The enemy
Posted by Richard on April 15, 2007
Joseph Heller is best known for his marvelous novel, Catch-22, which was immensely popular with anti-war types in the 60s and 70s, and is undoubtedly still much-beloved by leftists, at least those of my generation. I recently encountered a great quote from Catch-22: "The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on."
This quote triggered an ironic thought: If Heller's point is valid, one can argue that Nancy Pelosi and her leftist anti-war friends are no longer the loyal opposition, they are now the enemy.
If you're inclined to agree, you might want to join the Center for Individual Freedom in urging the President and the Republican leadership to "get some back-bone" and strongly oppose Pelosi's pursuit of her "alternate" (Chamberlainesque) foreign policy.
Thinking about Catch-22 made me think of an anti-war slogan popular in the 1960s: "What if they gave a war and nobody came?" Today, we need to ask a slightly different question: What if they gave a war and only one side showed up?
The anti-war left is growing louder and completely dominates the Democratic Party. Many short-attention-span Americans are weary of Iraq in particular and the "War on Terror" in general (partly because it was unfortunately named and inadequately explained). Most of the Republican leadership either can't clearly articulate the danger we face and the need to fight, or they're afraid to for pragmatic reasons, or they've become discouraged and given up.
So here's where things stand: A ruthless and growing global Islamofascist movement is waging war against every culture, society, and religion different from itself, and it vows not to stop until all the world has been forced to submit to its 7th-century rule. Only the United States and a handful of allies have recognized the global nature of this conflict and the seriousness of the threat. Now, it seems that our will is failing, and more and more of us are ready to join the Europeans in pretending there is no threat, or believing that some accommodation with the enemy is possible, or insisting that it's all about a handful of fighters in the mountains of Afghanistan and nothing else.
What happens when one side in a war decides to stop fighting, but the other side continues?
Leave a Comment