But has it been effective?
Reader comment on item: War's New Face

Submitted by Tom Pensyl (United States), Apr 17, 2003 at 23:01

Unfortunately our enemies don't see this new so-called humane war in the same light as we do. They see it as weakness. Just look at the results. Has it brought a true end of the conflict? Has it ended the terrorism in Israel? Not by a long shot. Is democracy blossoming in Afganistan? Hardly. Only time will tell about Iraq but the Shiites are already preparing to be ruled by their religious authorities.

This talk about a new humane kind of warfare seems to be ignoring several crucial realities.

For one thing, the Arabs as a whole will NEVER accept Israel. For every Anwar Saddat or King of Jordan there will be two or three Arafats or Saddam Husseins along with the Hezbolla and Hamas.

And for all that can be said about the Arab's failure to produce anything useful to the world, they are damn good at creating a populating explosion. Whether you like it or not, a large population is a resource from which can be drawn armies or suicide volunteers.

Islam has never and will never produce a society like that of the U.S.A. The goal of making democracy in Iraq is nothing more than wishful thinking.

The point I'm trying to make is that effective war will bring true peace when one side or the other is crushed, defeated and have no fight left in them. Effective war will recognize the enemy in it's totality (which is to say it's intellectual/spiritual basis as well as physical armies) and it will engage destructive power on it until the opposition is destroyed and discredited. Our "humane" war does not accomplish this and so the conflict goes on and on and on.

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