What's the land use guy doing writing about the war in Iraq? Not sure, but I feel like doing it anyway.

If anyone has written about this aspect of the war I haven't read it, but anyway it has finally dawned on me why we are in Iraq. Yes, it has a lot to do with nipping terrorism in the bud, but it also has even more to do with history repeating itself. In the early 1930's a certain evil man came into power in Germany, and by the middle of the 1930's he had a rabid following of soldiers and civilians that would follow him anywhere, including into hell which is exactly where he was headed and has probably ended up. But, long before WWII started, the world, namely Britain, France and early on before they switched sides, Italy, had several chances to make sure WWII never took place. A number of restrictions on military buildup were put on Germany after WWI by the League of Nations, a precursor to the UN, by virtue of a couple of treaties. These included no buildup of the army, air force or navy; restrictions which were obeyed until Hitler came into power in the early 30's. After that, there was a secret buildup of the army, and a blatant buildup of the air force and navy, all of which could have been stopped by the League, mainly Britain and France, but at the time there was a very strong "peace at all costs" government and movement afoot in England. So, they turned a blind eye to the military buildup of Germany, while refusing to build themselves up after having somewhat disarmed as the other part of the agreement after WWI. People that knew what was happening, such as Winston Churchill were ignored, even ridiculed by the peaceniks in power, and even after Germany surpassed England in air power the peaceniks still believed that the NON-use of force was the only way to achieve peace.

This whole buildup by what was now Nazi Germany culminated in about 1936 when the German army occupied what was a "demilitarized zone"known as the Rhineland. The impending disaster was still ignored, even after Hitler then upped the mandatory service in the armed forces due to a coming slump in numbers of eligibles because of the coming of age of the lower number of WWI babies. Right about this time, with England and France ignoring Germany's buildup, or more realistically refusing to stray from the peace at all costs stance, Italy left the League and Mussolini joined forces with what he saw to be the winning team, Germany. This came about after Italy saw complete non-action and empty threats by England and France when they attacked and took over Abysinnia. This failure to take action not only pushed Mussolini over to Hitler's side, but made Hitler believe even more that what he was doing was unstoppable, even though up until about 1938 he could have been stopped.

And where was the US during all this? Not being a member of the League of Nations, we were keeping out of the argument, hoping that Europe could solve its own problems sensibly. Of course, by the time we got involved a madman had been loosed on the world, a madman that came within a hair of ruling the world. A madman that could have easily been put to rest forever if PRE-EMPTIVE action had taken place, but the peaceniks couldn't see what was happening, or just plain refused to believe it. The rest is history, history which we damn well better learn from because there are some very eerie similarities between Saddam's rise to power and the resulting buildup and Hitler's rise to power and the buildup which followed.

On a final note, just for those that aren't students of WWII history, I didn't make any of this up or exaggerate it in the least. Read "The Gathering Storm" by Winston Churchill, the first volume in his history of WWII, Churchill lays out in hundreds of pages of detail that which I have put forth in a short thumbnail sketch. This just further emphasizes how incredibly stupid those people are that argue against the action in Iraq. Even if some of our intelligence was faulty, the chance of letting history repeat itself and not learning from very deadly mistakes just scares the hell out of me. And please, don't give me the arguments that the world united in the early 90's to defeat Saddam, what we did was akin to nothing by letting him get away and continue on his Hitler-like course. And don't give me the arguments that we haven't found any WMDs, I hear Hitler's voice from the past on that one, his army and navy were very well hidden until it was too late.

Yes, it is land use after all. We are stopping a madman in his tracks before it is too late. Land use in this country is part of the freedom that we enjoy in a society free of the hatred of insane and sadistic dictators.