Hi Emile Vidrine; Re terrorism and the Torah &c.
From my point of view, there doesn't seem to be a hell of a lot of difference, except in scale, between dropping a hotel in British Palestine, dropping the WTC, dropping nukes on Japanese cities, and setting fire storms in Germany. War is about killing.
The simple rule is that when we do it it's okay (with us), and when the other guy does it it's not okay (with us). The other guy has a similar set of rules and mores, but they're reversed.
And I don't mean to say this as a justification of the other guy's actions. I'd like to have avoided war, but it's too late for that. I don't see any reason to convolute language and morals to justify our need to kill people. To survive we must kill, unless by some miracle the other guy gives up and surrenders. But history suggests that he's not likely to do that, even when faced with overwhelming force. And he's certainly not going to do that when faced with less than overwhelming force.
From a theoretical point of view, the only reason the world doesn't descend into war forever is the combination of the following:
(1) Military ability is closely correlated with technological and economic strength.
(2) Countries with relatively high levels of democracy and civil rights tend to have much higher technological and economic strength.
(3) Democracies avoid getting into conflicts with other (powerful) democracies. This is not to say that democracies are peaceful, only to say that when they do execute acts of war against other countries, they tend to pick on the weaklings. (Like US and Nicaragua.)
There may be another factor, in that the democracies tend to not nurture hate among their citizens, or at least less hate.
All I can say is that it's a good thing that it's the United States, and not Afghanistan, with 10,000 nuclear warheads ready. Same goes for the strong conventional forces the US has.
Forces in the Middle East have been spoiling for another try at western military prowess ever since we let Baghdad up for air. If Bush "solves" this with no land combat it won't be a real, long term, solution.
The Kuwaiti liberation proved that the United States is unbeatable in the desert. To keep the militaristic little cesspools in line, the United States will now have to demonstrate that it is unbeatable in the mountains.
Eventually, we will have to prove that we are unbeatable in cities as well. Maybe that will be now, maybe we will wait until 2010.
-- Carl |
