Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (47897)	9/29/2002 7:26:47 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi LindyBill; Re: "First you want to discuss what we should do if Terrorists, who don't have a country as a base, use an A-Bomb on us, and now you change it to a country, which we would "send back to the stone age," They won't because of that, unless it is a Madman, which is what we are discussing about Iraq." The IRA didn't have a country, but the Brits negotiated with them. Same with the Basque separatists, etc. Like I said before, negotiations are the common fate of mankind. Are you at all convinced that the majority of the American people would prefer to die than to negotiate? I'm sorry, but the concept of a people that is afraid to eat apples because they might have traces of pesticides on them, being supposedly brave enough to "endure death before negotiations" is something that I find hilarious. It's not that I doubt the ability of the American people to stomach a fight. In fact, I posted on SI that we would be willing to take considerable casualties to bring down the Taliban (but that casualties would be fairly small due to technological considerations). Your attitude reminds me of one of the differences between war games and real life. (I love war games, of course.) In war games, people aren't really killed. So the participants tend to be much more willing to risk their lives than actual soldiers in real wars would. For example, if you play "Red Baron" (which is a WW1 flying simulation) on the internet, you will find that pretty much every encounter results in one (or rarely both) of the two players being shot down. This is an exceedingly poor match for the actual historical record. Even the Red Baron, who shot down ~80 aircraft, ended the majority of his encounters with no one hurt. This is because air tactics, as actually used by real people, are far less risky than air tactics, as used by people flying simulations. The undeniable fact is that the majority of most aircraft encounters between more or less equal opponents result in both parties flying for home, looking over their shoulders, with very little ammunition expended. Aces run up their totals essentially by sneaking up on novices, not by dueling to the death. For references to this fact of war, see the classic textbook on airplane tactics: Fighter Combat: Tactics and Maneuvering btobsearch.barnesandnoble.com My suspicion is that when you and your family face death, you will, like the vast majority of the human population, choose negotiation. Here's an interesting observation from the hospices where people go to die. These are the stages that people go through when they face death: (1) Denial (2) Anger (3) Negotiation (4) Resignation (5) Acceptance Number (3) is what I'm talking about here. When we bombed the bejesus out of the Germans and Japanese, we pushed them in to stage number (5), which perhaps is why they were able to accept our occupations without fighting back. The Israelis have never forced the Palestinians to face *DEATH*, nor have the Palestinians forced the Israelis, so that conflict is stuck in the denial / anger / negotiation stage. If we go into Iraq the way that the neocons are talking, we too, will have failed to force the Arabs to face death, and we too, will end up with the Israeli result. -- Carl P.S. "Negotiation" and "surrender" are not the same word. The British did not surrender to the IRA, they negotiated with them. And the above book on Fighter Tactics does give great advice to those who would fly simulations as well as the real thing. If you're interested in actual quotes from the book which indicate the truth about what I've said above with regard to air combat, I'd be happy to look them up, assuming I haven't lent my copy out. But now is definitely time for me to be getting to bed.