Whose War Is this

You make some good points.
"Point is, the editors of opinion mags are irrelevant to GW, and Buchanan's reference to them as if they were a force reflects only his own limited pundit worldview. "

However, I do believe that list was well salted with other than pundits, including some in his administration. I think Buchanan had them in mind also. This is a battle for the mind and heart of G.W.

You might think that these folks have no influence but his Dad was taken in my the likes of Rudman and Sununu on Court appointment Souter. Bush needs more people, in additon to Buchanan, to speak out for his position. Otherwise these 'pundits' press megaphones will stampede his Texas plain talk.

"We're going to be in the Gulf for a good long while, my friend. You may as well get used to it."

Gee Sinky, now you're sounding like that shitkicking liberal warmongering bastard LBJ. I ask you again, how did you get out of the draft? How did you avoid military service? You are what British philosopher Michael Oakeshott called "the failed individual"--you swallow "national greatness" propaganda to compensate for your own empty, uncentered existence. Do you have sons, Sinky? Probably not. Recent history's biggest saber-rattlers (LBJ and Tricky Dick) didn't.

You're just another aging angry old neo-con, one who loves to rattle sabers, but runs away from having to carry one.

"We're going to be in the Gulf for a good long while, my friend. You may as well get used to it."

Gee Sinky, now you're sounding like that shitkicking liberal warmongering bastard LBJ. I ask you again, how did you dodge the draft? How did you avoid military service? You are what British philosopher Michael Oakeshott called "the failed individual"--you swallow "national greatness" propaganda to compensate for your own empty, uncentered, unreflective existence--a low-rent Albert Speer, technocratic friend of totalitarians. Do you have sons, Sinky? Probably not. Recent history's biggest saber-rattlers (LBJ and Tricky Dick) didn't.

You're just another aging angry old neo-con, one who, like Kagan, Kristol, Wolfowitz and the rest of that globalist crowd, loves to rattle a sabers in peace but doesn't have the balls to carry one in war.

However, his stuff about Hitler came awful close to an apologia for Nazism.

This simply isn't true. I've seen the quotes that alledgedly support this, but I've also read the essays that these quotes are selectively culled from. When someone selects a line from an essay about what Germans of the 30s saw in Hitler, and attributes those same views to the author, in this case Buchanan, it is simply an exercise in lying. And that is an example of what has been done. What it does is reveal the low ethics of those who take quotes out of context in their zeal to label someone a Nazi. Such tactics used to be the province of the Left. And it's quite obvious that a number of Neocons haven't abandoned their roots.

This controversy first began when Buchanan defended President Reagan for his having laid a wreath at Bitburg Cemetery, to honor the German war dead. If you recall, a number of the same people who have called Pat a nazi also had the same words for Ronald Reagan over that incident. If you don't recall, then I suggest you go dig up some copies of Commentary magazine of that time. Do you also think Ronald Reagan is a "nazi"?

Another incident that aroused the Pat-is-a-nazi crowd was his defense of a group of nuns that was being evicted from their convent at the site of one of the former Death Camps, where they prayed for the millions of Catholics who also were murdered by the Nazis. Should good Catholic Pat have ignored the plight of these nuns? I didn't care, but then I'm not Catholic.

Another of his "nazi" activities was his having the gall to argue that old John Demjanjuk was falsely accused of having been Ivan the Terrible, a prison guard at one of the Nazi death camps. Buchanan argued that the evidence, largely from the Soviets, wasn't true. In the end Demjanjuk was acquitted, by the Israeli Supreme Court. I guess they're nazis, too.

I used to know all of these Crimes of Herr Buchanan. Mostly because I read a dozen magazines at the time when this all began, and I was very surprised to realize that some people had an agenda here, and that agenda wasn't seeking the truth. I was certainly naive to believe that there is a dedication to truth, to honor, and to goodwill among the people I considered on my side politically. Machiavelli lives.

War is a means, not an end.

Very true. That is one of the messages of Sun Tzu and Clausewitz. We have to know what our goal is and patiently go about doing it... until everyone associated with this attack is dead. No need to make a big noise that will create a bigger problem than we already have. Just lots and lots of small paybacks. The bad guys will get the message, and live in fear the rest of their days until their turn comes.

But if this does turn out to have been state-sponsored, then we likely won't be able to avoid getting ourselves a lot of publicity.

Munich is misleading, and poor old Neville Chamberlain gets a bad rap. At the time Chamberlain feared Bolshevism more than he did Hitler, and he thought that Communism was what England would have to fight. It was also the Great Depression and he needed to buy time in order to rearm England. We all condemn Chamberlain because we know what happened next, but he really wasn't some sort of antiwar pacifist.

Our allies in the Arab world are those who suffer from terrorists, some daily. Our enemy are terrorists and their supporters. It is a fact of life that both categories span multiple countries. Did Sun Tzu say anything about facts of life?

Your comments on the Arab world are the same as my own. But your comment on Sun Tzu is a non-sequiter, having no relation to those observations. Apparently logic isn't your strongest suit. Let me recommend Copi's Logic to you, perhaps you can correct this deficiency.

Sun Tzu's book on war is taught at West Point. The American military thinks he has plenty to say about the facts of life, especially on how to win wars. Maybe you know better than Sun Tzu. If so, you owe it to us to put your knowledge down on paper.

I advise you to read more widely. The Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare has documented the link. No, their Islamic beliefs are not the same; however, there HAS been a terrorist alliance formed among all these groups to share expertise and training. Iranian intelligence helps check out all the security details. In the report on the first World Trade Bombing and subsequent arrests surrounding it, the FBI stormed a house where terrorists (persons from Sheikh Rahman mosque) were in the process of mixing a chemical bomb set for using at the UN. Who was there helping them with the chemicals but a known South American terrorist. They also have documents proving that Iranian and Sudanese intelligence agents entering the country with diplomatic visas checked out the details around the first bombing of the WTC. For the documentation of these detail get Yossef Bodansky's books. (He is the director of the task force in Congress.)

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