This is the Enemy

An amazing sermon delivered by Rabbi Schlomo Lewis of Atlanta over the Jewish New Year.

I thought long and I thought hard on whether to deliver the sermon I am about to share.  We all wish to bounce happily out of shul on the High Holidays, filled with warm fuzzies, ready to gobble up our brisket, our honey cakes and our kugel.  We want to be shaken and stirred – but not too much.  We want to be guilt-schlepped – but not too much.  We want to be provoked but not too much.  We want to be transformed but not too much.

I get it, but as a rabbi I have a compelling obligation, a responsibility to articulate what is in my heart and what I passionately believe must be said and must be heard.  And so, I am guided not by what is easy to say but by what is painful to express.  I am guided not by the frivolous but by the serious.  I am guided not by delicacy but by urgency.

We are at war.  We are at war with an enemy as savage, as voracious, as heartless as the Nazis but one wouldn’t know it from our behavior. During WWII we didn’t refer to storm troopers as freedom fighters.  We didn’t call the Gestapo, militants.   We didn’t see the attacks on our Merchant Marine as acts by rogue sailors.  We did not justify the Nazis rise to power as our fault.  We did not grovel before the Nazis, thumping our hearts and confessing to abusing and mistreating and humiliating the German people.
We did not apologize for Dresden , nor for The Battle of the Bulge, nor for El Alamein , nor for D-Day.

Evil – ultimate, irreconcilable, evil threatened us and Roosevelt and Churchill had moral clarity and an exquisite understanding of what was at stake.  It was not just the Sudetenland, not just Tubruk, not just Vienna , not just Casablanca .  It was the entire planet.  Read history and be shocked at how frighteningly close Hitler came to creating a Pax Germana on every continent.

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Catch-22

With the sad death of two more Australian soldiers in Afghanistan, comes the predictable bleating that the war is "unwinnable" and an unmitigated disaster.

While the death of coalition troops is unquestionably tragic, some perspective is required. 22 deaths, over an entire decade in heavy combat, is fewer than the number killed on Australian roads over a single long weekend. Put very bluntly, as wars go, 22 isn't bad.

I'm not saying we should stay there no matter what. Continual, serious analysis is required (and Greg Sheridan makes a compelling argument for leaving Afghanistan here). However the total lack of stomach for causalities in war, has sent a clear message to Islamists. Kill a small handful of diggers and the people back home will surrender.

That is not the sort of message you want to be sending to these animals.

It does seem however that Afghanistan is now a useful rallying point for those who previously cried that Iraq was "unwinnable", a "quagmire" and "Vietnam all over again". They do seem to have gone quiet, haven't they?