A Time to Stand Firm
When Britain stood alone against the fascist dictators early in 1941--Pearl Harbor was nearly a year away--Franklin Roosevelt, beset by an isolationist Congress, sent his aide Harry Hopkins to shore up the morale of the British. Winston Churchill entertained Hopkins toward the end of his visit at a state dinner. He and the cabinet were nervous about what Hopkins might report back to Washington, since Britain could not hope to sustain the fight without American aid.
The slight and diffident Hopkins rose to speak with words that are as vivid and memorable today in the light of the atrocities wreaked upon London. This is what he said: "I suppose you wish to know what I am going to say to President Roosevelt on my return.
"Well, I am going to quote to you one verse from the Book of Ruth: 'Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.' " Hopkins paused and then very quietly said, "Even to the end."
Churchill was moved to tears. Today, the American people feel even more close to Britain than they felt in 1941, when a majority, wiser than Congress, wanted to give all aid to Britain against Hitler. In New York and Washington we know what it is to be visited by the obscene new fascists--the Islamifascists, whose random brutality is matched only by the puerility and sterility of their profane doctrines (to call them religion is itself a blasphemy). Britain has been America's closest ally in the war on terrorism--not only close in the level of its significant military commitment in Iraq, exceeding by many factors the nominal contributions from other powers, but Prime Minister Tony Blair has shared from the beginning a clear appreciation of the evil we have to confront and an admirable eloquence in articulating his perception.
And he has been as sure as any of us that the equivocation in the face of evil invites further assault just as appeasement in the '30s invited and then guaranteed the subjugation of the whole of Europe.
Freedom's enemies. Alas, that the whole of Europe is not so committed. The expressions of revulsion from the leaders of the Group of Eight countries have been swift, necessary, and right, and no doubt security everywhere will be improved at the margins. But words and bag checks are only a beginning. The G-8 leaders commendably met to devise a strategy for Africa; they need to devise a strategy for the survival of western civilization.
Isn't that putting it a bit strongly? After all, the fabric of democracy is strong, the Islamifascist cowards dare not work in the open, and even now the cumulative deaths from terrorism, all cause of grief, are nonetheless not on the scale of the 50 million killed in World War II. But it is necessary to put things strongly, just as it was necessary for Churchill to sound the alarms that were held by many back then to be absurd. The Islamifascist tactic in the world at large, and in Iraq, is to do all it can to slice the salami, to erode public morale so that we do not stay the course. It has to be noted that even in America a majority tell pollsters they are no longer convinced the sacrifices in Iraq are worthwhile. In Spain, by a conflict of circumstances, a dreadful bombing of a railway train was followed by the withdrawal of Spanish forces in Iraq. The same in the Philippines.
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