Thank you for your thoughts. I don't think that guilt is the motivating factor here. First, I think, we have learned(more from WWI then WWII) that total war can prolong a war and spoil the peace. Second, Americans as a group believe in a controlled response. If a untrained woman killed someone in a fight, we would hold her less accountable then we would someone trained by Special Forces. In America, the more you know about a subject, the more accountable you're held. In war, no one can compete with us. We can rain down fire from the heavens, and our all seeing eyes give no escape. That is a great deal of responsibility, and we are trying to use it wisely.
Question, Doctor: Could it be our guilt comes from a Modernist view that we are - or should be - somehow "beyond" the ancient base motives of jealousy, envy, greed, sloth, rage, lust, et al; and that we must not see others as motivated by the same. When the mask is removed from all the fashionable philosophies and political creeds, and the posturing of leaders and politicians, the basest motives are revealed. At bottom, Marxism is theft 'justified' by envy, sloth, and greed.
I tend to agree there is a dual force applied here. White guilt probably plays a part, but not a massive one -- we are, as we should be, making an unprecedented level of effort to minimalize noncombatant casualties -- probably a fourth our our casualties could be avoided if we simply shot first and asked questions later -- instead, we clean out a room/building, whatever, while putting our servicemen & women at risk.
That this effort is being made should be appreciated by the Left and others, instead of taken for granted. We are unquestionably one of the few militaries in the world who would make the effort.
Simple, brute, overwhelming force doesn't defeat insurgencies.
On the other hand, if the essayist is arguing that we should adopt Saddam's tactics and start gassing towns that harbor insurgents . . .
Simple, brute, overwhelming force doesn't defeat insurgencies.
Yes it does. It sure defeated the Japanese. It was close to defeating the north Vietnamese (was it Linebacker II?). You have to apply it before the occupation, with the purpose of completely breaking the will of the enemy. (Drawing them out and slaughtering them).
Needless to say, it's a nasty type of warfare. What we're doing right now is far more humane. It would work a whole lot better if our media was playing it's part fighting this battle on the ideological front. No one is playing on that field. If we had a full scale trumpeting support of our culture, civilization, and our mission in Iraq, if they portrayed these murderers for the twisted animals that they are; the insurgency would have no hope.
In the end, the only way to defeat terrorism, is through exterminating the terrorists, and perhaps, unfortunately, those in close proximity to the terrorists.
Terrorism is not quite war, but it's definitely beyond criminal activity. This is terrorism's edge.
We don't have an institution suited to deal with it.
Terrorists need to be exterminated. But by who?
Certainly not miranda reading cops. Or by UCMJ abiding military men.
So here we sit. Waiting for the next attack.
My bet is for the military to adapt into something that can perhaps temporarily be made to exterminate the terrorists.
Use a real world example to fix this in your mind. Think of the ms13 gang. They are essentially savages who do not respond to incarceration or punishment of any kind. They are first and only gang members and nothing else. They'll kill anyone for any reason. They have no respect for the law, or even civilization itself, or even human life per se. (the jihadists are similar)
In my opinion, they should be shot on site. And only because nothing else works on these people, except to kill them. MS13 people are either already murderers, or they are about to become murderers.(same as the jihadists)
But who should do the shooting? Certainly not police, certainly not citizens, and certainly not our good boy soldiers.
But somebody, somewhere is going to have to, sooner or later.
The ms13 gang are one thing, they're a terrorist gang. They don't have institutions or are not a product of an institution.
The jihadist on the other hand are the product of an institution. The jihadist come directly from Islam. And we can attack Islam if we choose to. We can ban Islam from America, deport muslims and bar their reentry. We can bomb muslim countries, take down their governments, and demand separation of mosque and state. We can bomb mosques, kill clerics, and kill mobs and masses of muslim people, if we choose this.
We haven't chosen to do this, yet.
The muslims dare us too, time and again. But we have not yet responded.
But perhaps, when people realize that Islam, the institution, has chosen terrorism as it's method of waging war against the west, we will.
I believe terrorism is a chosen strategy of the muslims who hate the west and America. And I believe they chose this method because we don't have an institution capable of meeting the moral challenges terrorism presents.(this certainly seems the case with the so called palestinians versus the Israelis)
For the west to win, we need to first identify and name the enemy, then kill it.
Muslims think of themselves as members of a world wide ummah, or nation.
We should treat them all accordingly, same as we did Germans or Japanese in past wars.
This is a gathering storm, right in front of our noses. If this enemy get nukulars, they won't be needing terrorism any longer. That much seems obvious enough.
Uh, Japan wasn't an insurgency--it was an Empire.
Yes, we had the force to defeat the North Vietnamese. The Viet Cong? Not so much.
Your final sentence, dear Aaron, I believe sums up the entire problem quite nicely.
Aiding and abetting the enemy during war (sedition, treason) used to be very serious crimes. Now it's their very definition of being a true patriotic American, for chrisake!
Doc, I don't know how you do this day in and day out without becoming your own patient!!
On second thought, I suppose it can be a healty thing in proper doses eh?
-Old Habits Reappear
-Fighting the Fear of Fear
-Growing Conspiracy
-Myself Is after Me
-Frayed Ends of Sanity
-Hear Them Calling
-Hear Them Calling Me
I think it's a grave injustice and stupidity to presume that MS13 and Iranian sponsored terrorists are such savages that they'll kill anyone for any reason. That dehumanizes them to the point that you stop regarding them as men capable of sophistcated strategies and tactics.
And it's also factually wrong. They don't kill anyone for any reason....they choose their victims very carefully and tend to limit their acts to a few precise, as opposed to many arbitrary attacks.
So for example, in Northern Virginia MS13 isn't kicking in doors at 3am to kill every 3rd Gringo household. And Iran, while it has sent terror squads on occasion to hit Israeli targets, hasn't made a habit of this.
If either group really were indiscriminate and utterly irrational, they'd have been liquidated by now.
"...grave injustice"??? "...presumed savages"???
Ettu, Dear John?
You appear to be an well-educated and articulate man, but my, such an apologist.
To paraphrase that full-bird old warrior Colonel Sherman Potter,
"Bull-hockey!"
Question, Doctor: Could it be our guilt comes from a Modernist view that we are - or should be - somehow "beyond" the ancient base motives of jealousy, envy, greed, sloth, rage, lust, et al; and that we must not see others as motivated by the same. -- M.Capulus
I prefer the Trekkie phrasing -- "WE'VE EVOLVED BEYOND ALL THAT!" -- followed by humming a cheezy Star Trek theme.
Muslims think of themselves as members of a world wide ummah, or nation.
More precisely, they think of themselves as a worldwide TRIBE. Islam came out of Arab tribal culture, is optimized for Arab tribal culture, and locks in all the aspects of Arab tribal culture -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- by Divine Fiat.
The coming of Islam suppressed the continuous blood feuds/honor killings/raid and pillage of Arab tribal society by redefining all the Ummah as a single Arab tribe, upon which all the blood feuds/honor killings/raid and pillage are redirected to the Infidels outside the new Ummah/Tribe.
Excellent.
I would add that our 'guilt' is exacerbated by our failing to address other pressing issues.
We feel guilty about Iraq because we did not act in Rwanda and are failing to act in Darfur.
Astonishing as it is, we cannot point to a single, completed achivement, as of late.
We allow ourselves to be hamstrung by the agendistas- even when we know better.
Doc: Something else applies here. Think of how frequently Christianity and Catholicism are bashed by the Left. Again, a case of taking several characteristics that do not apply to the group at large, and have not for several hundred years, and use that to delegitimize everything the group says or believes. No matter how morally upstanding the Roman Catholic Church is, the Left will forever point with glee and Schandenfreude to the child-molesters in the ranks and imply not only that all Catholics are kiddie-fiddlers, but that they secretly long for the return of the Inquisition.
The barbarism of an organization within the Church that ended a good 400 years ago, the perverse desires of a relative few priests - all of that serves to sufficiently tarnish the RCC in the eyes of the Left that they can justify ignorance everything Pope Benedict says. "Oh, the leader of the child molesters and witch burners has something to say? By golly, you BET we'll listen!"
Well, it's their funeral - and ours too.
Boy are our enemies sawing on our heartstrings too!
China is moaning about global warming melting the icecaps. They don't give a fig about the environment. Their sentiment is targeted at us.
China and Russia are declaring America a dangerous and illegitimate entity for wanting to strike Iran, evan as Iran is openly threatening to strike Israel in an initiation of hostility (recent). They are also targeting our guilt.
The world wants us to show weakness. They want us to fold. They want us to pack up, go home, hobble our economy, and lay ourselves open to attack, and they think guilt commanded by our domestic 5th column can do it. It's got to be one of our only weaknesses, and I hope we're not so weak-willed and weak-minded as that.
Of course skin matters! In the case of liberals, their skin is much thinner than ours.
I'm waiting for Willis castigate white liberals for "thinking like a negro."
It's a grave injustice to delude oneself when one is responsible for the lives of others. And by presuming MS13 to be irrational (as in willing to kill anyone for any reason) what you do is blind yourself to any thoughtful, clever tactic or strategic move they might make because your stereotype of them as 'willing to kill anyone for anything' blinds you to their ethic and code (such as it is).
Aaron,
Brute force does defeat insurgencies, and historically it has- when and only when the power fighting the insurgency has abandoned any pretense of seperating warrior from civilian- thus stripping the insurgent of his cover.
Insurgency is based on the concept that the insurgent will fight a People's War, but the other side will not. Historically, mass destruction of the people involved in the People's War, since Rome rule Europe, has been effective in combatting insurgencies.
I am not advocating this. Merely pointing out the reality- "we cannot defeat an insurgency" really means "We are a peaceful, life loving people and abhor the measures we would have to take to defeat this insurgency."
Regimes unafraid of atrocity are precisely those best able to deal with insurgency- yes, really. Saddam, when given free reign, had little to fear from insurgents. China, Iran, same thing. Have no illusions- the rulers of Beijing would slaughter a hundred million with no remorse to crush an insurgency. There is no hope that an insurgency could ever, ever free Tibet. It would be a lifeless place, one vast cemetery, before it was ever free.
And you can ask the Seminole or Nez Perce people about their experiences with insurgency on the one hand, and brute force on the other.
Who knows? If the west loses this Long War, will historians in some future age, when our humanitarian impulses have long faded from this Earth, conclude that our civilization fell when its members proved insufficiently ruthless to commit the deeds needed to maintain their collective security their opponents?
John - I failed to make mention that I understood your underlying point: "do not underestimate these brutal savages" and point well taken.
I am however, glad you qualified your last statement concerning their (chortle, snort) code of ethics with "(such as it is)".
Such as it isn't.
I'm reminded of this from faithmouse:
http://www.faithmouse.com/faithm...s/
daily416.html
John's point that the enemies of civilization are not all of a piece is well taken. There are other types of badness than indiscriminate killing. In the multiple loyalties of the Middle East, it is also wise to use different tactics for different opponents. Some enemies are implacable, but others are temporary.
How ironic to hear all this from Michelle Malkin's biggest fan.
Guilt? What guilt? Having been in war, and survived to an impending old age, I say that Shelby Steele is off the mark. It never occurs to someone in combat that the turdball trying to kill him might be some poor misunderstood fugitive from the Third World. You're just as dead whether killed by the most modern weapon or a punji stake. On the other hand, it is completely unnecessary to pulverize what civilization some Third World country might possess in order to subdue it. Using nukes to settle every dispute certainly would be effective, but the consequences, in objective terms, are untolerable. That's why we use minimal force, focused on particular points of resistance, when we engage in war.
Too many "white people" nowadays get their ideas about war and its consequences from movies. I can't think of a more inappropriate format for learning about such an important thing.
I'm going to challenge some Liberals I know to prove that their "Diversity" concept or ethic does not imply that they think Blacks have a black brain. Actually, I'm just going to assert that it does and see what they do.
How did Liberals manage to convert the meaning of "diversity" to its exact opposite, where they get to tell you what certain things they alone choose constitute "having diversity" or "being diverse"?
And how did they come to so thoroughly and exactly replicate what you would have thought to be the basic mentality of a KKK member, covered up by a "caring" verneer which allows them to use Blacks as their pawns? It's amazing.
When Liberals keep urging "tolerance" upon the rest of us, I take it to mean that they are the ones who have a real problem doing it themselves. Tolerance doesn't take any effort, but it doesn't include tolerating those who want to kill or control you - which Liberals instead seem to think means you've achieved a perfect world.
Oliver Willis does not have enough credibility to even say Shelby Steele's name - or Sowell's. Willis also spent about what seemed like a 4 straight months excoriating Jeff Jarvis at Jarvis' own site for not being a "true" or "real" Liberal, because Jarvis would not say what what Willis wanted him to say - express Willis' venom. As far as I know, that's not how you retain members in your Party.
Personally, I don't judge a man by the color of his skin. I judge him by the size of his nostrils.
I posted this over on Augean Stables, after noting the comment quoted below:
> After World War II, revolutions across the globe, from India to Algeria and from Indonesia to the American civil rights revolution, defeated the authority inherent in white supremacy, if not the idea itself.
This phrasing is itself victim to the guilt syndrome. It wasn’t the revolutions which eliminated white supremacy — it was white acknowledgement of the fact that they weren’t the be-all-end-all of the universe which allowed such things to take place.
Much like white males yielding up to the notion of sexual equality starting at the turn of the century, so, too, were white men yielding up to the notion of racial equality.
This is why the guilt issue makes no honest sense — it wasn’t white men who were lording it over others, it was the presumptions of a clearly dominant culture expressing itself. It is human nature itself to presume a measure of superiority over others “not my kind” — the Japanese word for “foreigner” also translates to “barbarian”, and the Chinese word to “devil”. Hence, the notion of superiority is hardly white, but human.
It says much of whites that they have risen above those notions with only a measure of pressure (and not overt force) to the concept of general equality.
The guilt is wrong, and always has been. It has allowed race zealots and demagogues to bring all manner of harm to those we should be helping — by expecting a measure of self-sufficiency and capability from them. You cannot help those who will not help themselves.
Also, I note this:
--------------------
"My forebears were Confederate... Every factor and influence in my background -- and my wife's, for that matter -- would foster the personal belief that you are right.
But my very stomach turned over when I learned that negro soldiers, just back from overseas, were being dumped out of Army trucks in Mississippi and beaten.
Whatever my inclinations as a native of Missouri might have been, as President, I know this is bad. I shall fight to end evils like this."
- Harry S Truman -
Those revolutions occurred not in spite of the notion of white supremacy, but because white people were in the process of recognizing the error inherent in it. It'll be interesting to see when the rest of the "races" catch up to white people in this recognition.
> Personally, I don't judge a man by the color of his skin. I judge him by the size of his nostrils.
Well, I don't judge a woman by the color of her skin, but by the size of her...
HEY, SOMEBODY HADDA SAY IT!!!
(8oD
The biggest racists I have seen in the last 40 years all seem to call themselves "liberals" and "progressives".
It also is becoming rather interesting to see that the ones that screech "racism" the loudest are the ones who are themselves racists. Oliver Willis and his ilk are the poster children for this.
The one bright spot (if it can be called that) is that they have tossed the race card around so much that it is just about worn out. The only ones buying their shinola are the LLL's who are in their "choir".
Well, I have to say, the only white, college-educated person I know who has openly refered to a negro by the "N" word (in a directly pejorative manner, not as any sort of friendly jibe or referent, like "My NIZZLE!") is a self-proclaimed "yellow dog Democrat", and a totally clueless socialist.
In D&D terms, an textbook, realworld 18 Int and a 3 Wis.
...will historians in some future age, when our humanitarian impulses have long faded from this Earth, conclude that our civilization fell when its members proved insufficiently ruthless to commit the deeds needed to maintain their collective security their opponents?
What were those three Greek words for "Fear Breeds Respect"?
An here we have George Bush's greatest sin. He doesn't have any "blacks or hispanics" in his administration. Foolishly, he hired very competent individuals for the jobs he filled. Secretary Rice, Secretary Powell, Secretary Gutierrez, they do not fill the bill as they were hired on merit not political correctness. Is it not strange that it is such an evil Republican administration that has promoted non-whites to such responsible positions. The Democrats generally toss the "poor minorities" a bone by appointing a one as Secretary of "go give some speeches your department isn't important". But Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, Secretary of Commerce, these positions have some clout and must be taken seriously. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development? this position is in charge of building ghettos.
No George Bush failed, he chose on merit without regard to race. Surely someone knew that this would never be viewed favorably?
I argued in the 2004 election campaign that part of Iraq is the Moral Superiority War.
And Bush is not so good at showing how action to stop Saddam is morally superior to the alternative inaction.
That the Dem non-action "no genocide" policy in Rwanda was morally inferior; that the Dem use no-defense in Iran in 79 was morally inferior; and the big one, cutting aid to S. Vietnam in 1974 meant accepting N. Viet victory. And SE Asian genocide.
Morally inferior.
S. Viet aid for 15 more years would have kept S. Vietnam away from a commie bloodbath, and prolly saved Cambodia, too.
The US "could" have nuked Hanoi, like my granny wanted, to win. This prolly would have cost fewer lives than the number murdered by the N. Viet when they accepted the unconditional surrender.
I do think "guilt" is there, but it's because the USA fails the Unreal Perfection test -- just as Christianity does.
There is also the mythological problem of "good, strong" king (God) somehow allowing evil to exist. Either not good enough, or not strong enough.
Dr. Sanity said, "You are automatically absolved, and all is forgiven with regard to any PC crime of being insensitive and loutish towards others--but only if you already are a member of a sanctioned victim group yourself."
Dr., the behavior you describe is not only absolved, when it is made by the likes of O. Willis, H. Belafonte, A. Sharpton, and the like, it is sanctioned and rewarded. Race hustling and victim pimping are very lucrative sidelines and for the fortunate few, they provide a far better job than can be had in almost any honest form of work.
Both sides of ANY situation must be able to share the guilt.
In the case of slavery and apartheid within the US, my ancestors accepted slavery as much as their captors did in many ways.
My grandfather told me the story of an American Indian that they had captured "down in Tennessee" and brought to the plantation where they attempted to make him perform the forced labor of a slave. He simply would not do the work. They beat him, they whipped him, he never even gave them the satisfaction of crying out. He starved himself to death chained to a pole.
It is difficult to accept our own guilt for any plight we suffer, imagined or real, but acknowledging our own complicancy is the first step to reality and healing.
Recent example in the news, a sports team hires a strip tease dancer.
In my book, BOTH sides are quilty of doing something they should not have been doing.
One of Christ's most important teachings concerns the transformation we go through when we FORGIVE others. Yes, it is a self-serving action to forgive others for it liberates YOU.
And that's just another good reason why Jesse Jackson isn't really a minister of the Christian faith.
The child out of wedlock is another...
See the writings of Paul for more on that.
.
"complicancy" ? "complicity"
See what can happen due to forced bussing? 
.
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