People dying because of religion. How oxymoron.
conflict in gaza whos @ fault
- Thread starter NIGHTFLIGHT
- Start date
they're all at fault but why play the blame game.
As far as I understand it, everyone in the middle east has wanted ALL jews dead for centuries. Israel has defended itself when necessary. Israel has talked themselves to death with "palestine/hamas" and all palestine does is lobb bombs and send brainwashed skitzos over to Israel with bombs strapped to themselves. Israel gave up the Gaza strip forced their citizens to leave, in exchange for a cease fire. Palestine never honored that deal. They wont stop until all the Jews are dead. So I say good for Israel. I hope they take the rest of Palestine and throw hamas out of the country period.
The people of Palestine had a chance to end this when they had their elections last year, I think it was. They elected Hamas, a known terrorist organization. Now I truly believe corruption runs deep so maybe it wasn't an election after all. Maybe people were threatened into voting for hamas. I don't know, I am just speculating (that could be dangerous). Once Israel has control of Palestine, hopfully they can compromise with the "people" of Palestine. I would hope that most do not want a war and would rather honor a cease fire even if they still hate all Jews.
The people of Palestine had a chance to end this when they had their elections last year, I think it was. They elected Hamas, a known terrorist organization. Now I truly believe corruption runs deep so maybe it wasn't an election after all. Maybe people were threatened into voting for hamas. I don't know, I am just speculating (that could be dangerous). Once Israel has control of Palestine, hopfully they can compromise with the "people" of Palestine. I would hope that most do not want a war and would rather honor a cease fire even if they still hate all Jews.
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it's a religious isue. I don't think you can win unless you could change their beliefs and that's something that will never happen.
Israel provides us a presence in the middle east, we support them on moral grounds that they should have their own religious freedom and country. (bottom line is still oil)
The history is a long sordid one too and having worked for a Jordanian, I have had to learn alot about the history (whether I like it or not) but both sides have such clouded re-written history that resolution is never likely..
The fanaticism is incredible.. Way too much emotion and very little room for compromise..
Common sense says... "hey I shot rockets into this area, the bomb us back to the stone age, maybe I should not shoot rockets?" or maybe I missed something..
The history is a long sordid one too and having worked for a Jordanian, I have had to learn alot about the history (whether I like it or not) but both sides have such clouded re-written history that resolution is never likely..
The fanaticism is incredible.. Way too much emotion and very little room for compromise..
Common sense says... "hey I shot rockets into this area, the bomb us back to the stone age, maybe I should not shoot rockets?" or maybe I missed something..
tinmann840
Registered
It's sad how Muslim extremist have altered the word of the Koran to suit their own twisted agenda. What we have in the middle east is a modern day Cain and Able conflict. Jews and Arabs are blood related. They are both descendants of the house of Abraham and their only difference is their religious ideology.Check this out:
When Mohammed founded the Islamic faith in Arabia in the 7th century A.D. and encouraged pagan Arabs to worship Allah, he took many of his ideas from Jewish and Christian teachings, and then added “revelations†which he claimed to have received from the angel Gabriel. Mohammed knew that Abraham was the father of the Arabs, and he believed in many of the great Bible characters. He taught that Jesus was a prophet who went to heaven, and who would one day come back to earth. But the Koran gives us no explanation of how Abraham, the Jews and the Arabs all fit into the divine plan for the Middle East and the world.
If you were to meet someone from Israeli you would not know he was Jewish by looking at him. Your first impression of him would be that he was Arab unless he were dressed as an Orthodox Jew.
When Mohammed founded the Islamic faith in Arabia in the 7th century A.D. and encouraged pagan Arabs to worship Allah, he took many of his ideas from Jewish and Christian teachings, and then added “revelations†which he claimed to have received from the angel Gabriel. Mohammed knew that Abraham was the father of the Arabs, and he believed in many of the great Bible characters. He taught that Jesus was a prophet who went to heaven, and who would one day come back to earth. But the Koran gives us no explanation of how Abraham, the Jews and the Arabs all fit into the divine plan for the Middle East and the world.
If you were to meet someone from Israeli you would not know he was Jewish by looking at him. Your first impression of him would be that he was Arab unless he were dressed as an Orthodox Jew.
I agree in religious freedom but what "right" do they have to their own Country based upon thier religious views? Do the Kurds in Northern Iraq have the "Right" to their own Country? How about Native Americans, do they have the "Right" to their own Country? Prior to 1947 everyone in Palestien was free to warship and there was very little unrest in the region. The Creation of Israel and the support given to Israel by the UK and US has been the catalyst for the unrest we have seen over the past 60 years. I do not agree with the tactics of Hamas but they believe their homeland was taken over by the Jew, they were pushed out and treated as 2nd class citizens. If that were to happen to any of us I suspect we would act in the same way to defend our homeland (Sons of Liberty, Green Mountain Boys, Robert's Rangers)
Rainbow_Boy
Registered
maybe you did miss something mister bogus. i can't say who started their war, but it looks like the israeli's will finish it. they say the ceasefire was broken day after christmas. and the jews attacked then, strategically. but what you don't see is the palestine peasants getting there heads kicked in everyday. i saw a palestine camera man getting shot, before xmas i think. and then they put another 4 or 5 bullets into him as he lay motionless on he ground. i hope the palestines win.
Hamas is getting exactly what it deserves. Israel gave Gaza back to the Palestinians thru treaty; they were rewarded with Hamas, who hides among women and children and fires rockets into Israel for sport. Israel signed a year-long cease fire in Gaza, under pressure from it's allies and the UN...what did Hamas do during this time? Bring in bigger rockets and continue to take potshots at Israel. Israel has had enough. What if Canada's stated purpose was the extermination of the US, and they shot rockets daily at us, AFTER we'd signed treaty after treaty and cease fire after cease fire? We would NOT stand for it.
This is what Israel gets for APPEASEMENT. Look at Hitler/Nazi Germany and Chamberlain/England for a classic example.
Hamas and Hezbollah know how to play the media game. They are masters at manipulating the media, and we are so stupid to buy into their BS. They have been caught PLANTING bodies and toys at bombing sites, then displaying to to the media. It really aggravates me that anyone could lend ANY credibility to them.
The entire Palestinian state would have had peace, real peace with Israel many years ago of they would just acknowledge Israel's right to existance, and stop the terrorism. Israel has tried and tried again, but because they are made out to look like the 'bully', they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. And the Islamic world does nothing but ferment further hate against them and the US.
It's a damn shame; but Hamas can reap what they sow.
This is what Israel gets for APPEASEMENT. Look at Hitler/Nazi Germany and Chamberlain/England for a classic example.
Hamas and Hezbollah know how to play the media game. They are masters at manipulating the media, and we are so stupid to buy into their BS. They have been caught PLANTING bodies and toys at bombing sites, then displaying to to the media. It really aggravates me that anyone could lend ANY credibility to them.
The entire Palestinian state would have had peace, real peace with Israel many years ago of they would just acknowledge Israel's right to existance, and stop the terrorism. Israel has tried and tried again, but because they are made out to look like the 'bully', they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. And the Islamic world does nothing but ferment further hate against them and the US.
It's a damn shame; but Hamas can reap what they sow.
Hookers
Again what gives Israel the "right" to exist as a state? Also remember the Palestinians were forced to leave their homeland and are fighting to get it back, not some barren piece of land granted by Israel. The UK Germany Analogy is not valid because it compares conflict between two sovereign nations with a conflict between a nation and a disenfranchised minority.
by the same right we as "old english" had to take over the continent of what is now "North America" IF you dig back in history (and it goes WAY back) who had the first recorded possession of the land in question and who took it away from whom? In fact if you have a sitdown with a "non-jewish" person involved, they cut off the history that shows they took the land originally and only go back to when the Jewish re-took the lands, just as you have cut off history at the "retaking".. I think the conflict is insane, it would serve all better to cooperate and make a go at the world market as a whole, not some segregated society of Us/Them.. Do keep in mind that also involved are lands that Israel took during the last major conflict when they got ganged up on by 3 countries at one time... Israel did not start that conflict either.. but they sure won it..
you have no idea what you were watching as I can show you video to the exact opposite.. is any of the video real?.. For all you know that "cameraman" had a rocket launcher right along side his camera in the minutes prior to dying..
And even the locals to the region will tell you that Hamas rules with terror amoung large sectors of the debated area.. you step out against us? you die.. You may side with Hamas (known terroroist group) and that is your perogative and appears your choice.. But by far and large much of the popluation is quite against them as all they have in their agenda is this "Death to all" mentality.. Most sad that civilians are getting killed but when you use civilians as shields, they are going to die..
My employer just returned from Jordan, I am sure I am going to hear more about what is "really" happening there.. sure can not trust the "Press"
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Sounds like the UN gave them the "right". For a decent unpartisan review, go to Israeli?Palestinian conflict - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (wikipedia), a partial quote follows:
This violence and the heavy cost of World War II led Britain to turn the issue of Palestine over to the United Nations. In 1947, the U.N. approved the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into two states: one Jewish and one Arab. The Jewish leadership accepted the plan, but Palestinian Arab leaders, supported by the Arab League, rejected the plan, and a civil war broke out. Israel quickly gained the upper hand in this intercommunal fighting, and on May 14, 1948 declared its independence. Five Arab League countries (Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan and Iraq), then invaded Palestine, starting the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The war resulted in an Israeli victory, with Israel capturing additional territory beyond the partition borders, but leaving Jerusalem as a divided city; the territory Israel did not capture was taken over by Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Transjordan (now Jordan). The war also resulted in the 1948 Palestinian exodus, known to Palestinians as Al-Naqba.
Bottom line, happened before you and I were alive, and right or wrong Israel holds the ground, just like we hold the Americas because our forefathers took (and held) it. Hamas can self-destruct trying to take Israel down (I hope they do).
That analogy IS is valid. I might take them longer, but with peace they would have a hell of alot better life than they do now, and they owe their kids better than teaching all this hate.
The following is a little dated, not pretty nor PC, but pretty blunt in it's truth.
Twelve Myths regarding twenty first century warfare: Unaware of the cost of freedom and served by leaders without military expertise, Americans have started to believe whatever's comfortable.
By Ralph Peters
We're in trouble. We're in danger of losing more wars. Our troops haven't forgotten how to fight. We've never had better men and women in uniform. But our leaders and many of our fellow Americans no longer grasp what war means or what it takes to win. Thanks to those who have served in uniform, we've lived in such safety and comfort for so long that for many Americans sacrifice means little more than skipping a second trip to the buffet table. Two trends over the past four decades contributed to our national ignorance of the cost, and necessity, of victory.
First, the most privileged Americans used the Vietnam War as an excuse to break their tradition of uniformed service. Ivy League universities once produced heroes. Now they resist Reserve Officer Training Corps representation on their campuses. Yet, our leading universities still produce a disproportionate number of U.S. political leaders. The men and women destined to lead us in wartime dismiss military service as a waste of their time and talents. Delighted to pose for campaign photos with our troops, elected officials in private disdain the military. Only one serious presidential aspirant in either party is a veteran, while another presidential hopeful pays as much for a single haircut as I took home in a month as an Army private.
Second, we've stripped in-depth U.S. history classes out of our schools. Since the 1960s, one history course after another has been cut, while the content of those remaining focuses on social issues and our alleged misdeeds. Dumbed-down textbooks minimize the wars that kept us free. As a result, ignorance of the terrible price our troops had to pay for freedom in the past creates absurd expectations about our present conflicts. When the media offer flawed or biased analyses, the public lacks the knowledge to make informed judgments.
This combination of national leadership with no military expertise and a population that hasn't been taught the cost of freedom leaves us with a government that does whatever seems expedient and a citizenry that believes whatever's comfortable. Thus, myths about war thrive.
Myth No. 1: War doesn't change anything. This campus slogan contradicts all of human history. Over thousands of years, war has been the last resort-and all too frequently the first resort-of tribes, religions, dynasties, empires, states and demagogues driven by grievance, greed or a heartless quest for glory. No one believes that war is a good thing, but it is sometimes necessary. We need not agree in our politics or on the manner in which a given war is prosecuted, but we can't pretend that if only we laid down our arms all others would do the same. Wars, in fact, often change everything. Who would argue that the American Revolution, our Civil War or World War II changed
nothing? Would the world be better today if we had been pacifists in the face of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan? Certainly, not all of the changes warfare has wrought through the centuries have been positive. Even a just war may generate undesirable results, such as Soviet tyranny over half of Europe after 1945. But of one thing we may be
certain: a U.S. defeat in any war is a defeat not only for freedom, but for civilization. Our enemies believe that war can change the world. And they won't be deterred by bumper stickers.
Myth No. 2: Victory is impossible today. Victory is always possible, if our nation is willing to do what it takes to win. But victory is, indeed, impossible if U.S. troops are placed under impossible restrictions, if their leaders refuse to act boldly, if every target must be approved by lawyers, and if the American people are disheartened by a constant barrage of negativity from the media. We don't need generals who pop up behind microphones to apologize for every mistake our soldiers make. We need generals who win. And you can't win if you won't fight. We're at the start of a violent struggle that will ebb and flow for decades, yet our current generation of leaders, in and out of uniform, worries about hurting the enemy's feelings. One of the tragedies of our involvement in Iraq is that while we did a great thing by removing Saddam Hussein, we tried to do it on the cheap. It's an iron law of warfare that those unwilling to pay the butcher's bill up front will pay it with compound interest in the end. We not only didn't want to pay that bill, but our leaders imagined that we could make friends with our enemies even before they were fully defeated.
Killing a few hundred violent actors like Moqtada al-Sadr in 2003 would have prevented thousands of subsequent American deaths and tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths. We started something our national leadership lacked the guts to finish. Despite our missteps, victory looked a great deal less likely in the early months of 1942 than it does against our enemies today. Should we have surrendered after the fall of the Philippines?
Today's opinion makers and elected officials have lost their grip on what it takes to win. In the timeless words of Nathan Bedford Forrest, "War means fighting, and fighting means killing." And in the words of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, "It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it."
Conflicts That Will Shape the 21st Century.
Twelve Myths regarding twenty first century warfare: Unaware of the cost of freedom and served by leaders without military expertise, Americans have started to believe whatever's comfortable.
By Ralph Peters
We're in trouble. We're in danger of losing more wars. Our troops haven't forgotten how to fight. We've never had better men and women in uniform. But our leaders and many of our fellow Americans no longer grasp what war means or what it takes to win. Thanks to those who have served in uniform, we've lived in such safety and comfort for so long that for many Americans sacrifice means little more than skipping a second trip to the buffet table. Two trends over the past four decades contributed to our national ignorance of the cost, and necessity, of victory.
First, the most privileged Americans used the Vietnam War as an excuse to break their tradition of uniformed service. Ivy League universities once produced heroes. Now they resist Reserve Officer Training Corps representation on their campuses. Yet, our leading universities still produce a disproportionate number of U.S. political leaders. The men and women destined to lead us in wartime dismiss military service as a waste of their time and talents. Delighted to pose for campaign photos with our troops, elected officials in private disdain the military. Only one serious presidential aspirant in either party is a veteran, while another presidential hopeful pays as much for a single haircut as I took home in a month as an Army private.
Second, we've stripped in-depth U.S. history classes out of our schools. Since the 1960s, one history course after another has been cut, while the content of those remaining focuses on social issues and our alleged misdeeds. Dumbed-down textbooks minimize the wars that kept us free. As a result, ignorance of the terrible price our troops had to pay for freedom in the past creates absurd expectations about our present conflicts. When the media offer flawed or biased analyses, the public lacks the knowledge to make informed judgments.
This combination of national leadership with no military expertise and a population that hasn't been taught the cost of freedom leaves us with a government that does whatever seems expedient and a citizenry that believes whatever's comfortable. Thus, myths about war thrive.
Myth No. 1: War doesn't change anything. This campus slogan contradicts all of human history. Over thousands of years, war has been the last resort-and all too frequently the first resort-of tribes, religions, dynasties, empires, states and demagogues driven by grievance, greed or a heartless quest for glory. No one believes that war is a good thing, but it is sometimes necessary. We need not agree in our politics or on the manner in which a given war is prosecuted, but we can't pretend that if only we laid down our arms all others would do the same. Wars, in fact, often change everything. Who would argue that the American Revolution, our Civil War or World War II changed
nothing? Would the world be better today if we had been pacifists in the face of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan? Certainly, not all of the changes warfare has wrought through the centuries have been positive. Even a just war may generate undesirable results, such as Soviet tyranny over half of Europe after 1945. But of one thing we may be
certain: a U.S. defeat in any war is a defeat not only for freedom, but for civilization. Our enemies believe that war can change the world. And they won't be deterred by bumper stickers.
Myth No. 2: Victory is impossible today. Victory is always possible, if our nation is willing to do what it takes to win. But victory is, indeed, impossible if U.S. troops are placed under impossible restrictions, if their leaders refuse to act boldly, if every target must be approved by lawyers, and if the American people are disheartened by a constant barrage of negativity from the media. We don't need generals who pop up behind microphones to apologize for every mistake our soldiers make. We need generals who win. And you can't win if you won't fight. We're at the start of a violent struggle that will ebb and flow for decades, yet our current generation of leaders, in and out of uniform, worries about hurting the enemy's feelings. One of the tragedies of our involvement in Iraq is that while we did a great thing by removing Saddam Hussein, we tried to do it on the cheap. It's an iron law of warfare that those unwilling to pay the butcher's bill up front will pay it with compound interest in the end. We not only didn't want to pay that bill, but our leaders imagined that we could make friends with our enemies even before they were fully defeated.
Killing a few hundred violent actors like Moqtada al-Sadr in 2003 would have prevented thousands of subsequent American deaths and tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths. We started something our national leadership lacked the guts to finish. Despite our missteps, victory looked a great deal less likely in the early months of 1942 than it does against our enemies today. Should we have surrendered after the fall of the Philippines?
Today's opinion makers and elected officials have lost their grip on what it takes to win. In the timeless words of Nathan Bedford Forrest, "War means fighting, and fighting means killing." And in the words of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, "It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it."
Conflicts That Will Shape the 21st Century.
Part 2:
Myth No. 3: Insurgencies can never be defeated. Historically, fewer than one in 20 major insurgencies succeeded. Virtually no minor ones survived. In the mid-20th century, insurgencies scored more wins than previously had been the case, but that was because the European colonial powers against which they rebelled had already decided to rid themselves of their imperial possessions. Even so, more insurgencies were defeated than not, from the Philippines to Kenya to Greece. In the entire 18th century, our war of independence was the only insurgency that defeated a major foreign power and drove it out for good. The insurgencies we face today are, in fact, more lethal than the insurrections of the past century. We now face an international
terrorist insurgency as well as local rebellions, all motivated by religious passion or ethnicity or a fatal compound of both. The good news is that in over 3,000 years of recorded history, insurgencies
motivated by faith and blood overwhelmingly failed. The bad news is that they had to be put down with remorseless bloodshed.
Myth No. 4: There's no military solution; only negotiations can solve our problems. In most cases, the reverse is true. Negotiations solve nothing until a military decision has been reached and one side
recognizes a peace agreement as its only hope of survival. It would be a welcome development if negotiations fixed the problems we face in Iraq, but we're the only side interested in a negotiated solution.
Every other faction-the terrorists, Sunni insurgents, Shia militias, Iran and Syria-is convinced it can win. The only negotiations that produce lasting results are those conducted from positions of indisputable strength.
Myth No. 5: When we fight back, we only provoke our enemies. When dealing with bullies, either in the schoolyard or in a global war, the opposite is true: if you don't fight back, you encourage your enemy to behave more viciously. Passive resistance only works when directed against rule-of-law states, such as the core English-speaking nations.
It doesn't work where silent protest is answered with a bayonet in the belly or a one-way trip to a political prison. We've allowed far too many myths about the "innate goodness of humanity" to creep up on us.
Certainly, many humans would rather be good than bad. But if we're unwilling to fight the fraction of humanity that's evil, armed and determined to subjugate the rest, we'll face even grimmer conflicts.
Myth No. 6: Killing terrorists only turns them into martyrs. It's an anomaly of today's Western world that privileged individuals feel more sympathy for dictators, mass murderers and terrorists-consider the irrational protests against Guantanamo-than they do for their victims. We were told, over and over, that killing Osama bin Laden or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, hanging Saddam Hussein or targeting the Taliban's Mullah Omar would only unite their followers. Well, we haven't yet gotten Osama or Omar, but Zarqawi's dead and forgotten by his own movement, whose members never invoke that butcher's memory. And
no one is fighting to avenge Saddam. The harsh truth is that when faced with true fanatics, killing them is the only way to end their influence. Imprisoned, they galvanize protests, kidnappings, bombings and attacks that seek to free them. Want to make a terrorist a martyr? Just lock him up. Attempts to try such monsters in a court of law turn into mockeries that only provide public platforms for their hate speech, which the global media is delighted to broadcast. Dead, they're dead. And killing them is the ultimate proof that they lack divine protection. Dead terrorists don't kill.
Myth No. 7: If we fight as fiercely as our enemies, we're no better than them. Did the bombing campaign against Germany turn us into Nazis? Did dropping atomic bombs on Japan to end the war and save hundreds of thousands of American lives, as well as millions of Japanese lives, turn us into the beasts who conducted the Bataan Death March? The greatest immorality is for the United States to lose a war. While we seek to be as humane as the path to victory permits, we cannot shrink from doing what it takes to win. At present, the media and influential elements of our society are obsessed with the small immoralities that are inevitable in wartime. Soldiers are human, and no matter how rigorous their training, a miniscule fraction of our troops will do vicious things and must be punished as a consequence. Not everyone in uniform will turn out to be a saint, and not every chain of command will do its job with equal effectiveness. But obsessing on tragic incidents-of which there have been remarkably few in Iraq or Afghanistan-obscures the greater moral issue: the need to defeat enemies who revel in butchering the innocent, who celebrate atrocities, and who claim their god wants blood.
Myth No. 8: The United States is more hated today than ever before. Those who served in Europe during the Cold War remember enormous, often-violent protests against U.S. policy that dwarfed
today's let's-have-fun-on-a-Sunday-afternoon rallies. Older readers recall the huge ban-the-bomb, pro-communist demonstrations of the 1950s and the vast seas of demonstrators filling the streets of Paris, Rome and Berlin to protest our commitment to Vietnam. Imagine if we'd had 24/7 news coverage of those rallies. I well remember serving in Germany in the wake of our withdrawal from Saigon, when U.S. soldiers were despised by the locals-who nonetheless were willing to take our money-and terrorists tried to assassinate U.S. generals. The fashionable anti-Americanism of the chattering classes hasn't stopped the world from seeking one big green card. As I've traveled around the globe since 9/11, I've found that below the government-spokesman/professional-radical level, the United States remains the great dream for university graduates from Berlin to Bangalore to Bogota. On the domestic front, we hear ludicrous claims that our country has never been so divided. Well, that leaves out our Civil War. Our historical amnesia also erases the violent protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the mass confrontations, rioting and deaths. Is today's America really more fractured than it was in 1968?
Myth No. 9: Our invasion of Iraq created our terrorist
problems. This claim rearranges the order of events, as if the attacks of 9/11 happened after Baghdad fell. Our terrorist problems have been created by the catastrophic failure of Middle Eastern civilization to compete on any front and were exacerbated by the determination of successive U.S. administrations, Democrat and Republican, to pretend that Islamist terrorism was a brief aberration. Refusing to respond to attacks, from the bombings in Beirut to Khobar Towers, from the first attack on the Twin Towers to the near-sinking of the USS Cole, we allowed our enemies to believe that we were weak and cowardly. Their unchallenged successes served as a powerful recruiting tool. Did our mistakes on the ground in Iraq radicalize some new recruits for terror? Yes. But imagine how many more recruits there might have been and the damage they might have inflicted on our homeland had we not responded militarily in Afghanistan and then carried the fight to Iraq. Now Iraq is al-Qaeda's Vietnam, not ours.
Myth No.10: If we just leave, the Iraqis will patch up their differences on their own. The point may come at which we have to accept that Iraqis are so determined to destroy their own future that there's
nothing more we can do. But we're not there yet, and leaving immediately would guarantee not just one massacre but a series of slaughters and the delivery of a massive victory to the forces of terrorism. We must be open-minded about practical measures, from changes in strategy to troop reductions, if that's what the developing situation warrants. But it's
grossly irresponsible to claim that our presence is the primary cause of the violence in Iraq-an allegation that ignores history.
Myth No. 3: Insurgencies can never be defeated. Historically, fewer than one in 20 major insurgencies succeeded. Virtually no minor ones survived. In the mid-20th century, insurgencies scored more wins than previously had been the case, but that was because the European colonial powers against which they rebelled had already decided to rid themselves of their imperial possessions. Even so, more insurgencies were defeated than not, from the Philippines to Kenya to Greece. In the entire 18th century, our war of independence was the only insurgency that defeated a major foreign power and drove it out for good. The insurgencies we face today are, in fact, more lethal than the insurrections of the past century. We now face an international
terrorist insurgency as well as local rebellions, all motivated by religious passion or ethnicity or a fatal compound of both. The good news is that in over 3,000 years of recorded history, insurgencies
motivated by faith and blood overwhelmingly failed. The bad news is that they had to be put down with remorseless bloodshed.
Myth No. 4: There's no military solution; only negotiations can solve our problems. In most cases, the reverse is true. Negotiations solve nothing until a military decision has been reached and one side
recognizes a peace agreement as its only hope of survival. It would be a welcome development if negotiations fixed the problems we face in Iraq, but we're the only side interested in a negotiated solution.
Every other faction-the terrorists, Sunni insurgents, Shia militias, Iran and Syria-is convinced it can win. The only negotiations that produce lasting results are those conducted from positions of indisputable strength.
Myth No. 5: When we fight back, we only provoke our enemies. When dealing with bullies, either in the schoolyard or in a global war, the opposite is true: if you don't fight back, you encourage your enemy to behave more viciously. Passive resistance only works when directed against rule-of-law states, such as the core English-speaking nations.
It doesn't work where silent protest is answered with a bayonet in the belly or a one-way trip to a political prison. We've allowed far too many myths about the "innate goodness of humanity" to creep up on us.
Certainly, many humans would rather be good than bad. But if we're unwilling to fight the fraction of humanity that's evil, armed and determined to subjugate the rest, we'll face even grimmer conflicts.
Myth No. 6: Killing terrorists only turns them into martyrs. It's an anomaly of today's Western world that privileged individuals feel more sympathy for dictators, mass murderers and terrorists-consider the irrational protests against Guantanamo-than they do for their victims. We were told, over and over, that killing Osama bin Laden or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, hanging Saddam Hussein or targeting the Taliban's Mullah Omar would only unite their followers. Well, we haven't yet gotten Osama or Omar, but Zarqawi's dead and forgotten by his own movement, whose members never invoke that butcher's memory. And
no one is fighting to avenge Saddam. The harsh truth is that when faced with true fanatics, killing them is the only way to end their influence. Imprisoned, they galvanize protests, kidnappings, bombings and attacks that seek to free them. Want to make a terrorist a martyr? Just lock him up. Attempts to try such monsters in a court of law turn into mockeries that only provide public platforms for their hate speech, which the global media is delighted to broadcast. Dead, they're dead. And killing them is the ultimate proof that they lack divine protection. Dead terrorists don't kill.
Myth No. 7: If we fight as fiercely as our enemies, we're no better than them. Did the bombing campaign against Germany turn us into Nazis? Did dropping atomic bombs on Japan to end the war and save hundreds of thousands of American lives, as well as millions of Japanese lives, turn us into the beasts who conducted the Bataan Death March? The greatest immorality is for the United States to lose a war. While we seek to be as humane as the path to victory permits, we cannot shrink from doing what it takes to win. At present, the media and influential elements of our society are obsessed with the small immoralities that are inevitable in wartime. Soldiers are human, and no matter how rigorous their training, a miniscule fraction of our troops will do vicious things and must be punished as a consequence. Not everyone in uniform will turn out to be a saint, and not every chain of command will do its job with equal effectiveness. But obsessing on tragic incidents-of which there have been remarkably few in Iraq or Afghanistan-obscures the greater moral issue: the need to defeat enemies who revel in butchering the innocent, who celebrate atrocities, and who claim their god wants blood.
Myth No. 8: The United States is more hated today than ever before. Those who served in Europe during the Cold War remember enormous, often-violent protests against U.S. policy that dwarfed
today's let's-have-fun-on-a-Sunday-afternoon rallies. Older readers recall the huge ban-the-bomb, pro-communist demonstrations of the 1950s and the vast seas of demonstrators filling the streets of Paris, Rome and Berlin to protest our commitment to Vietnam. Imagine if we'd had 24/7 news coverage of those rallies. I well remember serving in Germany in the wake of our withdrawal from Saigon, when U.S. soldiers were despised by the locals-who nonetheless were willing to take our money-and terrorists tried to assassinate U.S. generals. The fashionable anti-Americanism of the chattering classes hasn't stopped the world from seeking one big green card. As I've traveled around the globe since 9/11, I've found that below the government-spokesman/professional-radical level, the United States remains the great dream for university graduates from Berlin to Bangalore to Bogota. On the domestic front, we hear ludicrous claims that our country has never been so divided. Well, that leaves out our Civil War. Our historical amnesia also erases the violent protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the mass confrontations, rioting and deaths. Is today's America really more fractured than it was in 1968?
Myth No. 9: Our invasion of Iraq created our terrorist
problems. This claim rearranges the order of events, as if the attacks of 9/11 happened after Baghdad fell. Our terrorist problems have been created by the catastrophic failure of Middle Eastern civilization to compete on any front and were exacerbated by the determination of successive U.S. administrations, Democrat and Republican, to pretend that Islamist terrorism was a brief aberration. Refusing to respond to attacks, from the bombings in Beirut to Khobar Towers, from the first attack on the Twin Towers to the near-sinking of the USS Cole, we allowed our enemies to believe that we were weak and cowardly. Their unchallenged successes served as a powerful recruiting tool. Did our mistakes on the ground in Iraq radicalize some new recruits for terror? Yes. But imagine how many more recruits there might have been and the damage they might have inflicted on our homeland had we not responded militarily in Afghanistan and then carried the fight to Iraq. Now Iraq is al-Qaeda's Vietnam, not ours.
Myth No.10: If we just leave, the Iraqis will patch up their differences on their own. The point may come at which we have to accept that Iraqis are so determined to destroy their own future that there's
nothing more we can do. But we're not there yet, and leaving immediately would guarantee not just one massacre but a series of slaughters and the delivery of a massive victory to the forces of terrorism. We must be open-minded about practical measures, from changes in strategy to troop reductions, if that's what the developing situation warrants. But it's
grossly irresponsible to claim that our presence is the primary cause of the violence in Iraq-an allegation that ignores history.
Part 3
Myth No. 11: It's all Israel's fault. Or the popular
Washington corollary: "The Saudis are our friends." Israel is the Muslim world's excuse for failure, not a reason for it. Even if we didn't support Israel, Islamist extremists would blame us for countless other imagined wrongs, since they fear our freedoms and our culture even more than they do our military. All men and women of conscience must recognize the core difference between Israel and its neighbors: Israel genuinely wants to live in peace, while its genocidal neighbors want Israel erased from the map. As for the mad belief that the Saudis are our friends, it endures only because the Saudis have spent so much money on both sides of the aisle in Washington. Saudi money continues to subsidize anti-Western extremism, to divide fragile societies, and encourage hatred between Muslims and all others. Saudi extremism has done far more damage to the Middle East than Israel ever did. The Saudis are our enemies.
Myth No. 12: The Middle East's problems are all America's fault. Muslim extremists would like everyone to believe this, but it just isn't true. The collapse of once great Middle Eastern civilizations has been under way for more than five centuries, and the region became a backwater before the United States became a country. For the first
century and a half of our national existence, our relations with the people of the Middle East were largely beneficent and protective, notwithstanding our conflict with the Barbary Pirates in North Africa. But Islamic civilization was on a downward trajectory that could not be arrested. Its social and economic structures, its values, its neglect of education, its lack of scientific curiosity, the indolence of its ruling classes and its inability to produce a single modern state that served its people all guaranteed that, as the West's progress accelerated, the Middle East would fall ever farther behind. The Middle East has itself to blame for its problems. None of us knows what our strategic future holds, but we have no excuse for not knowing our own past. We need to challenge inaccurate assertions about our policies,
about our past and about war itself. And we need to work within our community and state education systems to return balanced, comprehensive history programs to our schools. The unprecedented wealth and power of the United States allows us to afford many things denied to human beings throughout history. But we, the people, cannot afford ignorance.
Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer, strategist and author of 22 books, including the recent "Wars of Blood and Faith: The
Myth No. 11: It's all Israel's fault. Or the popular
Washington corollary: "The Saudis are our friends." Israel is the Muslim world's excuse for failure, not a reason for it. Even if we didn't support Israel, Islamist extremists would blame us for countless other imagined wrongs, since they fear our freedoms and our culture even more than they do our military. All men and women of conscience must recognize the core difference between Israel and its neighbors: Israel genuinely wants to live in peace, while its genocidal neighbors want Israel erased from the map. As for the mad belief that the Saudis are our friends, it endures only because the Saudis have spent so much money on both sides of the aisle in Washington. Saudi money continues to subsidize anti-Western extremism, to divide fragile societies, and encourage hatred between Muslims and all others. Saudi extremism has done far more damage to the Middle East than Israel ever did. The Saudis are our enemies.
Myth No. 12: The Middle East's problems are all America's fault. Muslim extremists would like everyone to believe this, but it just isn't true. The collapse of once great Middle Eastern civilizations has been under way for more than five centuries, and the region became a backwater before the United States became a country. For the first
century and a half of our national existence, our relations with the people of the Middle East were largely beneficent and protective, notwithstanding our conflict with the Barbary Pirates in North Africa. But Islamic civilization was on a downward trajectory that could not be arrested. Its social and economic structures, its values, its neglect of education, its lack of scientific curiosity, the indolence of its ruling classes and its inability to produce a single modern state that served its people all guaranteed that, as the West's progress accelerated, the Middle East would fall ever farther behind. The Middle East has itself to blame for its problems. None of us knows what our strategic future holds, but we have no excuse for not knowing our own past. We need to challenge inaccurate assertions about our policies,
about our past and about war itself. And we need to work within our community and state education systems to return balanced, comprehensive history programs to our schools. The unprecedented wealth and power of the United States allows us to afford many things denied to human beings throughout history. But we, the people, cannot afford ignorance.
Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer, strategist and author of 22 books, including the recent "Wars of Blood and Faith: The
Projekt
Registered
Let's see..
This whole thing is nothing more than a continuing tit for tat issue. Brutality for brutality..
You can go back before the establishment of the state of Israel by outsiders, before British imperialism and Lawrence of Arabia. It goes on and on for centuries and millenia.
So what are a few nuances worth arguing for.
People have taken over from west to east and east to west and back and forth throughout human history, not just the history of western civilization.
The people of Palestine got shafted when Israel was made a nation for Jewish survivors of the holocaust. The fact that the nation was established as a homeland for the Jews after they were slaughtered in Europe doesn't matter much to Palestinians. Remember that Jews, Christians and Muslims all lived in that region prior to Israel. Palestine still has pockets of Christian people living there under persecution right along side the Muslims. Think about Bethlehem..
When the mass migration into Israel of Jews around the world began, they went there and took over sections of land that had been held by muslim and christian families for centuries. The aggressive settlement of lands in the west bank and Gaza caused a lot of anger for the people already living there.
How would you feel if someone just came to your neighborhood and started building a house in your ample backyard or the other end of your farm? You would certainly take up arms and fight them off your land, wouldn't you? And if you didn't have guns big enough to defeat their military hardware, I am sure that you would find yourself to similar conclusions as the Palestinians have.
It all sucks.. You can point the finger at one group or the other but when it all boils down both sides have committed attrocities. Lately, the international backing for Radicals propagating Palestine's cause, coming from slightly more affluent Muslim states, has caused a lot of media attention and more deaths in Israel. That has fueled the hostilities between east and west USA/IRAN just when the warmongers here would just love to use it to their advantage.
In a sense, I have to applaud the resolve of both sides. That of Israel for Defending themselves by any means necessary, sticking to their guns and holding on to what was given to them. And, for the determination of their opposition. Flame away.
This whole thing is nothing more than a continuing tit for tat issue. Brutality for brutality..
You can go back before the establishment of the state of Israel by outsiders, before British imperialism and Lawrence of Arabia. It goes on and on for centuries and millenia.
So what are a few nuances worth arguing for.
People have taken over from west to east and east to west and back and forth throughout human history, not just the history of western civilization.
The people of Palestine got shafted when Israel was made a nation for Jewish survivors of the holocaust. The fact that the nation was established as a homeland for the Jews after they were slaughtered in Europe doesn't matter much to Palestinians. Remember that Jews, Christians and Muslims all lived in that region prior to Israel. Palestine still has pockets of Christian people living there under persecution right along side the Muslims. Think about Bethlehem..
When the mass migration into Israel of Jews around the world began, they went there and took over sections of land that had been held by muslim and christian families for centuries. The aggressive settlement of lands in the west bank and Gaza caused a lot of anger for the people already living there.
How would you feel if someone just came to your neighborhood and started building a house in your ample backyard or the other end of your farm? You would certainly take up arms and fight them off your land, wouldn't you? And if you didn't have guns big enough to defeat their military hardware, I am sure that you would find yourself to similar conclusions as the Palestinians have.
It all sucks.. You can point the finger at one group or the other but when it all boils down both sides have committed attrocities. Lately, the international backing for Radicals propagating Palestine's cause, coming from slightly more affluent Muslim states, has caused a lot of media attention and more deaths in Israel. That has fueled the hostilities between east and west USA/IRAN just when the warmongers here would just love to use it to their advantage.
In a sense, I have to applaud the resolve of both sides. That of Israel for Defending themselves by any means necessary, sticking to their guns and holding on to what was given to them. And, for the determination of their opposition. Flame away.
Projekt, nothing in your post to flame at; was a decent argument. I just think the Palestinians would have had peace and self-determination already if their leadership wasn't so hell bent on self-destruction. They waste so much human capital and money and lives on it, rather than making peace. The only way their leaders can stay in power is by inciting hate. The majority believe in peace with a two-party state, but the leadership can never allow it.
Projekt
Registered
I agree. They have to make the decision to cut their losses and commit to peace. However, fear is a powerful thing going far to prevent a reasonable solution.
Rainbow_Boy
Registered
well just the fact that you haven't even seen the video makes me believe the reports you are receiving is biased/corrupt/propaganda. because i have seen it many times on aljazeera.
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