I would like you to read a speech delivered 89 years ago on the floor of the House of Commons by Winston Churchill. It was a warning that went unheeded. When the European War ended 11 years later more than 100 million people were dead.
In his speech yesterday, President Biden said something that was important about democracies and the laws of war. Here was his exact quote:
We also discussed how democracies like Israel and the United States are stronger and more secure when we act according to the rule of law.
Terrorists purposefully target civilians, kill them. We uphold the laws of war — the law of war. It matters. There’s a difference.
Yet, there is a revisionism embedded in this assertion. There is an inescapable reality that victors write the history, and with that history, comes a sanitizing of what was required to defeat evil and bring down the fascist states that threatened to envelop humanity in darkness. Each year of the Second World War was more violent than the year that preceded it until it ended in a spasm of violence that is almost incomprehensible. The defense of freedom became a war of annihilation. Do you know how the Nazi genocide was stopped?
Do you know how the Japanese Empire was defeated, which like Hamas, was a suicide cult?
I have written about the speech delivered by General MacArthur from the deck of the Battleship Missouri, and the profound words that he spoke at the dawn of the nuclear age at the end of humanity’s greatest tragedy and test. I have also written about the reality that each century of human history has been deadlier than the preceding century all the way until the mid-point of the 20th century. That’s when a generation of humanity realized that mankind had come to the edge of the abyss, the edge of extinction, yet somehow the next war didn’t escalate into the last war about which MacArthur feared and warned. In the end, the free world triumphed against a totalitarian system, and for a short time was unchallenged, unrivaled and victorious.
A new era has begun and a grave new threat has arisen. Russia, Iran, North Korea, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, China and their allies are menacing the world. The danger is growing, and it has ignited in Israel.
Horror is what lies ahead. Though the war will be necessary and just, it will be difficult, brutal and deadly. War is not a reality show, and as such, the American media is deeply ill-equipped to deal with it, cover it, explain it and contextualize it. The war will likely escalate and engulf the region.
Below are the words of Winston Churchill from 1934:
Many people think that the best way to escape war is to dwell upon its horrors and to imprint them vividly upon the minds of the younger generation. They flaunt the grisly photograph before their eyes. They fill their ears with tales of carnage. They dilate upon the ineptitude of generals and admirals. They denounce the crime as insensate folly of human strife. Now, all this teaching ought to be very useful in preventing us from attacking or invading any other country, if anyone outside a madhouse wished to do so, but how would it help us if we were attacked or invaded ourselves? That is the question we have to ask.
Would the invaders consent to hear Lord Beaverbrook's exposition, or listen to the impassioned appeals of Mr. Lloyd George? Would they agree to meet that famous South African, General Smuts, and have their inferiority complex removed in friendly, reasonable debate? I doubt it. I have borne responsibility for the safety of this country in grievous times. I gravely doubt it.
But even if they did, I am not so sure we should convince them, and persuade them to go back quietly home. They might say, it seems to me, "you are rich; we are poor. You seem well fed; we are hungry. You have been victorious; we have been defeated. You have valuable colonies; we have none. You have your navy; where is ours? You have had the past; let us have the future." Above all, I fear they would say, "you are weak and we are strong."
After all, my friends, only a few hours away by air there dwell a nation of nearly seventy million of the most educated, industrious, scientific, disciplined people in the world, who are being taught from childhood to think of war as a glorious exercise and death in battle as the noblest fate for man.
There is a nation which has abandoned all its liberties in order to augment its collective strength. There is a nation which, with all its strength and virtue, is in the grip of a group of ruthless men, preaching a gospel of intolerance and racial pride, unrestrained by law, by parliament, or by public opinion. In that country all pacifist speeches, all morbid war books are forbidden or suppressed, and their authors rigorously imprisoned. From their new table of commandments they have omitted "thou shall not kill."
It is but twenty years since these neighbours of ours fought almost the whole world, and almost defeated them. Now they are rearming with the utmost speed, and ready to their hands is the new lamentable weapon of the air, against which our navy is — no defence, and before which women and children, the weak and frail, the pacifist and the jingo, the warrior and the civilian, the front line trenches and the cottage home, all lie in equal and impartial peril.
Nay, worse still, for with the new weapon has come a new method, or rather has come back the most British method of ancient barbarism, namely, the possibility of compelling the submission of nations by terrorizing their civil population; and, worst of all, the more civilized the country is, the larger and more splendid its cities, the more intricate the structure of its civil and economic life, the more is it vulnerable and at the mercy of those who may make it their prey.
Now, these are facts, hard, grim, indisputable facts, and in the face of these facts, I ask again, what are we to do?
Countries in crisis
I react to President Biden’s speech about Hamas’ attack on Israel. I also discuss the societal decay in both the United States and Israel that led us to this point where democracies are in real danger.
President Joe Biden: “This is a moment for the United States to come together to grieve with those who are mourning. Let’s be clear: There’s no place for hate in America, not against Jews, not against Muslims, not against anybody. What we reject is terrorism.” ; “This is not about party or politics. This is about the security of our world, the security of the United States of America.”
We must reject terrorism, domestic and abroad, despite the inescapable reality of defeating evil.
Thank you, Steve Schmidt, for your powerful presentation of history and how it applies to what is going on currently. We must root out evil, crimes against humanity, and protect the vulnerable.
The parallels of pre-World War II and today are unmistakable. Thanks for another history lesson Steve and for keeping this comparison front and center.