The foresight of statesmen -- I.

Said the prime minister of Finland [A.K. Cajander] less than three months away from a shooting war with 180 million people: " We are proud of the fact that we don't have a lot of weapons and rifles rusting away in the warehouses and we don't have a lot of uniforms rotting and mildewing in the storehouses. But we do have a high standard of living in Finland and an educational system we can be proud of. . . .

The Winter War. By Eloise Engle and Lauri Paananen. Stackpole Books, 1973, p. 31.

This book is highly entertaining and recounts one of the most magnificent feats of arms in history. Just about anything written about the Winter War of November 30, 1939 to March 13, 1940 between Finland the the Soviet Union will amaze you. (See here, here, here, and here.)

The lack of foresight of the prime minister -- just days before a terrible punishing war with a huge country like the Soviet Union, ruled as it was by the psychopath Stalin -- is beyond tragic.

Had the Finns had more fighters, artillery and antitank weapons, not to mention other simple military equipment, they would have been able to mount an even more fearsome defense of their country than they did and perhaps even to have withstood the Soviet onslaught. But the politicians would not spend the necessary money.

The voices raised against the war against Islamic literalists (a huge proportion of the Islamic world, as we all know) sound eerily similar to that of Mr. Cajander 66 years ago. It is a powerful dream that men love to dream when they do not wish to make the sacrifices necessary to confront an implacable enemy. Decent people have difficulty understanding pure malevolence and that one day it could knock at their back door.

The responsibility to see clearly, understand, and act as reality demands is a heavy one. Yet there are those in our country who will not see that it is necessary even to take elementary precautions, let alone to inflict pain and death on our enemies before they can do the same to us.