WAR IS AN UGLY THING

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling that thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

—John Stuart Mill

Thanks to Ralph127 for this observation:

Peace at any price had deep roots in 1930s Britain. Roots fertilized by the blood of almost one million Empire soldiers on Flanders's muddy fields.

About ten years ago I told an old family friend that I was taking my dad, a Korean war vet, to see the newly opened Korean war memorial in Washington. My friend started crying. I asked her what was wrong. She replied that her brother had been killed in Korea. I was stunned. I never knew she had a brother much less that he had died in the defense of our country.

I mention this little tableau because today it is obligatory to say that the death of one American solider is a tragedy, as if this terrible truth should not be obvious to any sentient being. Winston Churchill’s great strength was that he was prepared to lead the ‘English Speaking People’ to the greater and even more terrible truth that war is not the ugliest of things.

A “Winston Churchill” today would have the courage to name the theology that drives our enemies. He would have the courage to confront the adherents of this theology at home and abroad. He would lead a free people to understand that the creed of their prophet Mohammad is incompatible with our individual Liberty. He would lead Americans, dare I say the English speaking people, to the truly terrible truth that we cannot suffer an Islamic polity to possess nuclear weapons.

Which city do you think good Muslims will nuke first?

de Tocqueville said:

"One of the most ordinary weaknesses of the human intellect is to seek to reconcile contrary principles and to purchase peace at the expense of logic."