What will we fight for?
Bookworm on Jul 17 2006 at 12:56 pm | Filed under: America, Islam
While I work, I like to listen to talk radio in the background. (I use KRLA’s site, which has great streaming audio.) Today, however, I couldn’t stick with it. I was listening to Michael Medved talk about the very real possibility that the same portable missiles that are raining down on Israel could easily be smuggled into Mexico and begin raining down on America’s border states. This is not a far-fetched scenario. The ostrich-like liberals in my county may be driving their SUV’s around with bumperstickers saying “No War For Oil” or “War Is Not The Answer,” but they really don’t have a say in the matter when one considers that the Islamists have unilaterally declared war on us. (And, yes, I think 9/11 was an act of war.) The fact that 9/11 happened at all means that it is no longer in the realm of conspiracy theory to suggest attacks from across the border. I found the thought too depressing to work to.
Still, even though I turned it off, Medved’s show did get me thinking about America’s response. There are two levels to the response. The first is a military response. Obviously, we wouldn’t begin bombing Mexico. I don’t think that there is any indication that Mexico is willingly providing a haven for terrorists to use as a base to attack the United States. Instead, we’d follow the money — and the money would lead to Iran. Would we attack Iran? I really don’t know. We’ve got a good launching site in Iraq, and we’re already waging a proxy war there with Iran pouring fighters into Iraq to destabilize the new Iraqi government. This would simply expand that initiative. We also know that 70% of Iranians are dissatisfied with their government. The question is whether that dissatisfaction extend to using an US invasion as an opportunity to overthrow their hated government, or if Iranians would coalesce around their government if their country were attacked. I’m not a militarist, a strategist or a tactician, so these are wild guesses and worries.
The second level to an American response would be what the citizens would do. This ties in with DQ’s earlier post today about an article that predicted that Israelis will cut and run if bombed, while Lebanese will coming out fighting. Aside from some serious problems I have with that assumption (are the Israelis cowards? are Islamists natural born fighters?), it does raise questions about America itself.
Americans haven’t had a war on their soil since the Civil War. Americans haven’t participated in great numbers in a war since the Korean War. Since that time, only minute percentages of the American population have been exposed to war. Americans live lives of stunning luxury compared to most parts of the world and compared to any other times in history. Americans are prone to think in terms of victimhood. (See here, here and here for my belief in this regard.) I know that I, personally, am a terrible coward. Do we have any fighting spirit left that will leave us capable of defending ourselves?
Well, perhaps we might still fight, not because we’re fighters anymore, but because of the unbearably bleak alternative if we don’t fight. In a way, a “normal” American life under falling bombs still has got to be better than the Hell of all eternity under Sharia (which is, after all, the stated goal of those arrayed against us).
A Sharia world means a world in which teenagers are lashed dozens of times for smoking pot, people are executed for watching soccer, girls are hanged for having a “sharp tongue”, tennis players are killed for wearing shorts, bareheaded girls are burned to death rather than being rescued from fires, adulterers are stoned to death (which would probably wipe out a third of America and most of Congress), children’s entertainers are murdered (something that might put a little fear in Hollyweird), women are enswathed in burkhas and denied the right even to leave their homes, whether for employment or healthcare, and on and on. Coward though I am, I’d prefer a real fighting war, where we actively repel this apocalyptic future. Maybe, faced with such an ugly enemy, Americans under attack would discover that there are things worth fighting for, and that there are fates worth than death.
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Vanderleun echoes BW’s thoughts. And they are scary thoughts:
–excerpt (link follows)
“..(to) retreat would be to court disastrous consequences for the United States in the short term and the entire world in the future; a future more costly to the planet in terms of life, liberty and treasure than anything currently being done in Iraq.
You think not? Imagine a second 9/11 on the same or a larger scale. That’s what the Canada 17 were planning. Imagine the American response to such an attack. Do you know where our 18 ballistic missile submarines are? No? Neither do I, but if you know what they can do you know that the nuclear payload on any single one of them is the end of the Islamic world. I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer if it all did not quite come to that. I’m sure the residents of Tehran, if they were free to speak, would agree.
Too dramatic? Imagine then just the global economic consequences. Picture the vanishing of trillions in capital, the price of a barrel of oil, the crash of the job market, the expulsion of illegals as Americans suddenly become willing to do not only the jobs they won’t do, but any job. Imagine a global replay of the Great Depression in a “networked, globalized” world.
Imagine that the housing market deflates with a whoosh. After all your 401K and spare cash were in the market because who wants savings bank interest. Suddenly your one big asset, the thing that made you “feel rich,” your million dollar chicken shack is worth $100,000. And your mortgage is due and both the jobs your family had have vanished like the highland mist at high noon. And that $6,000 monthly mortgage payment is 90 days past due. And tomorrow’s election day. And you really don’t have all that much to do except take that Mickey Mantle Rookie card down to the pawnshop so you can go to the market for a quart of milk.
How did it all happen? We forgot to win. We were so strong and so cool and so with-it, that winning just, well, didn’t seem fair. And playing fair is very important to Americans. After all, world war is just the World Series with guns. Isn’t it?”
————–
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/006407.php#006407
JG’s scenario describes America going from level 3, to level 10. The more likely scenario would be a graded increase, like the Defcon system.
Before nuclear weapons are employed, nuclear attack submarines can be given the order for Full Unrestricted Submarine warfare. Carriers can be given orders for full naval and air blockade. Nothing will get past, when the orders are “sink and destroy if they resist”.
No nation in the world, given free trade and what not, can survive when the United States decides that they shall be isolated via the seas, the land, and the air. The nuclearization of the capitals of the world is a brute force approach, not consistent with Sun Tzu’s dictate that the acme of battle skill is to win without a fight. Cut the logistics of a country via a blockade, and they will die.
There cannot be any “blockade runner programs” called Oil for Food. Nothing gets through the blockade, no food, no flotsam. Nothing.
Any nation will break, if only because their entire system goes into the dark ages and no real communication is then possible. With EMP weapons employed in the atmosphere over the target nation, even their communications are broken, and blockaded.
This is the power of nuclear weapons (EMP, not land burst) and attack crafts. In essence it is more powerful than nuclear winter because nuclear winter can be used only once. Its genkai is low. Strangulation and arterial block holds are more dangerous because you can use it more than once.
I’m not a militarist, a strategist or a tactician, so these are wildly guesses and worries.
You have the basic understanding down, you just simply do not have all the data to make any real informed judgements or decisions. The first step on the road to wisdom is to recognize how much you do not know. Enlightenment only comes after that one step in a journey of a thousand li.
Americans are prone to think in terms of victimhood. (See here, here and here for my belief in this regard.) I know that I, personally, am a terrible coward.
there are two types of cowardice as there is 2 types of bravery. Cowardice in the face of the enemy, which is physical cowardice, the refusal to help those being attacked in front of one’s own eyes. The other type is moral cowardice, the refusal to conduct oneself in a manner befitting their belief and philosophical principles.
It is rare to have someone who is both morally brave and physically valorous. Pantano is one such person, if you’ve seen that interview he had on the Daily Show. Impressive, awe inspiring even.
In terms of this bookworm, I tend to think you have this weird mix of physical valor and moral courage. It’s obviously not balanced, but neither is it completely deficient. Straight logic and direct means of descriptions is not capable of describing what I mean. It is as if I am describing a P/N diode or some other solid state device. I can be foward or reversed.
(which would probably wipe out a third of America and most of Congress)
Now you begin to see why America might have became the Islamic States of America in Prayers for the Assassin, heh. Hollywood would be exterminated as well, in a manner befitting Team America’s example, their adulterous relationships are legendary.
Coward though I am, I’d prefer a real fighting war, where we actively repel this apocalyptic future.
Human beings are complex lattices of energy and consciousness. At times we may be physically courageous, while morally weak, or we may be morally courageous yet physically submissive. The decision that you have made, to fight instead of to surrender to fear, is I believe one that rests upon some original virtue of courage.
Btw, for any successful US covert operation in Iran, you would have to follow the operations order and temp of Afghanistan. Read this interview(s) for a first hand account of how things “should be done”. Btw, how Iraq was invaded, is not the way.
http://ymarsakar.blogspot.com/2006/07/iran-insurgency-strategies.html
I believe that I would fight the islamists with whatever courage I do possess rather than give up my freedom. Of course, I have ample reason to fight to the death against islamo-fascists. I’m an atheist, they would kill me anyway. Makes the choice an easy one, I suppose.
Bookworm or readers of Bookworm Room, please go to Richard Cohen’s column in the Washington Post where he calls the creation of the modern state of Israel a mistake. I’m too sputtering flabergasted to see yet another Jewish leftist antisemite in the world. There are so, so many of them. Some maybe just deluded (”Oslo syndrome”), but I tend not to excuse them that way. If you say the Jewish state is a “mistake” that’s tantamount to saying it has no right to exist; and that’s an antisemite any way you slice it. But I’m not articulate like Bookworm and commenters. Please read. Please express my pent up frustration for me!
Not the Cohen article, but its dissection can be found at (a BW reference) Captain’s Quarters (link below).
Cohen purveys putrid mush unworthy of a national newspaper, or the WaPo. Perhaps the Post will be laying off soon, too, like their sister NY Times.
(From BusinessWeekOnline, Jul 18, detailing the shrinking of the Times: “..The article, noting that USA Today and The Washington Post have cut their size, pointed to rising newsprint costs and the loss of readers and ad dollars to the Internet.
“It’s painful to watch an industry retrench,” Keller said. )
—-see Cohen dissection at
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/007531.php#trackbacks
Take heart, Bookworm. I’ve no doubt that you know yourself well, but from what I’ve heard from experts, soldiers themselves often fight not out of any peraonsl courage, but because they don’t want to let down their squadmates. If Al Qaeda manages to hit California with missiles based in Mexico, and all you hold dear is threatend, you’ll have all the motivation you need. Moreover, courage isn’t the absence of fear; it’s acting in spite of fear.
Ymarsakar-
“It’s obviously not balanced, but neither is it completely deficient. Straight logic and direct means of descriptions is not capable of describing what I mean. It is as if I am describing a P/N diode or some other solid state device. I can be foward or reversed.”
You really lost me here–how about some clarification?
[...] What will we fight for? [...]
Concerning courage, it is mercurial. Meaning, it is neither this or that, in terms of elements and objects. A rock is a rock, whether you break it down via a hammer or blow it up with c4. Courage and human behavior, is not so scientific.
In terms of the diode, the P/N diode solid device, basically what’s known as a um a battery (not really a battery of course, but you get the picture). The polarities of a P/N diode can be reversed. And it can still work, more or less.
When I consider courage, morale courage and physical courage along with human motivations and behavior, I think of it as reversing polarity. Others can have their own visual cues based upon their experience and knowledge, so I cannot really say that I can adequately explain what I see in my head to other people.
It’s a gestalt rather than a definition, is what I am refering to. Patrick, for example, mentioned motivation, that allows someone to overcome fear to acquire courage. That’s true. But again, this interacts with all of other things, and therefore the whole becomes an image to me, rather than a number of descriptions.
The reason why I think this way concerning courage, is because I cannot predict when someone will or will not do something based upon their courage or lack of it. It doesn’t seem to make straight line logical sense that someone can be courageous in the face of fire, but morally cowardly in terms of speaking up or something. Those things do exist. And they seem to be contradictions, but that is not so, these people are not crazy nor abnormal. So what explains it? I don’t know what explains it.
“I don’t know what explains it.” Yamarsakar
A lack of consistency in their moral framework.
Some people are physically brave, for the most part they are ‘fearless’. When such a person has a cohesive moral ‘framework’ or understanding of life and their place in the world, they consistently demonstrate physical and moral courage.
Their are many examples of this, two that come to mind are Washington and Hamilton. One was for the time, an especially large man, physically imposing in size and demeanor. The other quite small and slight. Yet both reportedly possessed remarkable physical courage and of course their moral courage was amply demonstrated. What biographers discover when examining both these men is a cohesive moral outlook and understanding of life.