We'll win again but only after the enemy wipes out a couple hundred thousand of us first.
This is what I keep telling my dad. I thought 9-11 was the threshold, but apparently not. It will take major destruction of a US city caused by a nuclear bomb.
When the financial impact is so great that your average American cannot eat at Applebees every Saturday night for a prolonged period of time then you will see a fight.
As long as we are comfortable and can continue winter vacations at Disneyworld, then we will live in Fantasyland.
You are absolutely correct.
>>We'll win again but only after the enemy wipes out a couple hundred thousand of us first.<<
That is my take as well.
On a slightly related subject, I just finished Tom Clancy's "Executive Orders" last night. If only the middle east was that easy. I really enjoyed it though. It is actually skewing my perspective of the Middle East much as some dreams can skew your feelings about some things for the first half hour or so after you wake up.
You know, I don't even believe that anymore. It is quite possible that even a million casualties on American soil would not sufficiently harden the national will.
In my younger days I used to wonder why Rome fell. How they could have let it happen. Superior force, superior civilization...But force is meaningless without resolve, and civilization is a delicate thing.
And then there's the matter of birth rates and oil wealth. In fact, the only glimmer of hope I have is that something will be found to replace oil, or manufacture it by some wonderful new means. That would take the wind right out of the Islamic sails.
I'm reminded of a passage in a book by novelist Howard Fast..."The Jews, Story of A People."
He wrote, "The iron sword and the horse and chariot were the great equalizers; they catapulted the herdsman into history. Desert-parched, bitter with longing, the foot-bound wanderer of the desert and the badlands was suddenly mobile...On foot they had been helpless; but suddenly they stood in chariots, drove prancing horses, cast iron-shod spears. Now they began to hack and bite at the land which their mythology had assured them was theirs by right of first usage..."
This time, what spurs the barbarian is not a technology, but a fuel. Take away the oil---or its value---and you would take away their motive power. Otherwise they will hack and bite at the land of Israel, and the edges of civilization everywhere.
The United States MUST begin preparations for building up our military infrastructure and staffing to full wartime levels. It's time for our nation to be on a war footing and our great industrial and economic powers being focused upon the major task at hand. Iraq is not the war I speak of; merely, it is but a campaign in what looms ahead. We all know full-scale war is coming - it's only a matter of months or a couple of years.
We can only hope that tens upon hundreds of thousands of Americans don't have to be lost, first, before this great nation and our few true allies begin to finally fight back.
Sad but true.