CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, August 28, 2006

What will it take before we "get it"?

Just what will the Islamic fascists have to do before Americans -- at the Soccer Mom and the “don’t-bother-me-I’m-watching-‘American Idol’” level -- realize the Islamic fascists intend to destroy our economy and even our very lives?

I started to list all of the attacks against Americans and our allies that the perpetrators claim are the result of their Islamic religious obligations; however, beginning with the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968 to the present, creates a list of dates, places and casualties that would fill this entire column. Repeated, unremitting violence beat the senses into submission. Even 9/11 is being forgotten.

During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt encountered this same problem. Despite Pearl Harbor and reports of German and Japanese atrocities, Roosevelt faced a public that felt so isolated from danger that it would flip past the war headlines to the sports pages. There was no color TV to bring the carnage into America’s living rooms.

Of course, the Germans and Japanese had their propagandists. The Germans had Lord Haw-Haw and the Japanese had Tokyo Rose to broadcast their version of events. Back then, the Allies had the Western media on our side. Today, studies by Accuracy in Media and other media watchdog organizations prove a Western (and, of course, al-Jazeera) media bias against American foreign policy, so President Roosevelt had a decided advantage there.

Nevertheless, President Roosevelt and his advisers felt it important for what he termed the “home front” to share some of the hardships being experienced by our armed forces. So, the (mostly unnecessary) rationing of certain commodities and items was Roosevelt’s method of getting virtually every American man, women and child to understand that we were in a war for the continued existence of western civilization as we knew it back then.

Every American was issued a ration book containing a certain number of stamps for rationed items like: sugar, coffee, meat, fish, butter, eggs, cheese, shoes, rubber and gasoline. Silk and nylon were needed back then for parachutes, so, ladies stockings were not to be had. Except for essential food-production machinery, almost all auto and truck production went to the military.

Even in places as centrally located as Anadarko, Oklahoma, school children were taught to recognize German and Japanese aircraft. We kids made balsa-wood models of German and Japanese aircraft and painted them black. My mother (Dad was on a ship in the Pacific) hung my German Messerschmitts and Japanese Zeros and Mitsubishi Bombers from my bedroom ceiling.

Today, partisan politics, the Sinistra Media and a misplaced sense of political-correctness, which we didn’t suffer during World War II, have, in many respects, hog-tied our efforts to protect ourselves against Islamic fascist attacks here at home.

For example the Left doesn’t want the NSA to be able to monitor throw-away cell phone calls between known terrorists abroad and suspected terrorists here at home. Yet we know NSA intercepts helped the British foil a plot to blow up ten U.S-bound airliners in flight. So, what will it take for everyone to “get it”?

High gas prices are a direct result of the Islamic fascist terrorism in places where we obtain foreign oil. Will gas have to rise to $5.00 per gallon or will it have to be rationed for everyone to “get it”? Will everyone wanting to board an aircraft have to submit to a body-cavity search before we “get it”? Will the terrorists have to drive us into hyper-inflation followed by a return to the bread-line, soup-kitchen, Depression of the 1930s before we “get it”?

In 1914, Great Britain didn’t get its act together in the face of the German Kaiser’s boast of marching into France through Belgium. As the innocent Belgians were being slaughtered, British Foreign Minister, Sir Edward Grey, opined, “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”

He was wrong. But it took the lives of 1 out of 28 Frenchmen, 1 out of 32 Germans, 1 out of 57 British and 1 out of 107 Russians (who quit early) to get them lit again.

Our big test will come this November when Americans will decide this question: Do we appease the terrorists, i.e. “cut-and-run,” or do we continue to try to confront the Islamic fascists overseas? If the terrorists are clever, they will cool it until our November elections are over. That will assist those who still do not “get it” to come to power.

William Hamilton, a syndicated columnist, a featured commentator for USA Today and self-described “recovering lawyer and philosopher,” is the co-author of The Grand Conspiracy and The Panama Conspiracy – two thrillers about terrorism directed against the United States.

©2006. William Hamilton.

Dr. Hamilton can be contacted at:

Email: william@central-view.com