"If we will keep closing our eyes to evil, then that evil will defeat us tomorrow," said Marek Edelman, the last surviving military leader of the 1943 Jewish Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto in a recent Polish TV interview. Arthur of Chrenkoff has translated and published excerpts:
And do you know any war where nobody dies? I don't. Alas, it's in man's make-up; there's a fatal flow there that makes him kill, for pleasure or over some silly beliefs . . . Who started killing people? Americans didn't invade a wonderful democratic Iraq. There was a dictatorship there, torture, terror.
Every war with fascism is our business. In 1939 there were also many people who said that the war in Poland was not their war, and what happened? Great nations fell because politicians listened to those who were saying that it's not worth dying for Gdansk [Danzig]. If only we'd intervened militarily after Hitler re-entered Rhineland we probably would not have had the war and the Holocaust.
And why did they go to Europe then? Who defeated Hitler and saved Europe from fascism? The French? No, the Americans did. We thanked them then because they saved us. Today we criticise them because they're saving somebody else.
Unfortunately there's more hatred in men than love. Those who murder understand only force and nothing else. And the only force that is able to stand against them is the American democracy.
Please don't tell me what the Spanish did. So what? Do you seriously think that it will save them from further attacks? No. The weak just get punched in the head. Pacifism lost a long time ago.
Those who say that you don't have to fight for freedom, don't understand what fascism is. I do.
Edelman is the voice of Donald Rumsfeld's "New Europe." While "Old Europe," blinded by resentment over its impotence on the world stage, sees you-know-who as evil incarnate, "New Europe" -- having "been there and done that" within living memory -- suffers no such self-flattering delusions.
[via InstaPundit]
Welcome back. Your calling attention to Edelman's remarks is where it's at. People who are inspired by God, false or otherwise, can only be defended against by killing them.
Posted by: goomp | June 02, 2004 at 07:36 PM
Um, actually it was the Russians who did most of the heavy lifting against the Nazis.
Posted by: David Salmanson | June 03, 2004 at 12:40 PM
Um, nyet, gospodin.
Posted by: Sissy Willis | June 03, 2004 at 01:32 PM
From all I've ever read, the only people with pre-emptive strike doctrines in the past were fascist.
The junta in Japan,
the Third Reich,
Mussolini's Italy,
the Second Reich of Bismarck (starting the Franco-Prussian war, the 7-weeks war, and the war of Spanish Succession, and later, yes, you guessed it, WWI)
How did Germany start WWI?
Basically they were the first people major power to encourage a massive buildup over the Serbian crisis. Paranoia on Germany's part? Or were they, yet again, inciting European war?
We DID intervene after Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti invaded Kuwait.
Posted by: JSN | June 03, 2004 at 07:47 PM