1938 Redux

Another throwback for the faithful and informed:

Admittedly, there are mornings where I feel old beyond my years. That being said, I confess that despite being speckled with gray hairs, I’m not quite old enough to remember 1938 and I’m inclined to believe that many of you aren’t either. Yet it doesn’t really matter because we’re living it right at this very moment. Never mind the date on this issue’s cover, I said we’re living in 1938 right now. I mean sure the hairstyles are different, the fashions are different, and while we’ve seen gas prices drop significantly in recent weeks (nothing to do with President Bush despite 42% of Americans thinking otherwise), gas isn’t quite as low as $.10 a gallon plus tax. Even still, it’s definitely 1938 alright.

I mean can’t you feel it? As you step out into the great outdoors and take a deep breath, appeasement is thick in the air and Nazi expansionism is just beyond the horizon. Why, it was just a few weeks ago Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg sold the soul of his country to the Germans; and a week later Hitler demanded self determination for Germans of Austria and Czechoslovakia and then in the following month, with Schuschnigg resigning, Austria fell to German occupation in clear violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Ironically, it was just last week, that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared Hitler “a man who could be relied upon”, all the while Hitler was secretly staking his claim to annex part of Czechoslovakia without the intention to recede.

With Hitler’s vision of a new Germany taking shape, Winston Churchill is currently pleading to the British House of Commons that now is the time to resist Hitler. His speech has fallen on deaf ears and in a prevailing moment for Hitler, the Munich Pact was signed and the German army is raging on into Czechoslovakia leaving a path of anti-Semitic destruction in its wake.

It’s October 1938 my friends and we are on the brink of WWII about to embark on a long journey in the fight against Nazi expansionism and the German army’s reign of terror which will prove to be Hitler’s Mein Kampf (My Struggle). This journey will prove to be an uphill battle whether it is against the Japanese in the skies over the south Pacific, or against German forces on the beaches of Normandy. We will encounter losses and sometimes defeat as we prevail towards victory. Yet no loss could be greater than the loss of freedom at the hands of the Third Reich.

Admittedly though, despite the thunder of the German storm, the American people are seemingly disengaged. It’s ironic when you consider that aside from the events taking shape in Germany, and with the Nazi’s about to unleash hell upon the world, there’s actually a Broadway show fairing quite well and oddly enough, it’s titled Hellzapoppin. That it opens with a scene of Hitler ought to lend credence to a call to arms. It’s a sign that goes unchecked while America celebrates a world series sweep by the Yanks.

And when the moment comes that Americans are finally shaken from their complacency, it comes not as a result of Hitler’s German forces but through a telling tale of alien invasion by a one Orson Wells. That a creative work of fiction would so rattle the American soul was quite possibly serving a greater purpose than that of entertainment. Rather, it just might have been a test of will for what was to come.

And so now, the will of America is being tested yet again although we can safely assert that I have overplayed my hand. Because, when you awoke in today’s 1938, there is no German army storming through Austria and Czechoslovakia. There are no Jewish fathers, mothers, and children being stuffed into rail cars to be sent off to death camps. There are no one and a half million Poles being forced into Nazi labor camps. Instead, what we have in this 1938 is an Iranian president who not only calls upon the destruction of Israel and America, and through Hezbollah and U.N. faltering, is making calculated attempts to do just that. We have radical Islamic groups like Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Group and Jihad, Al Qaeda, the Mahdi Army, and others. In addition, we have state sponsors in support, both financially and ideologically, of this radical expansive movement. Yet, just as we did back then, we have a thickness in the air filled with appeasement. Some sixty years ago we prevailed against the forces of evil and yet we are at once again facing a radical ideology akin to Nazism; a New Order of a different sort being not waged by an America tolerant and accepting of different cultures and religions, but by an intolerant radical and tyrannical arm of Islam. Similarly, it is a radical ideology that is energized and seeking expansionism through terror and inhumane atrocities. And, while the players in today’s 1938 are both geographically and ideologically different, the game is the same. Make no mistake about it, the game is being played and it is being played without rules and we must play it is as such if we are to win. This isn’t a war about oil, no bid contracts for Halliburton, or an act by George Bush to make his father proud. This is a war of good vs. evil; a war not against Islam but of a radical ideology being masked as such.

However, despite these truths, it seems that across the globe everyone is so completely and utterly fixated on this false notion that everything will be great and fine once we pull out of Iraq. I mean let’s be honest, it’s the presence of American troops that are fueling the otherwise peaceful radical Islamic terrorists. They wouldn’t otherwise behead Americans would they?

To say American foreign policy is the culprit, is as asinine a claim as a woman in a revealing outfit insinuating she wants to be sexually assaulted.

Drawing further on the comparison to Nazism, at this exact moment we (Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Atheists, et al) face the threat of the expansion of a Radical Islamic ideology destined to defeat us at any cost. Declaring Jihad against us translates to radical Islam’s personal and spiritual struggle they will face against us now just as Hitler’s Mein Kampf was his personal struggle against which we defeated him then.

So although it’s a different sort of 1938, consider that the day of infamy (Pearl Harbor) didn’t occur until 1941. Considering that the attacks of September 11th were comparatively our day of infamy, is it really in our best interest to remain complacent and choose appeasement for another 3 years? After all, it is those destined to forget the mistakes of the past that are doomed to repeat them.