Posted on 12/04/2005 9:17:01 PM PST by ncountylee
Here's the NYT using the term "fighter" to describe anarchist/criminals led by paid foreign terrorists supported by regional Islamo-facist nation-states.
Next thing they 'll be described as "youths" like they are in Europe.
This is the same tactics we used in Nam. Fight an die for a Hill then abandon it a month later expecting the locals to maintain our level of control. In a week the NVA would kill them and we'd be back to square one.
We are liberators because our intent is to leave after helping the local government establish itself anew.
Conquerors invade and never leave, with the intent to establish and extend their rule over new territory.
We are liberators because of our intent to try and leave the Iraqis with self-government, independence, and a viable infrastructure. Yes, we went in there because of the threat posed by an oil-rich dictator with mad delusions of grandeur. But what sets us apart is our belief that we have a moral obligation to repair what we've broken, protect the innocent, and empower locals to do the same so we can leave. We are liberators because we do not have the mindset of conquerors.
All the similarities that lead people to believe we are conquerors are superficial.
We don't rule Japan, and they can ask us to leave any time they want. The only problem with leaving Japan is they know that they'll be at the tender mercies of a belligerent China sometime in the future, and our military bases are a lucrative source of income for them.
We have essentially left all of our World War II occupied territories to the governance of the local populations. We no longer appoint governors, dictate laws, strike down laws, reverse court decisions, or any other such activities a conqueror would be likely to do. What presence we do maintain in those nations are in the nature of forward bases on allied soil, not remnants of an invading army. I will admit and have admitted that we've acted the part of conqueror on the past, an in most cases things worked out fine because eventually we liberated our possessions from ourselves, by giving them the right of self-determination.
Like I've said before, the similarities are superficial. When you examine the deeper currents that separate liberators from conquerors, our nation is most certainly a liberator. If nations we liberate tend to imitate our preferred form of government, it is the choice of their people. It is probably a choice they haven't had for themselves in generations. Personally, I'm flattered.
well not in modern times anymore - the ruthless always lost modern day warfare.
Beeing fair and playing by the rules but showing up with more skill and high tech does the trick today.
It's because you want to win the peace aswwell as the war.
(What worth is a victory if you have to fight for it over and over ?)
must be something they secretly computer simulated for a decade...
What's interesting is that, if you deconstruct Murtha's plan, it would be just like the old strategy they denounce in this piece.
Murtha wants us to pull out of the entire country, come in when we are needed, beat up the insurgents, and then leave again.
That is exactly what this article says was the problem, and now we are doing it "right" by fighting and then staying.
No mention here that by staying we are encouraging insurgents to come back. Instead, the article suggests that the insurgents come to where we are NOT.
Vlad did impaling thing while defending against the Muslims, too. A field full of impaled prisoners of war from a prior invasion helped hold off one invasion.
I disagree. We aren't facing tough odds when dealing with the terrorists.
The terrorists have one major advantage over us, and that is their complete and total lack of respect for human life, ours and theirs. As much as they may deserve some of the things that have been suggested, we gain absolutely nothing from excessive brutality.
We kill them, then we bury them, and then we move on and kill the next one. Demonstrative examples of the kinds suggested won't help the people in the middle choose our path of peaceful coexistence, whenever possible. We have already been forced to war by the evil nature of our enemies. We have to resist the temptation to slip into barbarism because that is the nature of our enemies.
If we have to be the bloody paragons, we should try and be the paragons, and earn the respect due our great nation through our competence. Going out of our way to impale heads on spikes would only purposefully achieve what the New York Times, Reuters, and Associated Press have been trying to do for the past few decades. It would make people fear us for all the wrong reasons.
If people should fear us for our military might, they should fear us for our military's competence, and not our brutality. It sucks that when fighting extremists, of any sort, that such differences are lost on the enemy, but it isn't the enemy we're trying to win over. It is the enemy we're trying to kill, and the civilian populations we're trying to impress. We can hardly do the latter if the false tales of our brutality that are carried on the air waves suddenly become more fact than fiction.
Killing bad men who hurt innocents is something we can do, but let's not take joy in vengeance. Leave vengeance to God, and stick to meting our justice - swift, simple, clean.
And now it has been exposed. Ten years of classified work down the drain...
I see your point, and my post was made mostly in jest anyway.
I agree we should be flattered that countries we have occupied such as Germany and Japan are now pretty similar to our own country, and are counted among allies. It's still true that those people, especially the Japanese, would never have adopted our ways without some friendly conquering.
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