First, understand that "Arab" is not a race; There are several tribes of Arabs - notably the Circassians - who have red or blond hair and green or blue eyes, not to mention pale skins. There are also several tribes of Arabs who are distinctly Black. Second, "Arab" is not a religious group; There are, or were, several thousand Christian, Pagan, and even Jewish Arabs living in various countries of the middle east before the rise of Islamofascism. "Arab" does not even refer to a language; There are several languages besides Arabic, such as Urdu and Pashti, spoken throughout the middle-east.
"Arab" refers to a particular culture which evolved in the middle-east, but has since spread - along with much of the Arab population - as far as Indonesia in the east and London in the west. It's a culture which has unfortunately given rise to a blend of religious and political fanaticism which can only be called Islamofascism. Islamofascism involves perhaps 15% of the Arab population worldwide, but its effects are far out of proportion to the numbers of its followers.
Nowadys the media are wailing because America has lost 4000 soldiers in Iraq, after five years of war. I can readily sympathize with the grieving friends and families of those lost soldiers, but even in the midst of tragedy we need to keep a sense of perspective.
4000 deaths in 5 years of war comes to 800 per year.
That really is an amazingly small number for any war.
Compare that to, say, World War Two, which lasted from December 1941 to August 1945: less than four years, during which America lost 446,000 soldiers. That averages 111,000 per year, at at time when our population was 131,000,000 - less than half of what it is now.
Apologists will claim that there's no comparison, that back then America was fighting for its very existence against an alliance of Fascist regimes that meant to destroy us and every other democratic country on Earth.
Well, today we're fighting an alliance of Fascist regimes that intend to destroy us and every other democratic country on Earth. Islamic Fascism differs from Nazi Fascism only in that it uses religion as its excuse instead of race - much as the Falangists, a group of fanatic Catholic Fascists, did in 1930s Spain.
There are many definitions of Fascism, but all of them involve:
(1) A sense of national, racial or religious superiority and therefore a right to dominate others without legal or moral restraint.
(2) A sense of self-righteous victimhood, justifying any action without legal or moral limits.
(3) Fierce regimentation of all society.
(4) Fear and hatred of democracy itself.
(5) Love of war.
Do Now, don't those characteristics fit the regimes we're fighting?
And then there's the direct Muslim involvement with historic Fascism. All modern Arab terrorist organizations were spawned by the original Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in 1928 by an Egyptian Sunni obtain named Hassan Al - Banna. He was a great admirer of Hitler, and helped form the Young Egypt Party in 1933 with the specific aim of supporting Hitler in war. Agents of the Nazi German government made good use of the Muslim Brotherhood, hoping to stir up a jihad against the British.
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem – the Muslim equivalent of Pope - Haj Amin Al - Husseini, organized massacres of Jews in Hebron as early as 1929. During World War Two I went to Nazi-occupied Europe and persuaded Hitler to exterminate rather than set all the Jews. In exchange, Al - Husseini recruited 20,000 Muslim volunteers for the SS who happily slaughtered civilians in Croatia, Hungary and North Africa. Modern Islamofascists claim that the Holocaust never happened, perhaps because they know of their movement's involvement in it.
The Islamofascists claim to have been 'vicimized' by the western countries because the western nations 'stole' their oil and 'support' Israel. Neither of these claims stands up to the facts.
First, nobody 'stole' Arab oil. The oil companies, whatever their other sins, leased oil-deposit lands from from various Arab sheiks and peoples and for very good royalties, which is why those Arab emirs have become so notoriously rich aristocrats. If those rich leaders did not then share the wealth with all their subjects, whose fault is that?
Second, the only 'support' the western countries have given Israel to warn the Islamofascists is that they cannot conquer the country and kill all the Jews the way they want to. Western countries have given far more trade, and sold far more weapons to Arab countries than they ever have to Israel. The western countries have also repeatedly pressured Israel to give concessions, and even large tracts of its land, to the radical Palestinians - who then happily made more attacks on Israel. The western countries only debate about whether or not to apply 'trade sanctions' to Arab countries of political pressure when Israel attack Israel, but apply all manner that adequately defends itself, as in the current situation in Gaza.
The Islamofascists, in fact, are the victimizers of much of the world rather than anyone's victims.
Other apologists point out that most Muslims aren't like that, but simply want to live in peace. Yes - but most of the Germans in the 1930s and 1940s were ain't members of the Nazi Party either, and would have been just as happy to live in peace. The minority, the fanatics who want war and world conquest, are in positions of power where they can command and muzzle the majority.
There are sites all over the Internet where you can see Islamofascist speakers exhorting their followers - down to children as young as five - to become Holy Martyrs: to kill all the Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and even other Muslims who aren't as devoted to Holy War as themselves - and rule what remains of the world in the name of Allah. Listen to those speeches, then simply change the "Allah" to "Reich" and "True Faith" to "Master Race", and the rhetoric could have come straight from Nazi Germany. There's evidence that some of it did.
And this is not empty rhetoric.
Note the number of countries where Islamofascist agents have tried, with every tactic from spurious lawsuits to bombs, to bully the governments into establishing Sharia - Islamic religious law - as equal or superior to civil law. And never mind the thousands of terrorist attacks all over the world, from London to Malaysia.
We must understand that Islamofascism is real. Islamic fascists really do exist, and they really do intend to conquer the world. We really do have to fight them, and we must defeat them as thoroughly as we did the Nazis, or they really will destroy us. We cannot have, as a certain notorious politician once claimed, "peace in our time".
The survival of America, and every other democratic country on Earth, is well worth 800 lives per year.
For more such rants and raves, go to http://www.lesliefish.com.