Soap Box

Having performed for the people of Japan and spent time among them it is hard to think that some 73 years ago we went to war with this mannerly, courteous, soft spoken, gentle people. Though our cultures are vastly different, the similarities between our two races are many.

The Japanese have strong familial ties, love and dote on their children, live in a democratic society, are ambitious and work hard. They take great pride in their Islands and are fiercely protective of their territory.

The Japanese are a people of great tenacity and determination. Since the middle 40s they have turned a totally defeated and decimated Imperially ruled country into a modern, state of the art, aggressive and innovative democracy, a friend and ally of the USA.

The Germans were formidable foes in the Second World War, smart, aggressive and courageous. Adolph Hitler was a skillful speaker and a master manipulator and exploited the natural aggressiveness of the German people by providing a focal point for their national fiscal and social frustration. In his evil brilliance he rewarded the true believers, empowered them and through them forced his will on a population that realized what was happening to them too late to do anything about it.

The war with Germany was long, bloody and devastating for them, but yet again, the Germanic tenacity and pride took over after the war and built the nation into an industrial powerhouse and the most stable economy on the European continent.

Most of us have forgotten, and I think some are even unaware, that Italy was an ally of Germany in the Second World War, lead by a tyrant named Benito Mussolini, they entered the war against the wishes of the Italian people and were defeated before the war even got into full swing.

The Italians were so incensed with Mussolini that when he was killed, his body was hung up in the street where people walked by and spit on it.

We all know about our War of Independence, the First World War, the Spanish American War and the other short-lived battles and skirmishes America has been involve in over the years and the Cold War with Russia, which to my opinion is still covertly going on.

In any case the wars of the twentieth century were territorial for the most part, where the winner got all the marbles, planted their flag and occupied the lands they conquered and we basically understood our enemies.

Why we ever started interfering in the affairs of Southeast Asia and the Middle East seems, at least in retrospect, questionable. We were dealing with ancient cultures for which we had no understanding and no Rosetta Stone to decipher it.

The days of defined battlefields ended with the Second World War and America was introduced to conflict with nations who used their overwhelming numbers of troops for canon fodder, sacrificing wave after wave of human lives to achieve even small military objectives, urban warfare and human bombs.

The war we find ourselves engaged in these days is not, for the most part, territorial but ideological religious fanaticism fueled by centuries of violent indoctrination and tribal loyalties that have existed since biblical times.

There is so much about our enemy we don't understand, but one all-important fact we must understand.

There will be no truce or armistice in this fight, there will be no cessation of hostilities no matter what kind of pie in the sky treaties and agreements desperate Western diplomats are able to get the enemy to sign.

The Obama-Kerry initiatives, while noble in outward appearances, will not deter Iran's efforts to develop a nuclear device, but enable them to do so as sanctions are lifted and Iran gets it's fiscal house in order it will be business as usual, deadly business.

Is there anybody gullible enough to believe otherwise?

Our President and Secretary of State seem to think so.

Wonder if they've bothered to ask Israel how they feel about it, now Israel really does understand the enemy.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels​