Essay from the DOD

This is an essay being forwarded around. It was written by a DOD official. It is worth reading only so we can see the way the people in charge of this country view other people in the world. My comments are on the post above.

The Peaceful Majority by William Haynes

I used to know a man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War
Two. They owned a number of large industries and estates. I asked him how
many German people were true Nazis, and the answer he gave has stuck with
me and guided my attitude toward fanaticism ever since.

"Very few people were true Nazis "he said," but many enjoyed the return of
German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who
just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat
back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we
had
lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything
I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories."

We are told again and again by "experts" and "talking heads" that Islam is
the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to
live in peace.

Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely
irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and
meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the
globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at
this moment in history.

It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50
shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter
Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over
the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb,
behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque
after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and
hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that
the
"peaceful majority" is the "silent majority" and it is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia comprised Russians who just wan ted to live in peace, yet
the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million
people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China's huge population was
peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70
million people.

The average Japanese individual prior to World War 2 was not a
warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across
South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder
of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.
And, who can forget Rwanda , which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be
said that the majority of Rwandans were "peace loving"?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our
powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:

Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.
Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up,
because like my friend from Germany , they will awake one day and find
that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs
Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many
others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it
was too late.

As for us who watch it all unfold; we must pay attention to the only
group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Lastly, I wish to add: I sincerely think that anyone who rejects this as
just another political rant, or doubts the seriousness of this issue or
just deletes it without paying heed to it, or sending it on, is part of the
problem. Lets quit laughing at and forwarding the jokes and cartoons which
denigrate and ridicule our leaders in this war against terror. They are
trying to protect the interests and wel l being of the world and it's
citizens. Best we support them.

William Haynes