From the post I left on Island Dog's thread.....see link
Robert Byrd (D; WV) has said, at the beginning of our War on Terror, that we should just forget about fighting the terrorists because, in his opinion, such a war would simply never end. We'd have "enough enemies to fight until Doomsday" (that's a paraphrase). What should we do? Why, negotiate with them, of course.
Of course, Doomsday is just what at least some the bad guys want, in this case. But hey; we should just sit back, take their barbaric, 12th-century crap and let whatever happens happen, because we deserve it. We've exploited these people for years, after all, dominating them with our notions of Empire.
But then, those notions, oppressive and explotative as they may have been, also succeeded in bringing at least a little stability to their backward, tribal world, and guaranteed foreign markets for their locally-produced goods.
More recently, we've been paying them exorbitant sums for their oil, which has made small numbers of them rich beyond the Dreams of Avarice at the expense of the downtrodden vast majority.
That is our fault, or so that vast majority is told. The Islamic mindset would be good at, and for, nothing, if not for its ability to propagate the nursing of ancient grudges and the deflecting of blame from itself.
Know what gets me, though? I've actually heard people call into talk radio shows and opine that the West (meaning mainly the US, naturally) is actually getting what it deserves......because of the Crusades.
We took it to them, the idea seems to be, so now it's our turn (of course, the fact that America hadn't even been imagined during the time of Crusades, so its not really our fight, then, cuts no ice).
Well, if you want to believe in Karma, perhaps they're right. Paybacks being a bitch and all that.
But....there's always a but. There were, for example, no nuclear weapons in existence when the Christian invaders took Jerusalem.
The only real biological weapons were the clay jars of venomous snakes and/or plague-infected corpses often catapulted into the ranks of the enemy.
In short, the ability to kill millions of people at a stroke was non-existent, as was the means to destroy the whole planet.
That is no longer the case. The means do exist now, and unstable minds who do not fear, and even would welcome, death, and who swear complete and official loyalty to no one nation or government (besides, of course, the unstable minds at the head of the Iranian government) are working hard to acquire them for use in their own crusade. We cannot afford to negotiate or sit back. Too much is at stake.
I've also heard it said that the problem with Islam is that it hasn't had yet its own Reformation, as has Christianity. Once again, we come back to the fact that weapons of mass destruction exist now. Given this fact, waiting for Islam to undergo the throes of religious Reformation (which could likely cause its more zealous factions to become even more violent and unstable) and come to its senses is not an option. Too much is at stake.
Isreal, at the behest of its Western Allies, such as they are, has spent decades in negotiation, talking and talking until it is blue in the face, to no avail.
Violence and death are still an almost daily occurance in that nation. The election of Hamas and their threats to the Isreali nation do not bode well for the future, either.
Isreal has given in and given in until there is nothing left to give. They stoicly take the jibes of the World governments and Press when they kill, often in surgical strikes or precision military operations, one or two responsible people in response to attacks that killed dozens of innocent Isrealis.
They tire of negotiation, for which I, personally, don't blame them, and Lebanon happened to be where the bubble burst. Hezbollah's action was the last straw, and another Isreali war is on the offing.
The UN sits by and talks, as it always does, softly telling them to calm down and come to the table, because this just can't be happening.
The last time the UN really took any decisive action was in South Korea, and that's been over half a century. Of course, in recent decades, the UN mafia has seen a substantial ebbing of its will, and has often relied upon the US and Isreal to be their enforcers, unilaterally taking the actions which they haven't the moral courage or intestinal fortitude to do for themselves.
I foresee, in the not-to-distant future, a flight of Isreali fighter-bombers leaving for certain targets in Iran, just as they did some years ago for certain simliar targets in Iraq.
The UN will protest, of course, as it has in the past, and will pass certain measures that will ultimately come to nothing. Privately, however, it will wipe the sweat from its collective brow, as once again, one of its enforcers does what it will not.
Isreal has the right idea, and has for decades.....take the fight to the enemy, protestations of the world be damned.
Someone, some nation, has to have the guts to do the right thing for the sake of the civilized world, before the situation goes so far as to be completely lost. There can be no negotiation....too much is at stake.