Friday, May 28, 2004

 
Or Else - Or Else, what?

I doubt that I'll finish this tonight, but some lacunae in conservative thought bekon filling with even such half-baked stuff as are likely to be hacked out here. Without quite knowing why these holes exist, it may be pointless to point them out, but here goes-
First, a little digression my help the reader think outside his/her box or blindness. I never felt much guilt about not volunteering to fight in Vietnam because it seemed that our military was not "fighting with one hand tied behind its back," but that a more accurate image was that of Uncle Sam buried up to his *neck* with self-imposed restrictions, while the North Vietnamese poured down from a homeland esssentially untouched by U.S. ground forces. If necessary the NVA could lick its wounds and "take a breather" without risking the existence of the regime in the North. And if our aerial bombardment began to inflict significant damage, it was easy enough for the North to stop it by going through the motions of peace talks. Given that the North had as much of the war materiale from China and the USSR as it could absorb and was losing only easily replacable troops, and again, its own existence was never in serious jeopardy and was inflicting enormous political costs on the United States, it is not surprising that the North never gave up on its goal of absolute, unambiguous conquest of the South. The North *might* have accepted the existence a non-communist South if that were the only way to rid its own soil of U.S. ground forces. U.S. leaders, beginning with at least with LBJ, quite reasonably, if not correctly decided that an invasion of the North carried a substantial risk of a *real* land war(against China and/or the USSR)in Asia, if not WWIII.

It is also folly to expect the "Palestinians" to cease their terrorism against Israel. Again, to flog what should be obvious: What do they have to lose? The Israelis strike back of course, but typically inflict at best a small multiple of their own casualties. Even without the high Palestinian bithrate, their loses are not demographically significant.(As to what limits the rate of Palestinian terrorist actions, I don't know. One limiting factor could be the incompetence and cowardice of most Palestinians, and another could be a realization on some level that if rate or scope of actions against Israel exceeds a certain level, Israel will at last kill or drive out most Palestinians from the West Bank. It is probably far more important for most(or at least a minority which would be thwarted only by savage repression)Palestinians that Israel not exist than to have their own state of "Palestine." And what could a Palestinian state offer its citizens? Prosperity? It has no oil. It doesn't have the geography, traditions, and large Christian minority that gave Lebanon some semblance of prosperity in the past. A Palestinian might believe that he prefers to be ruled by his own gang of thugs and thieves rather than suffer the "humiliation" of Israeli rule, but he is not stupid enough to be exited by the prospect. To put it another way, only the prospect of the annihilation of Israel makes the prospect of miserable self-rule worthy of desiring. To flog this further, the prospect of self-rule while accepting the existence(and not waging war against)of Israel would seem to be nothing worth hoping for -or in other, words: the worst of both worlds.
[*Really* digressing-Israel policies *do* in fact, tend to cripple our own, and a strong U.S. president should strong-arm, if not "bitch slap" it. A better Bush would say something like this to Sharon: "You know, I love you like my own son, but it has come to my attention that the latest suicide bombers killed..what was it? 17 Israelis? And you did- what? Killed about 43 of their guys. Big whoop. Like it or not, you're seen as our ally, and when you do this tit for tat crap it's making *us* look weak too. Now, what I want to see is something like a 2 hour artillery barrage or a few hundred sorties against their cities. Let the UN pass its frickin' resolutions. They're gonna pass 'em no matter what. And are you really afraid of those blue-helmeted weinies? They ask for a cease fire-give 'em a cease frickin' fire. And if they violate it, hit 'em twice, no- ten times as hard as you did the last time. And don't give me this sanctimonious crap about holding the moral high ground by avoiding civilian casualties. It's makin' me puke. The fate of you Jews and Western Civ is on the line, fer cryin' out loud. And don't make me warn you again, or you'll find Palestinians flooding into Israel hoping that you will protect *them* from *us*.]

It's almost time for noddy-blinkers- With respect to the war of Islam against us, only the prospect of the utter annihilation of Islam has any reasonable chance of causing the Islamists to cease their assaults. Again, as in the case of the Palestinians, most of the rest of the Arab world does not have a high ratio of petrodollars to citizens. And while some individual Arabs can earn relatively high incomes in Western countries, it is at least possible that Arabs realize that as a group their collective behaviour is inimicable to freedom and prosperity. They probably also realize that as they immigrate to the West, they not only carry their group pathologies with them, but also that they cannot(like the proverbial scorpion riding some animal across a body of water)prevent themselves from making war, and when their numbers are sufficient,destroying their hosts.

Bush and the rest of us are fools that do not say, or wish to say, to the Iraqis: "We have liberated you from Saddam, but ultimately the future is yours to choose. You may choose to cease your war against us or you choose your own annihilation."
Presently, of course, Bush & Co is faulted for not "managing" the sit. in Iraq. Little outrage is expressed (or elicited from our leaders)for the Iraqi people. Too many people blame Bush, rather than murderous Iraqis for the deaths of of our troops. The Iraqi crimes are treated something like the weather rather than condemned. And to some extent, *this* is the fault of Bush. Bush has not issued any ultimatums or "Or elses" to the Iraqi population.
John Derbyshire tossed off a couple of sentences about not caring about what Moslems think of us. He has doubtless been sickened by those who desperately want them to like us. He *does,* no doubt, "care" about murderous intent in the hearts of those with the means to hurt us. And we should "care" or hey, *respect* those opinions enough to kill the bastards whenever feasible.

Going out on a limb......

Believing what the communists believed,in a way, it *may*(waffle, waffle, here)something of a testament to the human spirit that they waged war so savagely against us for some 70 years. It was not cowardice, but the realization that communism itself could be destroyed, that prevented the USSR from using its nuclear weapons against us. If the human animal or soul could not call upon courage and self-sacrifice in the service of evil, could good still command those virtues? Would I have been *disappointed* if the NVA had called off its war or if the jihadists did at this time?*Maybe just a little.*
Can the Moslem only both call off his war against the West *and* preserve his dignity/honor if he realizes that to make war, at least for now, would destroy Islam, leaving the secular and Christian worlds intact?
Can anyone have read this clumsy verbiage this far? Is more weird than sophomoric? Should I lurch into "Jerimiah Johnson"(Robert Redford)-Native American(or is universal?)stuff about our triumphs being measured by the "greatness" of our enemies. Er, no.