It strikes me as curious, just what the public is allowed to know -- then versus now.
To pick one example: every one of these posts includes at least one map showing exactly where the battle lines were, and as much as possible about the battles themselves.
So when has anyone ever seen a map of the current "war on terror", showing battle lines and describing significant operations?
Of course, people say: "there are no battle lines, since the enemy is well hidden, and is all around us, 360 degrees."
Sure, but that begs the question: then what metrics are being used to measure success & failure, and why has the public never seen them?
It's just most curious to speculate that, even with all our quantum leaps in mass communications, the average citizen today knows less about the status of "war on terror" than did his or her grandparents know about World War Two.
Instead of relaying dry facts and figures today's newspapers have a more important analytical task to perform. For example, if a Republican administration is waging a war on terror the press analyzes how they are doing it wrong. If a Democrat administration is waging the war on terror then the press analyzes how the Republicans should shut up about how the Democrat administration is doing it.
Boy do I ever have comments about “war coverage” now. As we have all noted, the New York Times of 1942 was a hell of a lot more patriotic than the Times of today. But there are some very disturbing trends in how the current war is being reported, thanks to the perversion of the media that resulted from the long march through the institutions.
Yes, the war on terror is different than WW2. There are no battlefield maps to measure victory or defeat. But there are very clear tell tale signs to look for in the murk of this conflict, and I hate to say it but they very clearly show that we are losing this war, and losing it badly.
First and foremost is the nature of the war itself. What we have is more similar to the Cold War than to WW2. Both the Cold War and the War on Terror had their military battles, but that’s not really where the wars were or will be won or lost. For the Cold War, we had a coherent multi-generational strategy laid down by Secretary of State George C. Marshall; the strategy of “containment.” We would contain Soviet Communism to those states where it existed, and prevent by any means necessary, its spread to other states. The strategy was that international communism would then collapse due to its own internal deficiencies. The strategy worked, only because when Soviet communism was on the ropes, Ronald Reagan realized it and he gave it the final shove.
We do not have the same strategy today. If there is a strategy for our war on terror, it is to make the terrorist states “like us.” By which I mean that we will “make them like us” in terms of becoming democratic institutions, which was Bushs’ strategy. That changed to 0bama’s strategy of “make them like us” by appeasing them.
It is apparent today that both strategies have failed.
And here is the real reason we are losing. First and foremost, it’s because we don’t even call this war what it really is. It is not a “war on terror” where we are taking some offensive action to wipe out international terrorists. It is more accurately “Islam’s war on the west.” It really is nothing less than that, and the mere fact that our public institutions are afraid (yes, AFRAID) to say so, is a confession that we have no strategy, and are losing a war we won’t even recognize as being waged against us?
The anti-American outbursts in the middle east in the past few days show just how badly we are losing this war, and it will take some explanation so bear with me. First, all of the “outrage” over some internet movie is manufactured. The muzzies aren’t outraged over it, they haven’t even seen it. But its used as an excuse to rile them up and murder Americans, for which any excuse will do. It’s a war on the west, remember? And WE ARE “the West.” OK, so they hate us. And our media and our political leadership (both parties) REFUSE to recognize this. How can we possibly win when we won’t even confront the evil facing us.
But wait, it gets even worse. It should be pretty clear that Islam is incompatible with the First Amendment of our Constitution, and any sort of guarantee of free experession of speech or religion. Do anything to “offend” the muzzies and they automatically resort to violence. Put a crucifix in urine, does it offend Christians? Sure it does. But Christians won’t murder anyone over it. Make a movie that tells the ugly truth about Mohammed, and they get violent. The problem is how our press and government is reacting to this. I heard this morning that our FBI has “tracked down” the movie producer, they released his name, and they listed his criminal record (yes, he apparently has one). The inference is pretty obvious. In the American media, making a movie, however truthful, that “offends” muzzies, is now equated with a CRIME. In fact, some entertainment idiots like Bette Midler have stated that the movie guy should be charged with murder.
I am an attorney, having gradutated law school in 1984. I really only remember one “lecture” from law school; that was during the first semester of my first year, when Dean Harvey, my Civil Procedure professor, turned the lecture over to a Holocaust survivor. He spent the hour telling us what he had to do to be the only member of his family to survive Auschwitz. (BroJoe, I know this is dear to you). Of course, I had studied history and knew about the Holocaust, and thought “yeah, this was bad, but so what?” After the man was done speaking, Professor Harvey went to the podium, and all he said was “It’s your duty as lawyers to make sure this never happens again.”
That’s when it hit home what it really means to be a lawyer. Where were the lawyers in Germany to stand up and say “This is wrong, it is illegal, you cannot do this?” I never forgot that. Unfortunately, most of my classmates walked out of the lecture believing it could never happen here.
Well folks, it is. Right now. Our most basic Constitutional guarantee, the right to speak and practice religion (which in my mind includes the right to attack any religion) is not only under assault, it is being destroyed. Right now, right under our very eyes, by the very same forces of evil that wound up stuffing Jews into ovens. If Robert Maplethorpe asked me to defend his placing a crucfix in a jar of urine, I would have done so. Today, it is the duty of every American lawyer to stand up and say that anyone in the United States has a right to make a video of Mohammed, to have it depict anything they want, and be absolutely protected in doing so.
Instead, he is being thrown away as a human sacrifice to appease a satanic cult that looks with contempt upon appeasement. Just as the Nazis did, guys. And when we do that, our Constitution and our liberties have lost to islam. The muzzies have won.
Who says history does not repeat.
We are losing the war against islam. Who knows, we may already have lost.