Absinthe & Cookies (a bit bitter, a bit sweet)

How can more knowledge about each other do anything but increase understanding?

Please note - I never used the "get over it" anywhere. I did say - lets make September 11th a day of affirmation & life.

No offense, but I understand all I want to about "the Religion of Peace". I understand that *they* think this world isn't big enough for them and us. So if that's the way they want it, then that's their choice, and my choice to make sure we're the ones left standing.

Rob,

Please go to my blog http://laughingwolf.net and read what I just posted under never forget. Understanding is nice, gives you good feelings, and does absolutely nothing to deal with the fact that not just war, but war to the death has been declared on us. We do understand, we do study motivations and attempt to learn from them, and we do help even our enemies. It is those enemies that do not care, do not learn, and absolutely fear understanding because to understand is to be contaminated.

They have sworn to kill us, to destroy our culture and all that it stands for (hope, acheivement, opportunity, you know, those things) in order to bring their vision of the world into being. A vision that requires a stone-age level of existence for most, if you care to take a long realistic and rational look at it. We did not seek out what happened, it was brought to us by a false ideology and a desire for power over every individual in the world. Nothing less.

I have studied things, including history, religion, and other such insignificant things. Has America made mistakes? Yes. Did we try to do what was right and did we try to correct them? Also yes. Understanding will change nothing, but may find an easier way raise people up afterwards. We must NOT sink down to their level, but that does not mean that we do not fight this war tooth and nail.

If you have not figured out that this is a war to the death, and not just individual death but societal death, then you need to go back to school.

BTW, I am so glad I posted before I saw this. Or it might have been a very different post.

Well Said Ith! Let's be the ones standing, and then we can lead others on up.

Thanks and well said, LW. You're one of the most eloquent writers!

*bow* *blush*

Thank you, Milady!

Help me understand something then Robert... what the flipping hell would your response to 9/11 be?! To pretend nothing happened? To pretend the world is nothing but sunshine and rainbows?

At the time, I'm not sure my response wouldn't have been the same. Blast the taliban who were certainly harboring the terrorists who performed this atrocity.

I'm also not convinced that Iraq is a direct threat. A brutal dictator. Yes. A people oppressed beyond belief? Yes.

But so are the people of Zimbabwe. Uganda. Congo, and most of Africa. If our objective is to be the world's policeman, how about North Korea, which ***IS*** a credable and concrete threat to the US, and ***IS*** governed by a brutal dictator, who has allowed his people to resort to cannabilsm, for goodnes sake.

So - yes. Do what's necessary to protect the United States, our famileis, our friends. But for goodness sake, do something else too. Something to change the hearts and minds of those who think they are our enemies.

Rob, I really do think you're sincere, but these people don't want their hearts changed. Sometimes it takes grinding an enemy into the ground before their hearts are opened to an alternate reality. Yes, that's harsh, but it's also the way it is sometimes.

Historically - when has that worked?

World War II: Germany, Japan

And, that's just the most recent examples.

After we kicked the snot out of Japan & germany, we spent considerable effort (Marshall Plan) rebuilding Europe, and considerable time in Japan. Capturing hearts and minds. In world war I we gound Germany into the dirt and then left them there. World War II was the result.

So what do you propose in the Middle East? Grind them into the dirt. - Well - they're there. What now? hearts and minds? or another generation to hate?

Rob, you really need to read some more history about the end of World War I and the Weimar Republic in Germany. Do a Google search for "November criminals" and read some of the sources you'll find there. Then, try William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich or William Manchester's The Arms of Krupp and see if you still stand by the statement "In world war I we gound Germany into the dirt and then left them there. World War II was the result."

One of the reasons Hitler and the Nazis were able to rise to power in Weimar Germany was that a significant faction in Germany did not believe that Germany had been defeated on the battlefield during World War I, but rather that the nation had surrendered as a result of treachery within the Wilhelmine regime. The German territory lost at the end of World War I was not lost to Allied invasion and occupation, but through German withdrawal in accord with the terms of the Versailles Treaty.

Take a look at this map and tell me again that we "ground the Germans into the dirt" in World War I. They lost a lot of men on the battlefield, but not much territory. Nothing like what they lost in World War II (see here).

Additionally, you might want to consider that the Marshall Plan was not designed so much to "win hearts and minds" to our side after the war, but to prevent the Russians from winning those same hearts and minds in the postwar economic chaos. That's one lesson that we did learn from Weimar Germany -- in bad economic times, people will follow those who can provide them with bread.

Finally, it was the utter and complete military defeat and occupation of both Germany and Japan which allowed us to root out the totalitarian elements within the two countries which supported their imperialist aims. We tore down their old forms of government and imposed truly democratic systems on them -- not because they wanted democracy, but because we insisted that they have it. As the new governments demonstrated that they were worthy of more autonomy, we gave it to them. Eventually, we were able to turn everything over to them, but only because we knew that they were not going to go back to their old ways. And, as Rob has noted, this process took years to complete.

Rob, it will probably take grinding the Islamofascist regimes of the Middle East into the dirt for peace to have a chance in that part of the world. We need to be just as thorough and just as merciless with the Islamofascists as we were with the Nazis and the Japanese militarists. It's the only method that will solve the problem, rather than just paper over it.

We know all we need to know about how they feel -- they want to subjugate us to their way of life, or kill us if we don't submit. Personally, I'm not going down without one hell of a fight.

Sorry for taking so much bandwidth, Ith, but reading "hearts and minds" BS always sets me off.

Some minds are so set in concrete that grinding them to dust, along with the bodies that contain them, is the only way to prevent harm to self! Those who deny that plain fact are blind, deaf, and dumb, or something similar. Maybe they don't care if they get killed by the "uglies", but the rest of us sure as hell do!

TRF, not at all! That was my fantasy reply :)

Gotta love a comment with a bibliography!Thank you :) :)

I'd reccomend "The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny " by Victor Davis Hanson.

Haven't read it yet as I'm still working through Carnage and Culture, but I think it deals with some of the themes we've been discussing.

Well said TRF! That was a masterful reply. Good one also MommaBear. :)

Ith, thanks for the book recommendation, am going to have to add that one to my "to read" list. BTW, am posting a response to a bit of logical fallacy he posted on his site too. Couldn't resist. *g*

"Understanding is nice, gives you good feelings, and does absolutely nothing to deal with the fact that not just war, but war to the death has been declared on us."

Or, to put it another way: When you wake up in the night and go to the kitchen for a drink of water, only to find a burglar robbing you blind, what does it matter WHY he's doing it? Are you going to stand there trying to understaaaaaaaaand why he's there? No! You're going to chase him out and call the police!

Piss on "understanding." And piss on the people who demand understanding rather than defense (so piss on you too, Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin, Julia Roberts *gasp* Martin Sheen, George Clooney, Dennis "the Menace" Kucinich *gasp* ah hell, I'll never be able to name them all).

Sorry guys, I cannot forget or 'Get over' September 11th. I work at Andrews AFB, outside DC. I remember commenting how wonderful the weather was that morning, about an hour before all Hell literally broke loose. A calm and splendid day was turned into a malestrom of stacked phone calls, alerts, armed guards all over the place, frag orders, locked doors, ID chesks, taped windows, rumors and re-calls. All with the tower of black smoke from the Pentagon over to the west as Guard F-16s and Marine F-18s loaded for bear streaked into sky. At a tempo not seen before. That didn't stop until well after Air Force One touched down around sunset.

Want to thank everyone for providing some great discussion, and keeping it civil. Y'all are great )

I would hate to have been born and bred in a soicety ravaged by war. I could not even imagine how I would live. Who I would hate/blame and what I would live for. Can you?