Article

2006-05-02 Home Front: WoT

Why is America so delicate with the enemy?

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Posted by JerseyMike 2006-05-02 08:24|| || Front Page|| [11136 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Today words like "power" and "victory" are so stigmatized with Western sin that, in many quarters, it is politically incorrect even to utter them. For the West, "might" can never be right. And victory, when won by the West against a Third World enemy, is always oppression.

Every now and again I do a Google search to see if any of the MSM have reported an American victory in a battle in Iraq or Afghanistan. The word seems to have dropped out of their style manuals.

Posted by Matt 2006-05-02 08:42|| 2006-05-02 08:42|| Front Page Top

#2 Excellent article. RTWT.

Posted by Dave D.">Dave D. 2006-05-02 08:57|| 2006-05-02 08:57|| Front Page Top

#3 "I call this white guilt not because it is a guilt of conscience but because people stigmatized with moral crimes--here racism and imperialism--lack moral authority and so act guiltily whether they feel guilt or not."

Lot's of good insight in this article, but it somehow has a defeatist tone. America acts guilty because it has been morally stigmatized? No, only with the assent of the West can we be condemned as guilty and lacking moral authority.

Other cultures all over the world have aggressed and gone on imperial campaigns, yet they do not seem to be plagued with this debilitating guilt, nor self-stigmatized because of it. Perhaps we in the West are better at admitting our past transgressions and the other-the non-West-are better at not going all neurotic over their past transgressions.

Posted by Jules 2006-05-02 09:16|| 2006-05-02 09:16|| Front Page Top

#4 Jules nails it. The "crimes" of the U.S. and Europe really amount to behaving pretty much as every human culture always has but being able to do so with unprecedented effectiveness due to superior technology.

The native tribes of America, for example, had fought brutal territiorial wars for scores of generations before the Europeans arrived and joined in. The only difference was that superior weaponry allowed the Europeans to win unprecedentedly one-sided and permanent victories. The pattern repeated in Africa, Asia and the Middle East through the second half of the last millenium and into today.

We see this in the occasional rumblings that it's unfair or inhumane that smart weapons allow the U.S. to win conventional victories with so little risk to many of our troops. Like it's somehow "unsporting".

I guess if you can't win the game, the other side will try to change the rules, and has done so successfully enough that the U.S. has been unwilling to use it's full conventional power in any conflict for more than 50 years. That combined with increasingly sophisticated assymetrical tactics like terrorism and guerilla warfare have made our position more difficult than it has to be.

Posted by VAMark 2006-05-02 11:02|| 2006-05-02 11:02|| Front Page Top

#5 You fight wars to win. Not for moral high ground.

Posted by closedanger">closedanger 2006-05-02 13:30|| 2006-05-02 13:30|| Front Page Top

#6 Remember that there are two war ongoing. The official war, that gets all the Internet coverage even if most of it is ignored by the MSM; and the secret, SOCOM war, all but invisible.

The last count I had was over 300 SOCOM personnel had died in the line of duty. My guesstimate is that for each of these lives, we take down on or about 100 enemy, worldwide. Do the math.

My point is that in the conventional war, we follow all the rules of war; but the SOCOM war has only efficiency as its rule. And I suggest that efficiency, in this case, ventures into realms that few of us would prefer to consider.

The X-Files is an enjoyable TV show. It would be far less enjoyable if we knew our side was actively doing things that unwholesome, even to a repugnant enemy.

Posted by Anonymoose 2006-05-02 14:21|| 2006-05-02 14:21|| Front Page Top

#7 This is the real issue in the CIA's war on the administration. SOCOM is doing what the CIA once did, when it was formed, but can't do and doesn't want to do anymore.

This is also the real target of the political attacks re: data collection.

And of the generals from the regular Army who are threatened in fundamental ways by what Rumsfeld has put in motion with SOCOM.

Posted by SmealingCribnitz14432 2006-05-02 14:27|| 2006-05-02 14:27|| Front Page Top

#8 Dr. Sanity has a good post discussing Steele's column. Well worth reading.

Posted by Dave D.">Dave D. 2006-05-02 15:47|| 2006-05-02 15:47|| Front Page Top

#9 The native tribes of America, for example, had fought brutal territiorial wars for scores of generations before the Europeans arrived and joined in. The only difference was that superior weaponry allowed the Europeans to win unprecedentedly one-sided and permanent victories.

A little nitpickfor reasons presently unknown, Native Americans did not have the genetic immune diversity found in African, European, and Asian populations. As a result smallpox and other imported diseases killed up to 90% of the existing Native American population. Native American diseases had no impact on Europe. This greatly aided the displacement of Native Americans by Europeans and Africans.

Posted by Slaviling Glomong9311 2006-05-02 22:48|| 2006-05-02 22:48|| Front Page Top

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