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Really a state of chronic and corrosive anarchy

Reader comment on item: Op Eds Now More Central in War than Bullets

Submitted by Jason Keuter (Italy), Nov 7, 2006 at 01:18

This article is right, and the implications for the way war is presently fought bodes very ill in both the present and the future. Intellectuals in the west prop up governments and resistance movements that, under normal historical circumstances, would have long ago been deemed untenable.

Generally speaking, devastating losses in wars with superior neighboring societies have delivered such verdicts. Moreover, those losses have made possible the advance of civilization to greater and greater numbers of people. In a media age, the superior civilization, because it is free and democratic, is subject to greater scrutiny and thus greater self-criticism. It's flaws then become magnified into essential characteristics through sheer repetition.

Meanwhile, the characterizing flaws of the enemy are kept secret, as those who are free to seek information in democracies are not free to seek that information in non-democracies. Tyrannies therefore control their image for western audiences. They know this is a propaganda war but America doesn't. The propaganda war, however, can only be one two ways: continue fighting with a vlountary army but turn the cameras off or reinstitute a draft which will lead to pressure for decisive military victory.

Given these two options, I think it safe to say the propaganda war will never be won and it is simply best to maintain some semblance of stability and let corrupt, nihilistic and backward societies to destroy themselves. Another solution might be to de-fund higher education so we no longer subsidize so lavishly the self-flagellating pseduo-radical even more pseudo-intellectual loyalists to pinhead ideologies.

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