[SeattleTiger]

Long read but sounds worth the time! Bump for finishing later.

[Sir Gawain]

So that's where you've been these last few months...writing this book you just posted. lol

[Sir Gawain]

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[WOSG]

wow, what a tome.

"China, where the Manchus used brutality to subjugate Tibet in the north, Taiwan in the south, and the Muslim provinces of the west ..." ooops, needs a geography lesson.

[McGavin999]

That was a great read. I'm sure he's right, history has been written in the last 30 days and it will change the face of warfare forever.

I just hope the Iraqi people will be able to hold on to what has been offered to them.

[Travis McGee]

Oh boy! Red meat! But more than I can digest tonight.

Question, is this course worth two or three credits, and when is the final?

Just kidding!

[happygrl]

Thanks for posting.

[Deb]

Ouch! My brain hurts. Great piece, but how 'bout something from the Onion next time.

[Heuristic Hiker]

bump to you for a nice historical perspective

[JZoback]

Bump for later read

[Sparta]

First of two interesting historical essays from nunya bidness.

If you want on or off the Western Civilzation Military History ping list, let me know.

[Travis McGee]

Bookmark for later read!

[Thud]

The author's scholarship leads much to be desired. He overlooks critical facts which could support the conclusion he wants, in addition to spinning facts which are contrary to his conclusion. Here's an example of each:

a) Positive fact overlooked. The Teutons' rage at Roman slaughter of women and children resulted in the destruction of several Roman legions at the hands of Armanius (Hermann the German) when the latter changed sides. Varus was KIA, and the Empire's frontier stabilized on the Rhine instead of the Elbe.

b) Negative fact spun. Sherman's "march to the sea" gutted Confederate armed resistance in the Civil War, and had nothing to do with Southern resistance to Reconstruction. The latter was the Southern ruling class trying to regain power. The former was so widely admitted, at the time and since, that Finnegan's spin here is obvious.

Whatever merit his conclusion might have is badly tainted by his game-playing with facts.

[Valin]

After September 11 the government pursued the terrorists more as criminals and less as soldiers

I was under the impression that exactly the opposite is true. In my readings on this subject it would appear that before 9-11 the FBI, INS, Customs...etc were more concered with collecting evidence to be used in a courtroom.

[NeonKnight]

Any form of warfare is terrorism. War is terifying.

A major component of modern day terrorism that you are ommiting from your definition is that terrorists are not governments. We never claimed that Sadam Hussein was a terrorist, but rather that he may have supported terrorists.

Recognized governments do not commit acts of terror, they commit acts of war. Even if they use the same tactics as terrorists, they are held to a different degree of accountability and may be deposed or overthrown, something that is traditionally impossible to do with terrorists, who are more fluid and not confined by borders and bounderies.

[Luis Gonzalez]

Wow...

John Lewis Gaddis, in his A Grand Strategy of Transformation, discusses the source of terrorism: "...it's becoming clear now that poverty wasn't what caused a group of middle-class and reasonably well-educated Middle Easterners to fly three airplanes into buildings and another into the ground. It was, rather, resentments growing out of the absence of representative institutions in their own societies, so that the only outlet for political dissidence was religious fanaticism" and concluded that "Terrorism—and by implication the authoritarianism that breeds it—must become as obsolete as slavery, piracy, or genocide: "behavior that no respectable government can condone or support and that all must oppose."

Mr. Gaddis, the Robert A. Lovett professor of military and naval history at Yale University, agrees with Caleb Carr when he clearly identifies the source of terrorism as oppressive, totalitarian societies.

The Bolsheviks under Lenin, introduced into the world the concept of justified murder in the name of a cause, and from those beginnings, terrorism has grown into the primary tool of the extremist against his perceived "oppressors".

What common grounds do communism and fundamentalist Islam share?

A tad complicated perhaps, but nevertheless common ground in their ultimate goal of power over the people living within their grasps. Communism is an atheistic society that removes the personal relationship between the individual and his God, replacing Him with the State, as it transforms the State into the source of all Hope, shelter, and safety.

Fundamentalist Islam's theocratic totalitarianism interrupts the individual's personal relationship with his God, and sets the State as the intermediary between the individual and his God, thus creating a situation where all governmental dictates are considered to be "God's will".

Russia's total war on the Chechen people has created a veritable breeding grounds for terrorists; it has failed to achieve any results other than the continuation and escalation of the violence thus far, and will continue to do so. And as the people of Chechnya realize that their fate is death at the hands of Russian troops, or Russian bombs, they will engage in escalating acts of violence themselves. Additionally, it has created an opportunity for Middle Eastern State-sponsored fundamentalist Islamic terrorists groups to inject themselves into a very old conflict, create a new front for their war on the West, and inject religious fanaticism into the Chechen conflict.

In contrast, the US-led War in Iraq is seeing the terrorists turning on their own people; they've actually begun assassinating their own clerics, making the entire "war between faiths" idea a farce, and exposing Islamic terrorism as little more than geopolitically based warfare, waged by States via the use of shadow armies using religious fanaticism as a recruitment tool, and a weapon.

Good job on this, I truly enjoyed reading it.