Posted on 09/09/2005 9:37:21 AM PDT by Jonathan
September 11 was not so much a discrete event as part of a continuum. It was the result of broad strategic failures that, preceding it by decades, continue to this day and are likely to continue on. It is as if the country has lost, as exemplified by the Left now out of power, a great deal of the will to self-preservation, and, as exemplified by the Right now in charge, not a little of its capacity for self-defense. Our politics and policies have somehow been parceled out to opportunists like Michael Moore -- purveyor of conspiracy theories and hatreds, whose presentation, unclean in every respect, is honored nonetheless by the controlling rump of Democrats -- and to Bushmen like "Kip" Hawley of Homeland Security, father of the proposal to allow carry-on ice-picks, bows and arrows, and knives with blades up to five-inches long.
For more than 20 years prior to September 11, Islamic terrorists imprisoned and murdered our diplomats and military personnel, destroyed our civil aviation, machine-gunned our civilians, razed our embassies, attacked an American warship and, in 1993, the U.S. itself. For varying reasons, none legitimate, we hesitated to mount an offensive against the terrorists' infrastructure, hunt them down, eliminate a single rogue regime that supported them, or properly disconcert our fatted allies whose robes they infested. This was comparable in its way to Munich.
They are all so wrong. In violating established tradition and throwing aside advantage and elemental common sense, they waste American lives. And for what? What moral construction would allow anyone to spend more than 2,000 dead and tens of thousands of wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan -- so far -- while insisting without major exception that cutting costs is a virtue?
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
You can't defeat either the facts or the logic . . .
Got a username/password?
I would like to read it to.
Help? Anybody?
Or make any sense of it.
I know. I started reading the first couple of paragraphs and then I reread them and then again and then I just said "forget it".
what a verbose windbag... not you jonathon, helprin.
he disregards this administrations executing a successful campaign, albeit in the media, a pr nightmare navigation through the obstacles in the congress and senate and the media, plus minimal sacrifice from the american people who are supportive of the exercise and most would like to see more action...
teeman
Thanks. I think.
But I believe Helprin is chastising Americans and our leaders.
He is, again in my opinion, rebuking America for the foolish and dangerous decisions we are making today.
And he is warning that our Western culture is on a suicide course if we don't change course.
Other major strategic thinkers are worrying about the strategic force implosion being directed from the Administration...
what does that mean? Please clarify.
I would tend to agree with some of the writers points. I still question the number of troops..are they sufficient. what the response has been....that would look "too much like we are occupying the country" and "more insurgents would be created."
Helprin believes, as I do, that a nation-state and it's people need to be SUBJECTED, not simply have their army defeated on the field of battle.
The citizens who are supporting the terror insurgency need to be made refugees, their homes and businesses and wealth destroyed, and the price for supporting opposition made incredibly high.
See Japan, 1945, for a proper application of this tactic.
Thanks for the ping!
"Helprin believes, as I do, that a nation-state and it's people need to be SUBJECTED, not simply have their army defeated on the field of battle."
I believe that too. Compassion in war is self-defeating. See Victor Davis Hanson on Gen Sherman.
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