when the first French bayonet appeared over the hill. But Hitler’s estimation of the Allies was vindicated. They lacked the will to keep the peace. Hitler’s grip on power was secured and the ensuing war consumed at least 44 million lives.
Hitler himself declared that, "The forty-eight hours after the march into the Rhineland were the most nerve-racking in my life. If the French had marched into the Rhineland, we would have had to withdraw with our tail between our legs, for the military resources at our disposal would have been wholly inadequate for even a moderate resistance."
Hitler won his first direct confrontation with the Allies, not because of superior forces, but because of superior will. The most modest gesture by the allies would have ended the Nazi reign.
We have a similar circumstance today. Radical, fundamentalist Islam lacks even a fraction of the resources to needed defeat Western civilization militarily. But, just as Hitler considered the WWI alliance too flabby to defend itself, radical Islam sees the West as a decadent giant that lacks the resolve to defend its own existence.
Radical Islam took heart from the United States’ retreat from Lebanon after the 1983 suicide truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut and from our Somalia retreat a decade later as proof of American moral frailty. For all of its technological backwardness and military weakness, Middle Eastern Islamists believe firmly in their cause and are convinced that their tenacity can outlast any western material strength.
Unfortunately, as was the case with Hitler in 1936, the Islamists seem to have the measure of their foes. A recent Fox News poll found that 34% of Democrats did not want America to succeed in Iraq, and another 14% were uncertain. Even among Republicans, 11% favored failure. Overall 22% of Americans are rooting for their own country’s defeat and another 15% are uncertain where their loyalties lie. This is precisely the moral erosion that Osama Bin Laden, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian dictator Bashir Assad and other tyrants are counting on.
The mood of the Congress is to surrender. The chairman of the House Democrats’ 2006 campaign declared in no uncertain terms that his party is counting on military reverses to bolster its own electoral success in 2008.
Has anybody really considered the consequences of defeat in Iraq? How will the future look if Bin Laden and Ahmadinejad can claim victory over America in Iraq? When the next front in this war of civilizations opens, who would trust us as allies if we prove to the world that we lack the stomach to win?
For the entire span of its 15 century history, Islam has been at war with its neighbors, trying to spread its religion by the sword. Unless we wish this conflict to continue indefinitely, we must succeed in this opportunity to change history. History has handed us the opportunity to alter its course. We would be fools not to accept it.