I was watching Face The Nation Sunday and they had two guests on there talking about the Israeli vs. Hezbollah. The guests were senators Chuck Hagel of Neb and Chris Dodd of Conn. Chris Dodd made the point that part of the difficulty for Israel is that Hezbollah isn't in a war for land. It made me think, is war an outdate concept. throughout the history of man, wars have been fought to occupy and gain land. establishing new governments come along with the territory, but the basic concept is to gain land. not to help another group of people establish control but for the expansion of an empire. are wars such as Iraq doomed concepts from the beginning. are we trying to fit a square peg in a round hole? and before someone mentions World War II, remember, hitler was in a war to gain land, we were there to stop him. at first he was successful, then we were because there was a simple solution, stop hitler from expanding.
For War to be totally effective you have to annihilate the enemy almost completely. Kill so many of them that they lose the will to fight. That is the only way to truly WIN a war......and it ain't pretty. DD
Yes, I think that when countries fight wars to try to "transform" other societies into say, becoming more democratic or less religously extreme, it is like fitting a sqaure peg in a round hole. The truth is we can't change other cultures so easily. We can't make Iraq a Western- like state, and Israel can't make Hezbollah or Palestinans peaceful neighbors. At the same time, diplomacy won't work either. I don't know if anything will.
At what cost? Think about how much blood and pain. What was it - nearly a million American casualties alone? In that scenario - we didn't have a choice. We did have a choice with Iraq.
Again, in order to win, you have to beat the enemy down SOOOO bad that they lose all taste for war. We are talking about slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people including civilians, like WW2..... Blow up all infastructure, kill almost all men of fighting age, etc.... It is the only way to truly win a war, and not something that is palatable to people in today's world. Number of casualties suffered in WW2 per nation DD
Fatty, Germany was and is a Western state, despite Sir Jackie being from there. Germany was a democracy after WWI, which is how Hitler came to power... in elections. He eventually twisted and perverted it into something totally unrecognizable, but there you are. Japan was the most "Western," of the states in the Far East when war broke out, a war that had really begun some years earlier in the region, if not for the United States, then certainly for countries like China. The real reason Japan became a democracy was the crafty policies of MacArthur in post-war Japan, and the fact that the Emperor was spared, and told the people to accept the form of government. That's the very short response, IMO. Keep D&D Civil.
I'm tired of people calling this Israel/ Hezbollah/ Lebanon thing a war -- it's not. It is a minor regional skirmish at best - not even a true battle. Yeah, it would suck to have artillery shells falling and crappy rockets to dodge, but this isn't exactly the Battle of Okinawa. And DD is right if there is ever to be true peace over there they will have to have a total war in which one side utterly destroys the loser. You can't carve modern political boundaries out through religious regions and expect them to last.
Perhaps you're right. You have to beat an enemy so badly into submission that there is some kind of "surrender". But then again, when is the last time a nation "surrendered" to another nation. Since the inception of the U.N. - we really haven't seen a major conflict on that scale. Perhaps WWII was the war to end all wars. Or war as we know it. Maybe it's a good thing that the kind of war you describe no longer exists. Maybe it shows we're moving a step in the right direction. Maybe our stomach for war should even be less. And what we see going on - if it's not war, then it's something war-like that's still grotesique and needs to be eliminated. One thing is for sure...if we continue on like this, eventually at some point, there's going to be a war like the past.
The problem is not that war has changed, it is that the MEDIA has made it accessible to everyone to see how adhorent it is...... Vietnam was the first one that brought war into the living room, now people want to minimalize casaulties, and you can not win that way...not going to happen, you just create more people that are angry with you for destroying their cousin, their mother, their sister, their bridges, their electricity,....etc...etc...etc....you have to take the enemies will to fight away.....hurt them so bad that they are just happy to be alive. And, certainly the USA does not have the stomach for such a battle unless we are attacked first. Do you think we would drop the bomb on Japan today? Not with all the news coverage we wouldn't, and I think it was the right move at that time..... Times have changed.......and unless the USA is attacked, we will probably never see the nation mobilized for war again. IMHO, this war is all about the economy, it is propped up by government spending on defense contracts. Bush is an idiot, if he thought he could win.....the only thing that is going to happen is that we leave and they go to civil war....... Nice on ya GW !! DD
Momma, hey momma, come lookin' for me I'm here in the meadow by the red maple tree Momma, hey momma, look sharp, here I be Hey, hey, momma look sharp Them soldiers, they fired. Oh ma, did we run But then we turned round and the battle begun Then I went under, oh ma, am I done? Hey, hey, momma look sharp My eyes are wide open, my face to the sky Is that you I'm hearin' in the tall grass nearby? Momma come find me before I do die Hey, hey, momma look sharp from the musical 1776
What we've got here is failure to communicate. Some terrorists you just can't reach, so you get what we had here in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon which is the way they wants it. Well, they gets it. And I don't like it any more than you men.
