In Islam any able bodied man is seen as a combatant and even old men are seen as people who could help plan strategy, and they came up with that idea about 1500 years ago. That idea isn't just a good one for them to know but for anyone waging a war.

Meanwhile, any grade school teacher will employ the strategy which I mentioned. If one person in class throws a spitball at her behind her back she'll punish the entire class until the kids grow to hate the spit baller and tell on him. Then, when she let's them have fun again, all the kids are grateful to her.

So, the average US citizen and the government does have the strategic sense of a kindergarten teacher. It's time for us to withdraw from international social life and let the next motivated power step in.

So basically you view this as a war to eliminate Islam, right?

There is no power "motivated" to attempt to terrify 14 of the world's population our of their religion. Such a power would be a worthy target of anyone in the world who values democracy and the sovereignty of nations.

Besides Saudi Arabia would make a better first target in that case anway.

__________________
A song that says it all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqITJFGyq4s

What do you mean there?

Saudi Arabia would be a rotten target. It would be worse than attacking the Vatican, as that would unify most Christians all at once. Saudi Arabia is where Mecca is located, and it says in the Hadiths that no infidel can ever be allowed to bear arms there. Osama uses the American troops located in SA as a point of justification for aggression, for example.

The best strategy was to take down Iraq. That's because it was run on a National Socialism model and not a religious one. That made it weak because it wasn't headed by some "sacred king" but just a regular person. From what I've seen muslims are happy that the government was taken down.

Anyway, if Iraq could have been secured, then a western type government and culture could be introduced. If the infrastructure was developed, like Japan, it could become a favorite trading partner in the west. That would mean an increase in wealth and standard of living for them, and materialism means the death of religion, which is powered by poorness and lack of control feelings.

Then, the goal would be to subvert surrounding countries through cultural, economic, and military means. In the end a place like Mecca would end up like the Vatican, which was a former seat of massive world power, but is now a quaint tourist location.

A war is both overt and covert and psychological and physical. Attempting to fight wars according to some imagined set of morals is nuts, because from the very beginning you lose. We lost this war before a single shot was fired by us.

I agree but you are the raving lunatic trying to pitch this war as a chance to terrorize an entire nation out of its various religions (theres is no one Islam, but many). You are the one that is pitching this as a all-out war on Islam. If you going to go into crazy talk land at least stay consistant.

You can't turn a country thats busy tearing itself apart into a model of Western values. No ammount of brutality will create a national identity comparable to Japan's in Iraq.

If your idea is to sew the seeds of cpaitalist materialism why mess with overturning governments at all? Wars are meant for defeating nation states, not ideas. You can't drop a bomb on an ideology.

__________________
A song that says it all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqITJFGyq4s

I'm not sure whether Adlerian is arguing tongue-in-cheek for his own amusement, but I agree with him on this point. The United States has become too "civilized" -- for want of a better word -- to win wars. At least, to win these optional, unnecessary conflicts that our militarists dream up to distract the public from domestic issues.

I suspect we would lose that veneer of civilization quickly if we were truly in national peril. Then, we'd enthusiastically spend our sons' lives, and our daughters', too. But those sorts of wars are extremely rare.

From where I sit, that's a good thing because, eventually, it should mean that take on fewer Iraq-type projects.

This is not a fresh revelation. British society used to be organized around sustaining the empire. Young men graduated from Eton and Oxford, joined the army and didn't come home from India until 30-40 years later. Americans don't care to live that way. It upsets our would-be empire builders enormously.

Correct.

I'm making points about what war really is and should be. I'm doing it in a brutal way to cause a reaction which I think is indicative of the current mindset.

That's and I'm a psychopath.

I agree on all points. Again I believe in America because I believe in the promise of democracy as imperfect as it is. Some people embrace the word "democracy" because they assume it to be synonomous with US power and little else. I think push comes to shove more Americans fall into the first camp than the second - which is a great thing about this country.

Unfortunately I think that this war is going to be a long and painful lesson for a lot of Americans in the first camp that they've been sold a bloody, costly bill of goods with this particular war and the effect you are describing ultimately will cause Americans to shift even more dramatically away from unilateralism and adventurist expeditions, long term. Its going to be a bumpy, ugly path to getting there though because even among the majority of folks who say they now oppose the war and we should get out, very few of them I think currently understand what a hornet's nest we have really opened up in Iraq. Coming to that awareness will make for a lot of very angry people.

__________________
A song that says it all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqITJFGyq4s

We will lose because the the attitudes, which you believe to be correct. It's something which has swept the nation, right to the top.

My main problem with this is the "we" in "we will lose". Getting involved with this in the first place was I believe already a loss for the "we" I believe to be the one that matters - regular citizens and American democracy. That "we" wins by not getting involved in first place. Even approached as coldly calculated as an attempt to increase US global political influence it was a strategic blunder of immense proportions.

"We will lose" sounds to me an awful lot like the delusions of the rabid sports fan that actually believes he personally gains anything other than entertainment from the spectacle of watching one corporate owned sports franchise beat up on another in an on the field brawl. The Iraq war was an ill conceived expedition from the get go. Its not worth getting out now because its not going so well. It was from its ill-fated conception destined to not "go well" for the actual political and financial well being or security of American citizens. That was never really the motivating factor for the people that got us into it in the first place.

"We" - us regular American citizens - have been "losing" the war in Iraq to the tune of $10 billion a week since we made the foolish decision to go in there.

__________________
A song that says it all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqITJFGyq4s

We've had some very significant examples of what isolationism can bring to the country. I predict that we're headed there again.