D-Day - June 6, 1941 - Then and Now ... Alan Caruba

D-Day - June 6, 1944 - Then and Now
By Alan Caruba
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There is a cruel calculus of war. It is the number of casualties required to win. Beyond that, it is the consequences of losing.

Sixty-six years ago, on June 6, 1944, the greatest armada of ships and men laid siege to the beaches of Normandy, France, in an invasion that would put an end to the Nazi conquest of Europe.

The invasion was divided into sectors involving U.S., Canadian, and British troops, including airborne. Conservative estimates are that the U.S. alone lost 4,696. The U.K. lost 1,043. The Canadians lost 1,204. The total is 8,443 and, in general, it is believed to have been closer to 9,000.

As the battles raged on, pushing into Germany, some American troops under the Supreme Allied Command of Dwight Eisenhower came upon the Nazi concentration camps. Eisenhower ordered all possible photos to be taken and that Germans from the surrounding villages be required to see the camps and even be made to bury the dead.

In words to this effect, Eisenhower said, “Get it all on record now, get the films, get the witnesses, because somewhere down the road of history, some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.”

Having previously attacked al Qaeda in Afghanistan, beginning in 2003 American and allied forces engaged in Operation Enduring Freedom, invading Iraq. Between then and now, the total American losses have been just over 4,400 while the British have lost 179 and others 139 for a total of 4,720.

In seven years of combat to create a democratic government there, the losses have been half of what was lost in the D-Day invasion.

As Eisenhower predicted, in Iran and throughout the Middle East and everywhere else that Jews are hated, the Nazi Holocaust, the deliberate killing of six million Jews, is denied.

In the past week, the doyen of the White House press corps, Helen Thomas, demanded the Israelis “go home, to Germany, to Poland.” She could have added that the Israelis return to the Arab nations they had to flee following the founding of Israel in 1948 or the Russian émigrés who fled persecution in the former Soviet Union. There are six million Jews who call Israel their home.

The Israelis are home. After an exile of 2,000 years, they returned to their home and restored their nation.

On September 11, 2001, the attack on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. took approximately 3,000 American lives.

In late May, John Brennen, the Assistant to the President and Deputy Senior Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, gave a speech in which he described the people who flew commercial airliners into those buildings and who have not stopped plotting to kill more Americans as victims of “political, economic and social forces” who should not be described in “religious terms.”

He repeated the Obama administration’s assertion that the enemy is not “terrorism”, dismissing it as a “tactic” because, he said, terrorism is “a state of mind.” Then he added that the word “jihad” should not be applied to 9/11 and the subsequent attacks such as the Fort Hood murders.

Brennen described jihad as “a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community” adding “there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women, and children.” Brennen denied the jihad that justified those murders.

Jihad has never really meant anything other than the total conquest of the world to impose Islam.

D-Day was the beginning of an epic struggle to restore and protect Western civilization against the barbarism of Nazism and every day that has passed prior to and since the establishment of Israel in 1948 has been part of this struggle, the legacy of that struggle.

Since the end of World War Two, Americans have sacrificed their lives in places like Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, joining that struggle wherever freedom is challenged, wherever the barbarism of enslavement has asserted itself.

Does anyone think that the Israelis, on the frontlines of Western civilization in a barbaric region of the world, will not ultimately have to defend themselves against Iran?

That they are not now defending themselves against Turkey that has allied itself with the Palestinians who have no legitimate claim to Israel or Jerusalem, a city holy to Judaism and Christianity? Against a people who would dare to build a mosque within a short walk from ground zero in New York?

Does anyone think we should not have landed on the beaches of Normandy in 1944?

Does anyone think that freedom is not worth fighting for and even dying for?
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Caruba blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.© Alan Caruba, 2010

The Greatest Generation Should be Ashamed of Us Today

The Greatest Generation Should be Ashamed of Us Today
America No Longer Has the WILL to WIN!
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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As I considered President Obama’s words concerning the war in Afghanistan a few days ago, I found myself embarrassed by them. To realize Obama had no intention of ‘winning” a war in Afghanistan, and that the word victory was never used in his entire speech, it became clear to me that Obama was only concerned with “ending” the war in Afghanistan -- not winning it. Now, let’s be clear about something. The United States could/can win a war in Afghanistan. The United States could/can win a war anywhere it chose/chooses.

Just nuke ‘em.

No, I am NOT KIDDING. Had we nuked the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan when we were sure Osama bin Laudin was hiding there, we would have been finished with the never ending search for him and we would have sent a powerful message to our enemies -- everywhere -- to attack the US is to bring unimaginable death and destruction down on the attackers and their loved ones. The price is not worth it.

The Commander-in-Chief could have ordered it done -- and -- in my opinion, SHOULD have ordered it done. We had the means and the wherewithal to do it. What we did not have was THE WILL!

Today as I think back to 1941 and the sneak attack by the Japanese on the US Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, I thank God that we had men of fortitude in charge of this country. Men of courage stepped forward and offered themselves, their futures, and their very lives to win a total victory over the Japanese and, as it turned out, the Germans, as well.

Today, as the few survivors of that great conflict watch America circle the drain, how sad they must be. They must be deeply depressed to watch the wishy-washy, limp-wristed, leadership of this nation apologize for being the world’s only superpower. To watch a President of the United States actually BOW to a Japanese leader must make them physically sick to their stomachs. To watch the American leader acting more as a naive boy, than a man, on the world stage has to be a bitter pill to swallow for the remnant of the Greatest Generation.

I have a similar reaction. Born just before the US was compelled, by events that took place 68 years ago today, to join the Second World War, my formative years were molded in that worldwide crucible of death and destruction. Yes, like so many of my generation who were mere children during that conflagration, I readily admit that it left me with scars and with definite ideas about freedom’s cost and the necessary sacrifices a nation MUST be prepared to make to preserve her freedom and liberty.

Firebombing the enemy's cities and killing over a hundred thousand men, women, and children to break the enemy's will to fight, was necessary, -- and they did it! Dropping a nuclear bomb on an enemy city to force them to surrender was necessary, and so -- they did it! Dropping a second nuclear bomb on a second enemy city, to drive home the point that we were relentless and had the will to kill as many of the Japanese and/or the Germans as was necessary to compel them to the surrender table was necessary, -- and they did it.

Horrendous? Yes! Necessary? ABSOLUTELY! Did it take courage? YES! More than you or I will ever know-- if we are lucky. But with current events as they are, with Islamofacists seeking the death of every American man, woman, and child, WE, YOU and I, MUST be prepared to take whatever necessary steps are called for to insure they fail. If that requires the use of nuclear weapons to completely wipe out a terrorist nest in the caves and mountains of the Middle East, then WE, YOU and I, MUST BE PREPARED TO USE THEM! I submit to you that the current leadership of the United States is NOT PREPARED to take the steps that may be necessary to insure the continuation of the freedom and the liberty those wonderful men and women of The Greatest Generation offered everything they were -- and everything they ever hoped to be -- to preserve for us.

My personal journey to becoming a conservative began at Pearl Harbor. My philosophy on politics had its birth on the morning of December 7th, 1941.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning in Paradise when ......... ......... .........

Around 8 AM, 68 years ago today, the Japanese swooped in, out of a brilliant blue sky over Hawaii, and bombed the port of Pearl Harbor to smithereens. Much of the muscle of our Navy was destroyed. Two thousand and four hundred US servicemen were killed.

I was seven months old.

In the next four years, as my consciousness grew, I became aware of all the activity around me. I saw soldiers in uniform. I saw my grandmother crying when the telegram came that her baby boy had been "Killed in Action" somewhere in Europe.

And finally, I remember guns being fired into the air, people running through the streets of our little South Carolina town, hugging and kissing each other. I remember folks saying: “It’s over!” And it was. But it left an indelible mark on my family and an equally deep and indelible mark on me.

Those first 4 years of my life, the formative years, were experienced under intense stress. I learned the cost of war right from the beginning stages of my life. I lost one uncle, in Belgium (the Ancestral homeland) another was machine gunned through both thighs and lay in a freezing stream in France, all night, until American troops found him the next morning. The icy water of that frozen stream saved his life. He suffered ”shell-shock” (referred to as "Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome" today) the remainder of his life. A summertime thunderstorm became an instant German artillery barrage. He would race for cover. The flashbacks were ever with him.

Others of my family were in the Pacific fighting the Japanese. They, too, came home with stories of Japanese Kamikaze planes hitting their ships and, in one case, finding a woman… yes, I said a woman, pilot in one of them! She was alive. For whatever reason, the plane with the bomb attached, did not explode.

When we could get those veterans to talk, which was not often, I was spellbound by the stories of their experience. I soaked it up like a sponge.

You see, I learned, both from personal experience, and the second hand experience of my family members, who were in the hell of the Second World War, what war really is. And, I learned that you have no choice when the enemy brings the war to your doorstep, you must fight back, and you must prevail, no matter the cost.

Today, we find ourselves in another war, which was brought to our doorstep. In doing so, the enemy killed many more people with their sneak attack than the Japanese did with their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.

I don’t suffer fools lightly. My generation shares that quality. Today we have people in our government who are advocating a policy of retreat for the United States in our war against terrorist in the Middle East. It does not seem to matter to those folks, that an enemy which has brought war to our shores, will not quit, and go home, just because we do. They will follow us back to our own country and continue to wage war against us here... in our land.

It makes no difference how many medals hang from a man’s uniform or suit jacket. For all the times he was right, represented by those medals, there are times when he is wrong.

Had the United States listened to the “doves” after Pearl Harbor, I would most likely be writing this missive in German rather than English. It was that serious then, and it is that serious now.

So, as we think, today, of the men and women who gave everything they had, including their lives, to insure that you and I would have a free country, let us think of the men and women serving today for the same reason.

On December 7th, 1941 the Japanese, and the Germans, wanted nothing less than the conquest of the world. Today the Islamofacists want the same thing.

You have to ask yourself… as an American… are you going to stand down, ground your weapon, and allow this evil from the deepest, darkest, depths of hell, to take your country? That is the question all Americans must ask themselves. For, understand, they will not stop with America. Once America is out of the way, the remainder of the world will fall to them as easily as dominoes.
The Men and Women (Caps Intentional) of 1941 had to ask themselves the same question. We had better thank Almighty God they answered in the affirmative.

Today, we honor them for it. But they will tell you, those who survive to this day, that there was no real question about what the people of America would do. It was simply understood that freedom was far to precious to allow the forces of evil to take it from us. And so they marched forth to stop it and preserve this country for you and me. And they did!

We can never thank them enough. Not only did they save America, they saved the world!

Are we, as Americans, prepared to give up our freedom today after that generation gave so much of their blood to preserve it for us?

I pray to God that America will finally awaken to the danger that threatens us and take the painful steps, whatever they might be, to preserve this country, and again, the world.



J. D. Longstreet