Putting Hirohito with those other names that Mike named, is a dishonor and a disgrace.

We may need Bush to make a new approach, but that does not mean we need Mke’s approach, however.

Why does mike think bookworm used compromise when mike thinks he never used it? Because, those who believe in the End of History has nothing but compromise to use. THey don’t believe in the tactics and strategies that came before, like mike said those things are over or at least he believes they are over and done with. Mike sees fighting terrorism as feeding it, or whatever analogous actions of the US in this war as feeding it if not specifically fighting terrorism. What else does mike have humanly available to use in his arsenal except compromise? Does he think he has invented a new positive sum game that is not centered around compromise?

The answers don’t lie anymore in simplistic solutions like dropping a (now “tactical”) nuclear weapon or working out a compromise.

Mutually Assured Destruction and the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were anything but a simplistic solution. It’s people who believe in the End of History that believe that if you just avoid these simplistic solutions, you’ll have a very simple solution. That’s a difference in philosophy, always and anyways.

The world hasn’t changed — we’ve changed. We’re embarrassed by American ourself, by what we are, and we’re ashamed to defend ourself.

A common saying regarding Israel is this: If the Palestinians would give up fighting, there would be peace in the Middle East (although maybe not on terms agreeable to the Palestinians); if the Israelis were to give up fighting, everyone of them would be slaughtered and their homes burned. Under those circumstances, there is no room for negotiation. For Israel, at least, it is a zero sum game. And I think, given the pronouncements of Al Qaida and its fellow travelers, they envision that zero sum game for us.

[By the way, Mike, I am so appreciative of how you've kept this debate polite and intellectual. I don't know that we'll ever be able to convince each other here, but I do think that we've perfectly demonstrated the high functioning in a civil society of a true marketplace of ideas.]

When someone declares his intention to destroy you, yes, I thinking winning is a zero sum game. There’s no room for negotiation in a conflict with someone whose goal is your complete destruction. We are not involved in a mere territorial dispute or a struggle for limited or precious resources. This is a struggle about core issues of being and not being. Indeed, I challenge you to explain to me how we negotiate our way out of the current war Al Qaida thrust upon us on 9/11. To keep it real, I would ask that you keep in mind the fact that Islam’s goal, as stated by the prophet and his followers, is a world that has surrendered completely to Allah, that radical Muslim groups forthrightly state that they want America and Europe completely Islamicized, and that modern Islamists have with regularity slaughtered adherents to Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and sects of Islam with which they disagree.

Just to expand further on my position, I will remind you that modern Germany and Japan were both land hungry, people destroying, totalitarian dictatorships. The US defeated those political ideologies completely through a war that envisioned only victory, not some weird compromise that kept those ideologies in power. I suspect that your average decent German would infinitely prefer a post-American Germany (even if he doesn’t like America very much right now), to living in the police state of Nazi Germany. As someone I heard interviewed once said, sometimes you have to excise a little healthy flesh to remove a cancer.

By the way, you should also ask African Americans what they would have thought of a compromise with the South in the 1960s. Perhaps something where people would be slaves for only 15 or 20 years before “ascending” to sharecropper status. That too was a system that didn’t leave room for compromise. And as a total and random aside here, I’ll just add that slavery is endemic in the modern Arab world.
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Bookworm, I appreciate your passion and conviction for making a world that is safe and free for all people. As you imply, those are the feelings (among others) that inspired the American Revolution, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil Rights Movement, and WWII.

You suggest that I am dangerously idealistic in thinking that war can be avoidable, that treating “the enemy” as a human being is the right path, that there are other solutions besides zero sum games.

In turn, I suggest that you are idealistic as well, but in a way that keeps the wheel of hatred, fear, and war turning for people now and well into our grandchildren’s future. You believe that fighting the good fight against Muslims will be a zero sum game, despite all evidence (Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Iran, etc.) to the contrary. You want this “war on terrorism” to be no different than the wars our ancestors fought against tyrants and, as you put it, “land hungry” dictators. You hope that we can find the perfect place to drop a big bomb, or kill the right terrorist leader, or excise the right flesh, to win the war.

But times have changed, Bookworm. The rules have changed. The old players - the Hitlers, the Stalins, the Hirohitos, the Mussolinis, and the Maos are gone. The old ways of thinking about and dealing with them are obsolete. Granted, GW tried to win one for the Gipper by toppling Saddam, but that’s the exception that proves the rule, isn’t it. We need a new approach.

Osama is a sign of the times; he and his “Islamofascists” are a symptom, not the cancer. The cancer has matasticized, there is no longer a physical tumor you can excise to restore health. (Unless you’re thinking genocide? But I know you’re not.) The cancer is not Islam or the Muslim people. Western foreign policies helped to create the disease and now we’re watching it spread. The tragic thing is, instead of treating it, we’re feeding it.

You introduced the term “compromise,” attributed it to my beliefs, and then sneered at it. It’s interesting how much loathing some people have for that word. Loathing born of fear? But I actually never used the word in any of my postings. Why did you think of it? You obviously equate it with weakness. This is another out-dated way of thinking, but it sure dies hard! The world is much more complicated now, largely because of its staggering population density, declining natural resources, and mind boggling advances in technology.

The answers don’t lie anymore in simplistic solutions like dropping a (now “tactical”) nuclear weapon or working out a compromise. We’re at a Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary in world affairs. Will we choose to react like dinosaurs or, for once, adaptive mammals?

I disagree with Bookworm on the Goodness of Europeans or the French. Some good, most of them sheep. The ratio is a bit lower here in America.

And until we understand this too, we’re just going to end up in an endless stalemate, where our tremendous advantages in terms of size and weaponry are simply offset by our Oprah-like compassion for the guy who wants to kill us.

Israel. Don’t be like Israel, never be like Israel, not unless you wish to sacrifice thousands of your people as Danegeld. (French loved that in WWII)

If Hiroshima was zero sum, Japan wouldn’t be the 3rd or 2nd most powerful global economy at the same time that the US economy is the best in the world.

War is zero sum. There’s one winner, and there’s one loser. It’s not like taxes, where lowering it, allows everyone to win. Wars, however, end. There’s a beginning, and there’s an end. What happens later, is something else.

Just to expand further on my position, I will remind you that modern Germany and Japan were both land hungry, people destroying, totalitarian dictatorships. The US defeated those political ideologies completely through a war that envisioned only victory, not some weird compromise that kept those ideologies in power. I suspect that your average decent German would infinitely prefer a post-American Germany (even if he doesn’t like America very much right now), to living in the police state of Nazi Germany. As someone I heard interviewed once said, sometimes you have to excise a little healthy flesh to remove a cancer.

By the way, you should also ask African Americans what they would have thought of a compromise with the South in the 1960s. Perhaps something where people would be slaves for only 15 or 20 years before “ascending” to sharecropper status. That too was a system that didn’t leave room for compromise. And as a total and random aside here, I’ll just add that slavery is endemic in the modern Arab world.

Looks like the Hiroshima example was, on the contrary, the right example for you. I’ve lived long enough to know that I can’t change people’s beliefs. We could argue all day about whether it’s best to dehumanize the enemy and kill them off or keep the enemy human and (for once) unpack the conflict.

I wonder how you define “win.” I suspect you believe in a zero-sum game. Do you think killing Osama is going to stop the war? Will bombing Iran quell the unrest in the Muslim World? Did you think getting rid of Sadam was going to end terrorism? Where is Jerusalem for our new Crusaders? Where is Hiroshima now?

I understand that you see “Islamofascists” as Evil and Western people as Good. But with that B&W worldview, so much of value is lost.

Your point was to consider literature and movies that prepare our children for the Second Crusade. I agree with you that our kids are being exposed nowadays to media that emphasize the black and white over the gray. The Evil Ones and their minions found in Harry Potter, Narnia, and The Lord of the Rings are just plain evil to the core. Interestingly, however, they also are not human (we could argue about wizards vs. muggles, but they are essentially distinct).

In time of war, we must be especially vigilant, not only so that “the enemy” doesn’t ambush us, but, perhaps more importantly, so that we – our children included - don’t fall into a moral trap. When we make our enemies into nonhumans, they are easier to eliminate. They become livestock or monsters.

An elderly gentleman once told me a story that gets to the heart of the matter. He was a child during WWII and, like all the other kids in his neighborhood, he loved to go to the movie theater. Before each movie, the proprietor would show a news reel to bring the audience up to date on the war effort. My friend recalled with great clarity the day in 1945 when he saw a news reel reporting on the bombing of Hiroshima. He was stunned and frightened. After the movie, he went home and told his mom about what he had seen and how terrified he was by the suffering and death the bomb had caused. His mother replied,”Don’t worry honey, Japs don’t feel pain the same way we do.”

I only hope that, in our passion to destroy the Evil Ones in our world today, we aren’t teaching our children to hate and dehumanize in their world tomorrow.

I’m not trying to make a historical analogy. That is, just as I appreciate that the Da Vinci Code is fiction (and poorly written fiction at that), I realize that the books I’m describing are also fiction. I mean, I’m not trying to mail letters or book flights to Hogwarts or Narnia. My point is that, fiction or not, these books have larger messages about appropriate conduct when evil forces are arrayed against us. (And yes, I believe wholeheartedly that we are on the side of good, and that the Islamofascists represent evil. This is black and white to me, without shades of gray.) All of the books/movies I discuss teach children this message using fantasy and allegory. I just noted, almost as an aside, that it’s fascinating that the imaginary world Lewis created 50 years should, coincidentally, have parallels to the real life decisions children are facing now — something that may affect how they process the messages in the fantasy books.