The West has always been far more willing to close with the enemy and fight to a decision than have other cultures.
It is true that Western civilisation generally detest carnage and killing of noncombatants. For that reason, the American Civil War is the turning point in Western military history especially the inovation of Gen. Sherman (deportation of civilians, death by starvation, destruction of crops and other "brave" deeds that constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity
The rest is only advancement in technology of mass killing of civilians.
In WWII Germans were not cuttting ears of captured and killed enemies as trophies and did not send sculls of captured enemy soldiers to their sweethearts back home. Maybe for that reason there was more soldiers surrendering, who knows.
The problem with radical islam is their belief that all carnage done to enemy civilians is justified. They believed in it before Gen. Sherman and had ample time to make an art out of it.
Deception of enemy is virtue, deception of oneself is deadly trait.
What about WWI and WWII dont you think that these wars were both excessive as far as carnage and violence? Carpet bombing entire cities by both sides, rounding up entire populations for extermination, I think the West knows more about Total war then any one else. How about Sherman's march throught the South? Very mild wasn't it.
THe difference between East and West in the case of Islam is that Islam relies on the will of Allah, which is not to be counfounded with Allah Himself. Islam is relying on the will to Jihad, on the violence to jihad. That is a secular concept of violence, not a religious one, because violence in religious terms is rather a blessing, an ability to strike back at an aggressor, not a mean of achieving a premeditated stated goal.
SO Islam is solely in servitude to violence. Violence is the protector of Islam. Out West the protector are the "good fruits" J_sus talked about. We plow the land and we are servile to the land. The land and its fruits are the protector of the WEst.
We can see that the West cannot rely on the land as a resource when the land is destroyed by Islam. And this is what is happening. We are no match to Islam in that respect. So, what do we do? We do what we do best: We plow the land and use the proceeds to buy protection for the land, and, ironicaly, we buy this protection from muslims.
But muslims are bad protectors, because muslims would rather resort to sucessful violent conquests than ones that fail, since muslims' self esteem and existentialism relies on the successes of this violence. Hence, when the muslims hit the RUssia, China India brick wall, the muslims will turn against an easier target, the WEst, the very west that was paying it for protection.
Hence the west comes to be in an even worse situation than before, because not only its land is attacked, but moreover it is deeply penetrated by the attacker it trusted at first. THe west will seek to rely on other types of protection welfare, out of cultural impetus, and out of sheer laziness and cowardice - prefering peace at the cost of civilian populations used as shields against terrorists rather than picking up a fight with lesser collateral damage risk than peace. So the West will turn to China or Russia.
However China and Russia are giving up communism - communism that refused to plow the land but rather turn people into grazing animals, and instead are picking up a medieval modification akin to kingship. Under this third way, people can plow the land but they still have to face the wrath and hunger of the former communist cattle keepers at times. There will be a system set up so that the predatory nature of the leaders of China and Russia is maintained through feeding.
So as China and Russia will rely on the returns of the plowing done by the west, the west will rely on Russian and Chinese protection from barbarians such as muslims. We are returning effectively to a global dark age akin to the Middle Ages, where the WEst is the servant, and the East is comfortable in rationalising its position as King/god of the West, because the West will actualy request it.
Aside from this petty arrangement, there will remain a few brave people who will truly rely on G_D's blessing and G_d Himself. THose people will resist servitude in calculated ways. People of G_d are owned by G_d, and hence will rather fight and die rather than wish for protection from a thug. And that is the ultimate winning formula despite the likelyhood of people of G_d being utterly annihilated by the East. The reason being is that the East-West arrangemenet will rely on evolution, it will rely on nature's good will and on their own wits to succeed.
However we all know that nature and people's cunning and wits are the worst of the backstabbers, especialy a nature that is hostile to human beings whose immune system is weak, whose dependence on a Earth orbit, environment and meteorites is heavy and whose evolution and petri dish experiments are poor comfort for the tribulations nature is going to butcher them through.
It is then that those of faith will survive and resist better, because those of faith know better than to rely on wishful systems. Those of faith will never submit to nature, but will attempt to make nature its servant, they will attempt to make the sinner and criminal its servant, and not the other way around. Those will arm and protect themselves and they will not be part of the backstabbing tribulation process that will affect a G_dless system. Blessings are on the way for believers, and they will be best capable of exploiting and defending those blessings, G_d being their only source of welfare, absent or not.
I am tiring of hearing about "The West" all the time, though. Although I understand the concept "misery loves company," it is an overstatement to say the Islamists are at war with "The West." It is clear that they are targeting Americans wherever they may be and Jews wherever they may be, in Israel or elsewhere. They may get around to all those other countries in Europe someday, but I would imagine it will be many years in the future.
The Europeans may in the meantime arrive at some sort of accommodation/appeasement with the Islamists, especially if the unthinkable occurred (U.S. basically destroyed in a decades-long war of attrition).
Apart from the crusades, hundred years war, thirty years war, colonial wars, Crimean war, American Civil war, the Indian Wars, First World War, Balkan Wars, Second World War, and a host of other war's we in the West have been too peaceful, oh I forgot empire building wars.
What the West does have a tendency to do is throw up out of work historians who will write any cr*p to get a bit of money
Tony
Based on Christian and western principles, President Bush offered Iraq a chance to end the conflict without total destruction of its people and its government. In retrospect, this was a mistake. Bush applied western principles to an eastern enemy.
That is just not true at all. For better or worse, we entered the Gulf War as a member/leader of a UN coalition with a specifice mandate. Once Iraqi forces vacated Kuwait and agreed to the conditions for surrender that the coalition demanded, we could not continue to march on Bagdad and oust the Iraqi government.
To do so would have had to smash the coalition we put together, break our word to our allies, and become an international pariah ourselves. Bush decided against that course. He did not base his decision on “Christian and western principles”. He based it on his belief that that course of action was bad for America.