The Top 40

The military bashers had Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Fort Hood - hell they even claimed Tucson and Oslo. They implemented wikileaks, repealed DADT and now we have the first lady SHAMELESSLY using military families as reelection props. Enough already. Some punk who doesn't want to pay his student loan back defecates on a police car and he's a hero.

I've never been sold on the notion of making Muslim nations into Western-style representative democracies as a realistic war aim. The more I learn about Islam and the Muslim world, the less I like, and the more I'm convinced that they can't be made to be like us, so we will have to fall back on making them get along with us peacefully.

The only war aim which makes sense to me is to instill in the Muslim world such an unthinking fear of civilized nations, and what they can do, that they will scramble to do the work of suppressing those Muslim who dare to inflict violence on decent folk.

Perhaps I'm being unrealistic, but we're going to have war with some portion of the Muslim world whether we shoot back or not. The West might not be able to summon up a sufficient dose of sheer frightfulness to make them pay attention, but we did, once.

For examples of what I mean by "sheer frightfulness", see Max Hastings' 'Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45'.

For an earlier treatment of this issue, see Kipling's "Grave of a Hundred Heads". This was written by someone who had lived in what was then northwest India and is now Pakistan and some of Afghanistan, and actually interacted with the inhabitants - who haven't changed much at all, and if they have it's for the worse thanks to Saudi oil money financing Wahabist lunacy.

And the point of the poem is that the only way to deal with savages and barbarians is to instil in them fear of the consequences should they injure civilised people.

Machiavelli had something to say about this, too.

Fletcher, a lot of people had much to say about this. Unfortunately, none of them work or reside inside the Beltway.

Thank you for linking my post!

God, Zilla, you have a way with epithets, though I would have added...quaking plates of jello to the list of attributes of our ersatz leaders.

Peccable, none of them are employed (I refuse to use the word "work" for this gang) in Whitehall either. Perhaps fortunately, there are a few with vaguely sensible attitudes in Paris, Moscow and Beijing.

Peccable, none of them are employed (I refuse to use the word "work" for this gang) in Whitehall either. Perhaps fortunately, there are a few with vaguely sensible attitudes in Paris, Moscow and Beijing.

Sorry for double post. My PC is badly in need of the "nuke from orbit and reinstall" treatment; some sort of glitch occurred.