When the pessimist hears, “OK, gang. Here’s our last chance,” he mainly hears the word “last.” The optimist hears “chance.” Whichever you are, please suit up accordingly because I do see this as our last chance.
In June 1940, France’s famous Maginot Line did Germany the unbelievable favor of stopping the westward reach of France’s defenses at the Belgian border rather than continuing those defenses on westward to the ocean. So when Hitler’s armored units poured through that huge hole the French obligingly left undefended it was the end of free France, and the British had to flee homeward from the beaches of Dunkirk in watercraft large and small, including floatables down to and including inflated inner tubes.
Winston Churchill, prime minister of the U.K., faced microphones in London and, in that lugubrious delivery of his, intoned, “The news from France is very bad tonight!” A week ago, the news from France these 75 years later wasn’t much better. Though not as snappy and polished as Nazi German panzer armies, the unending waves of Islamic “immigrants” seem to enjoy similar success in taking and holding French territory and rewriting those heart-warming rules governing “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.”
Then suddenly last Sunday the news from France turned spectacularly good. If you can overlook nearly 20 innocent people being murdered, you could say it’s the best news since the liberation of Paris. In fact, in a way, it was the liberation of Paris!
Over 40 leaders of countries around the world marched slowly and deliberately – to the cheers of almost 4 million people throughout France – through the streets of Paris, arm in arm, Israelis and Palestinians included. You don’t have to be Jewish to emphasize those previous words, but it helps!
When Germany and Japan surrendered in 1945 we thought we’d have plenty of chances to agree to quit killing one another. Instead we quickly saw that damnable fraud, the United Nations, become a VIP lounge for thugs, murderers and dictators. And then came the Cold War. But after Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s brazen invasion of Kuwait, President George H. W. Bush rekindled our hopes by hem-stitching together a coalition of three dozen nations to make sure that aggression “did not stand.” Immediately after 9/11, President George W. Bush demanded all nations declare whether they were for America or against us. Some countries – Pakistan comes to mind – seem to be still thinking it over. It’s not as easy as you’d suppose to get countries to agree it’s wrong to do what was done to America on 9/11. Too many commas, semi-colons, conditions. If the world again refuses to “give civilization a chance,” I see little encouragement down the road. That’s not light at the end of the tunnel. It’s another bomb going off.
Thank God I still have my beautiful America’s role in World War II to keep me proud. The world is recoiling in shock and disbelief – at least the good part of the world – that the president of the United States was AWOL from that redemptive Sunday, Jan. 11, in Paris. Obama’s aloofness from the Problems and Promise of Paris is downright bedeviling. Every disappointment Obama hits us with makes him look more and more vulnerable to suspicion that some very bad cat is holding hostage his very big tongue.
Former New York Congressman John LeBoutillier, now co-star of Fox News’ “Political Insiders” (Sundays, 7:30 p. m. Eastern), brought the house down last Sunday with his praise of former French leader Charles de Gaulle, quick to arrive in America after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, and his excoriation of President Obama, not for not lifting a finger, but rather for giving a finger to Western civilization’s effort to put itself back together!
The award for the Most-Important-Non-Fiction Role goes not to any French leader and certainly not to the absent, derelict and shameful no-show, Barack Obama. That historical prize goes to Egyptian President Abdel Sattah el-Sisi, who had the guts and brilliance to appear before a Coptic Christian congregation and scold the leaders of global Islam for allowing their religion to be hijacked by barbarians. “You need a revolution,” declared el-Sisi, which was interpreted as a call for nothing less than a long-overdue Reformation of Islam, as their co-Abrahamic brothers, the Christians and Jews, gave the world centuries ago.
Please bring back the days when this sort of global insult resulted in laughter, not murder. A young winner of the Olympic heavyweight boxing gold named Cassius Clay decked Sonny Liston to become the professional heavyweight champion of the world. It was worth a smile when Cassius Clay, who changed his name to Muhammad Ali, announced he was going to take a trip around the world “to meet some of the people he was champion of.” And it was worth more than a smile a few days later when the Nigerian media caught him out at the airport only two days after he’d arrived in Nigeria.
“Ali!” shouted the men and women of the Nigerian media. “You promised to spend four days here in Nigeria. This is only your second day and already you’re leaving. Why do you leave us now, Ali? Why do you leave us?”
Well,” said Ali with that kid-in-the-cookie-jar expression on his face, “They’re waiting for me in Egypt, and everybody knows Egypt is more important than Nigeria!”
It may have taken half-a-century, but el-Sisi has now made it bull-proof and pig-tight: Egypt is more important than Nigeria!
Media wishing to interview Barry Farber, please contact [email protected].
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