Winning hearts and minds.
See the vehicles behind the troops.
Posted on 05/31/2004 7:15:48 AM PDT by knighthawk
Genghis Khan was perhaps the most successful warrior the world has ever known. During the 13th century, he conquered most of civilization with an army of fewer than 100,000 Mongol horsemen. According to Genghis' biographer, Jack Weatherford, the warlord's philosophy went this way: "Warfare was not a sporting contest or a mere match between rivals; it was a total commitment of one people against another. Victory did not come to the one who played by the rules; it came to one who made the rules and imposed them on his enemy."
Osama Bin Laden is unquestionably one of history's greatest villains, a man who has ordered the deaths of thousands of civilians to fulfill a perverted vision of religious thought. Does anyone doubt that, if given the chance, Bin Laden would commit mass murder by using a nuclear device or a chemical weapon to annihilate as many people as possible? Would any rational person dispute that?
The answer, of course, is no. Bin Laden wants to kill as many "infidels" as he can. And so America is locked in a war against this maniac and thousands of terrorists who agree with his philosophy.
But is America fighting that war the way Genghis Khan would fight it? The question is almost absurd, because the answer is so clear: not a chance. This country has nothing close to a total commitment in defeating terrorism. We are divided on tactics as well as ethics, and the terrorists know it.
Writing in The New York Times, Elizabeth Alexander, the director of the National Prison Project for the American Civil Liberties Union, said this: "The Pentagon-approved interrogation techniques that deprive prisoners of sleep and force them to stand in stress positions for extended periods are both disturbing and illegal. It is time for the military to unequivocally ban such officially sanctioned abuse of prisoners."
Make no mistake, the ACLU wants captured terrorists to have the same rights as American criminals do. So sometime in the future it's very possible that a captured terrorist who has knowledge of an impending chemical or biological attack would be interrogated as a bank robber would be. You could not deprive the suspected terrorist of sleep nor make him or her unusually uncomfortable.
My questions:
Do you think that's a sane strategy?
And do you think the ACLU is looking out for you and your family?
The kind of theoretical nonsense that the ACLU and others are putting out there must be giving Osama and his boys huge laughs.
Look, fair-minded Americans are embarrassed by Abu Ghraib and never want anything like that to happen again. We are better than the terrorists. We should never violate human rights in any circumstance.
But a middle ground must be found, and fast. The terrorists have no rules; they kill at will. But we, the primary targets, have all kinds of boundaries, many of which put us in danger.
President Bush and Congress should have declared a formal war shortly after 9/11 and defined new rules of incarceration and interrogation to fit this unique combat situation.
U.S. military courts should handle cases of accused terrorism, and harsh interrogation techniques should be approved when there is an imminent danger.
A divided America playing by obsolete rules of engagement is not going to win the war against Bin Laden and his mass murderers. We need to wake up and wise up. As Genghis Khan well understood, it is defeat the enemy or die.
Ping
What would happen if they took the hardest of the hardcore out into the desert and make them sit in a circle. They take one of them and sew him up snuggly in a fresh hide, ala the Apache method. As the hide slowly dried, it crushes the guy inside. I'll wager the others watching will become very talkative.
Similar to what Blackjack Pershing did in the Philipines in the early 1900s.
"During the 13th century, he conquered most of civilization with an army of fewer than 100,000 Mongol horsemen. "
by terrorizing civilized peoples, raping women, burning villages. He WAS a terrorist!!
Besides, did the Mongols succeed in leaving their "civilization" behind in the conquered territories? Where are they today? Except in their intellectual off-spring such as Osama.
The author is trying to make a point, but this is NOT a good analogy!
Khan's army was notoriously brutal. In fact Rome fell in part beacuse after losing a first battle in horrible way - the stories that spread made it impossible to recruit another decent army - since all were citizen soldiers.
The members of Al Queda do not fall under any of the provisions of the Geneva Conventions and do not deserve to be treated accordingly. Their treatment of our prisoners have not conformed to the Geneva Conventions and certainly their treatment of non-combatants such as Berg and Pearl have not.
Extract as much information from them as possible, execute them publicly as a warning to others that might want to follow in their footsteps, and bury them in pig fat! Any bleeding heart liberals who don't like it, can be damned.
It is an excellent analogy. What civilization do you expect OBL to leave behind?
Winning hearts and minds.
See the vehicles behind the troops.
A patrol from the Second Battalion of the 1st marine division searches for road-side bombs near a highway connecting Amman and Baghdad, near Falluja on May 31, 2004. REUTERS/ Nikola Solic
An Iraqi policeman aims his machine gun towards a crowd of Iraqis celebrating next to three cars, riddled with bullet holes after gunmen fired on a convoy of sport utility vehicles in Baghdad, Iraq (news - web sites), Sunday May 30, 2004. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Michaela DeSoucey, 26, a graduate student in sociology at Northwestern University sits outside a coffee shop in Evanston, Ill., with her dog Mickey Thrsday, May 27, 2004. DeSoucey, who would like to see even more media coverage of the Iraq (news - web sites) prison abuse scandal, says, 'I think people are too afraid to confront what's going on beyond their coffee and muffin.' (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)
Yes the Media is suppressing in the USA such stories as this:
update.
Supporters of radical Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr stage a counter-demonstration in Najaf, May 29, 2004. Earlier in the day some 200 people had protested against an assassination attempt against Sadreddin al-Kabanji. Witnesses said that Al-Kabanji, a critic of Sadr who supports Iraq (news - web sites)'s senior ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, was targetted by Mehdi Army gunmen as he left the Imam Ali mosque after Friday prayers. No one appeared to be injured in the incident. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra
What fools, the ACLU would be the first to be beheaded, unbelievers are scorned even more than infidels.
In Sept 1999, (911?)
A great King of Terror will come from the sky.
He will bring back the great King Genghis Khan.
Before and after Mars rules happily.
Nostrodamus (c10:q72)
fyi
I am not sure Genghis Khan makes a good model. He started with nothing to defend, nothing to lose and his rules of warfare are based on that. We on the other hand have much to defend.
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