Bill Whittle

Bill Whittle is an excellent if infrequent essayist. He publishes a new one every month or so and they are always really worth reading - thought provoking. His newest ones Deterrence Part One and Deterrence Part Two come on the heels of the Presidential Debate and he has some great things to say: bq. I credit John Kerry with the genuine desire to protect this nation, because the alternative is the back alley short-cut to insanity. He has, in mind, precisely the correct formula used protect the ideals of Liberal Democracy and ensure its victory in WWI, WWII and the long twilight fight of WWIII. bq. Allies and alliances defined the Great War. After four years of mind-shattering horror, the European powers had fought themselves to utter stalemate � and those trenches might yet today mark the borders between Germany, Belgium and France were it not for the arrivals of the American allies. Don�t misunderstand me � we did not win that war on the battlefield. That credit goes to the British and the French. But the endless supply of American troops disembarking, full of confidence and optimism and raw heroism, convinced Hindenberg and Ludendorf to desperately roll the dice on the spring 1918 offensives before they faced a million fresh American troops, full of fight. But defense was king in that war, and the Ludendorf Offensives failed. The counterattacks succeeded. The alliance won that war. bq. The alliance won World War II � that is beyond dispute. Without Britain hanging on during the lonely and dark opening years, where would the Western invasion have come from? Soviet Russia defeated almost 70% of the strength of Nazi Germany, and the United States defeated Japan single-handedly at sea, and with a great deal of help from the British and Australians and New Zealanders in brutal island jungles. An Alliance won that war � not us. Not us alone. bq. For almost fifty years, the most successful alliance in history had the guts and the commitment to put American cities on the line in order to prevent Soviet tanks from crashing through the Fulda gap. American, and to a deteriorating degree, European taxpayers built and maintained the armed forces needed to keep half of Europe free while the other half slowly rotted under the weight of an ideology so corrupt that it can now only thrive in the hothouse environment of the western coffee shop or faculty lounge. That, too, was an alliance victory. bq. If John Kerry were running for president in 1916, or 1940, or even 1976, he would have my enthusiastic vote, for the alliance of the US and the European powers is what saved Europe and the world not once, or twice, but three times in a single lifespan. One might expect some gratitude and respect for this, but as I say, the scales fell from my eyes some time ago. bq. But this is not 1916, or 1940, or 1976. Europe, ruler of the world in the first war, had become a military freeloader by the end of the third. Europe was not able to muster the military muscle or political will to extinguish a genocide within Europe � and things have gotten worse since them. The French nuclear carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, returned from her sea trials with a reactor room flooded with five times the allowable level of radiation and with one of her propellers at the bottom of the Atlantic. She borrowed a screw from her predecessor, the Foch � which was faster � and now sits in port making impressive appearances during national holidays and furthermore showing that if God exists he has both a sense of justice and a sense of humor. bq. The Germans cannot deploy an effective force beyond her own borders. The Russians � the mighty Russians -- could not call up so much as one decent ten-man special ops squad when she and her children needed them the most. Japan has constitutional restraints � drafted in American English � preventing her from deploying her defense forces overseas: a fact that has given me many nights peaceful sleep. And as for China� even if she decided, out of the kindness of her heart, to commit her forces to help her arch-rival�who do you think, Senator, would benefit the most from us sharing our weapons, tactics, logistics and intelligence with China. bq. But liberals are defined by their wishful thinking. An alliance would be nice � if the allies could shoulder some of the burden. But the sad, inconvenient, disappointing fact is that there is only one army on the face of the earth that can fight on the same battlefield with the United States; whose forces, technology and training rival ours in quality if not in scale, and whose trust has been forged by three world wars when we have stood alone, together. That country is Great Britain, one of the members of the �trumped-up, so-called coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted.� bq. The sad fact, the unpleasant reality of 2004 is that there is only once nation in the world that is of any strategic value on the battlefield, and that ally is with us as she has always been, a staunch friend through many dark nights who deserves something better, I perceive, than slander from a man proclaiming himself the greatest diplomat since.. well, since himself. I will say this for John Kerry: he is a man unrivalled in his own esteem. bq. An alliance of European powers is a chimera that no longer holds any significant value. That is a critical point. It is an essential point of delusion embedded in Senator Kerry�s world view. He waits for rescue from a knight long dead and moldering, sitting beneath a withered oak tree in rusted armor. And he continues through several other points like a tack hammer -- nailing the truth into the foreheads of liberals everywhere...