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

To: Bilow who wrote (85481)	3/24/2003 1:36:01 AM
From: Sun Tzu	Respond to of 281500

He gave two examples of shock and awe in history. One was the nuking of Japan, the other was Sun Tzu executing girls in order to make them march correctly. Both were examples of the use of overwhelming bloody force. And people complain that Saddam has modeled himself after Stalin! This madness may be contagious. Now it's clear to me that nuking cities or executing those who can't keep tempo are effective techniques for making humans behave. It is not clear to me that it is so. In fact I can recite historical examples of kingdoms showing that people get used to anything no matter how drastic. And when that happens the revolt with a godly force. I suggest you read the Umayyad Dynasty. It is particularly fitting to this debate because it involved application of extreme force on Iraqi population. Yeah, fireworks displays are "awesome", but no, they don't shock anyone. Least of all an Iraqi population Actually, they don't even shock Canadians. Sacha Trudeau, son of former Canadian Prime Minister, is making a documentary about this war and is in Baghdad. I heard him talking tonight and one of his comments was "it is amazing how quickly one gets used to it. We [the reporters] along with the local population run out and watch them". We could fix that problem by going back to the old "Dresden" solution, but that would get right back to the problem of killing 5% of the population, and we don't have the guts to kill that many people. I really wish you'd stop posing that as a solution. There are those who see nothing wrong with that and may take you up on your offer. Sun Tzu PS I did not want to kill those concubines, but it was in my self interest to do so; it got me the job as the general.