When containment started in the late 1940s the Soviet Empire consisted of seven countries, or nine if we consider the Ukraine and Byelorussia of the time as separate entities, with a total population of 187 million. Two decades later the “Evil Empire” had expanded into 73 countries with a total population of 1.4 billion. Some containment!
Makes me wonder why some think it worked against communism or how it could work against islamofascism. Worth the whole read.
But truth be told, no one is really talking even about containing islamofascism, the debate is whether to face it head on or to ignore it, hoping it will resolve spontaneously (as the soviet fell spontaneously). It puzzles me how so many still believe that history "just happens" instead of made by men, and occasionally a man.
The elder of these daughters was Edith Zierer. In January 1945, at 13, she emerged from a Nazi labor camp in Czestochowa, Poland, a waif on the verge of death. Separated from her family, unaware that her mother had been killed by the Germans, she could scarcely walk.
But walk she did, to a train station, where she climbed onto a coal wagon. The train moved slowly, the wind cut through her. When the cold became too much to bear, she got off the train at a village called Jendzejuw. In a corner of the station, she sat. Nobody looked at her, a girl in the striped and numbered uniform of a prisoner, late in a terrible war. Unable to move, Edith waited.
Death was approaching, but a young man approached first, "very good looking," as she recalled, and vigorous. He wore a long robe and appeared to the girl to be a priest. "Why are you here?" he asked. "What are you doing?"
Edith said she was trying to get to Krakow to find her parents.
The man disappeared. He came back with a cup of tea. Edith drank. He said he could help her get to Krakow. Again, the mysterious benefactor went away, returning with bread and cheese.
They talked about the advancing Soviet army. Edith said she believed her parents and younger sister, Judith, were alive.
"Try to stand," the man said. Edith tried - and failed. The man carried her to another village, where he put her in the cattle car of a train bound for Krakow. Another family was there. The man got in beside Edith, covered her with his cloak, and set about making a small fire.
His name, he told Edith, was Karol Wojtyla.
Act or be acted upon.
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