A rchive Date
[ 11-01-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[Http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/jackson.html
Soft underbelly
Decline of values weakens our society
By PAUL JACKSON - Calgary Sun
January 11, 2004
A vast panorama unfolded before us as we entered the New Year - world terrorist groups and rogue nations intent on undermining and destroying the western democracies and western civilization in general.
That was my contention in the column "Gloomy forecast" (Jan. 4) but a lot of readers wondered whether the scenario I painted was quite that bleak.
Yet, if my contentions are right, they asked, what we could do to save ourselves?
Well, for one thing, we are not going to defeat world terrorism and threats from rogue states by the so-called "soft power" stances of Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham and his even worse - if that is possible - predecessor, Lloyd Axworthy.
Terrorist states no more want to chat than did Adolf Hitler Hitler or Stalin. They see that as appeasement and weakness to be exploited.
It's military might, and the will to use it, and quick retaliation they fear.
Some readers noted that western democratic countries have faced seemingly unbeatable odds before - far worse odds than suicide bombers - and still came out of the crisis victorious. They point to Britain standing alone against the axis powers in 1940, and the West having to draw the line against Soviet expansionism within months of the ending of the Second World War when most had expected a long reign of peaceful co-existence.
If the western democracies again stick together, surely, I'm asked, we can beat world terrorist movements and disarm rogue nations?
They point to the quick success of the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the Liberation of Iraq - one of the three countries representing President George W. Bush's "axis of evil," and of the sudden decision by Libya's Moammar Gadhafi to open his nation's doors to nuclear inspection. Iran, too, seems to be softening its stance against allowing inspectors to tour its supposedly-peaceful nuclear projects.
This is a bright spot. Now rogue nations know the U.S. means business and having been quite willing to move into Afghanistan and Iraq, their own regimes may not be safe from attack.
Maybe even North Korea, with its maniacal strongman Kim Jong-Il will get the jitters. Since many nations in the Middle East are havens for terrorists, if they kick the terrorists out to save themselves, the threat diminishes greatly.
Our opponents are also trying to undermine us on two fronts: One military, by the use of hit-and-run terrorist attacks, and on another front by trying to make us lose confidence in the righteousness of our own societies.
They are exploiting our failing ethical values, already shaken by Enron-style crooks and charlatans in a variety of corporations, the spread of pornography, the drug culture, vicious rap music and non-stop movie-screen violence.
The loss of ethical values, as my late colleague, Lubor Zink, so often warned about, created a "soft-underbelly" in western society that weakened us from within.
We have to regain our ethical values and restore faith in our institutions, and that includes our churches, synagogues and mosques.
The penalties for malfeasance in business must be harsh, the drug culture must be stamped out, also by the harshest measures.
Pornography should not be "respected" on the spurious basis of "free speech."
Neither should rap or hip-hop music, or the pernicious junk Hollywood churns out.
As an aside, its said that Hitler's armies had an easy time rolling over France because the people of that nation had became so debauched by much of the above they were too morally weakened to fight back.
That mustn't be allowed to happen today. Our societies must be strong and resolute.
Military, we have to use all the means we have and use them unrelenting against our enemies.
The "shock and awe" mass bombing of Baghdad, then the sudden ground force sweep across Iraq and right into Baghdad certainly was a lesson for other despotic nations.
We have the high-tech military hardware our opponents lack, and we have to start launching commando-style raids against terrorist camps and assassinations of our enemies' leaders.
Just as the Israelis do.
We should let North Korea and other would-be nuclear powers know that NATO's first-strike nuclear policy is still on the books.
And, rather than fight the war on our own land, we must take the war to our enemies' lands, as Bush has been doing.
We can still lose and still win this war against modern-day barbarism.
I'd prefer we'd win it, wouldn't you?
But the hour is late.
Jackson, associate editor of the Sun, can be reached at paul.jackson@calgarysun.com Letters to the editor should be sent to callet@calgarysun.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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