American Power

droid

Well-known member
I like Elizabethan Craner. At least his language is in the same timeframe as his politics.
 

luka

Well-known member
Duane J. Truitt says:
February 17, 2017 at 8:05 am

The notion of a war that is declared, has a beginning, a middle, and a declared end with full capitulation by one side or the other does not exist today. Thankfully so, because if we were engaged in any such existentially-threatening cataclysmic war, it would be thousands of times bloodier than what we are engaged in now.

Such a war might come to pass at some future point, but given the nuclear option, the only way a complete end to any “war” can occur is with nuclear armageddon. The nuke bomb completely changed the nature of war over 70 years ago.

What we have today is not “war”, as a noun. What we have is continuing offensive and defensive struggle, as a verb … a struggle which will never, ever end, because human beings are human beings and there will always be conflict, some of it violent.

What is so difficult to understand about that?

The struggle in the Middle East with radical Islamists will never, at least not in many human generations to come, come to an end. It will always threaten the USA and the rest of the civilized nations of the world, because of easy human communication and movement across the planet. At best, we manage this struggle as if it were a low-grade fever, with relatively minor applications of therapeutic relief from time to time as are necessary.

But, when we allow the struggle to metastacize, and grow out of control, as we did prior to the 9.11.01 attacks, it requires emergency invasive treatment, which almost always involves going too far, and “over-kill”, as we did in Iraq … it’s inevitable that overkill be employed when engaged in an, if only episodically, existential battle for our survival.

So, what this author complains about is precisely the correct diagnosis and course of treatment. If we don’t keep the struggle between Islamic radicalism and the rest of the world under control, and limited to fighting a low grade fever, then instead we’ll soon take a massive blow which will cause us then to massively over-react.

Sorry, I’ll take the former approach every time over the latter.

The struggle between those who want to kill us, and us, will never, ever end.
 
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