St Paul's Cathedral During a Bombing Campaign
They started it, we ended it.
Posted on 6/23/2006, 7:06:31 PM by siddude
I can see it now, I think. It is on the right-hand page of a book by or about Winston Churchill, and it is a quotation by Churchill on the subject of war. Specifically, what happens to a civilized society when it goes to war with a barbarous one. I can't find it (yet), but what I remember as being the main point was that if the civilized society is to prevail over the barbarous one, it will necessarily and tragically be degraded by the experience as a vital cost of victory. Partly, this is because civilized war tactics are apt to fail against barbarous war tactics, thus requiring civilized society to break the "rules" if it is to survive a true death struggle. It is also because the clash itself — the act of engaging with the barbarous society — forces civilization to confront, repel and also internalize previously unimagined depredations. This is degrading, too.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Winston Churchill who I think fought in the Boer war would know.
General Pershing knew what to do
I still think, if we play by the rules, it will be Red Coats and the Patriots all over again.
A lot of words have been written about bombing in WWII, both by the Americans and the British, but very little has been said about the same tactics that were used by the Germans, and used first BTW.
Only complete a**holes would think that the allies were unjustified to use carpet bombing in WWII in order to win over the animals that were the axis nations. Enough said.
"Sometimes it is not enough to do our best; we must do what is required."
Winston Curchill
I really get pissed when Liberal spout their nonsense about we can't lower ourselves to the level of our enemy because we as a people are better than that. NO WE ARE NOT, we are the meanest bastards on the block and we built the greatest nation on earth not by being pansy assed, weak kneed girly men but by taking the fight to the enemy each and everytime some nation or people thought they could cross us. What has happened is our strength has been sapped by a load of Euro-loving femisexualized pseudo intellectuals who have forgot that we are men of action rather than limp wristed hermaphrodites.
We gave an award for singing to two guys who never even sang. We put little sweaters on dogs. We shot John Lennon six times and didn't even aim for Yoko Ono. We think Elvis is still alive. We put Braille on drive-up automatic teller machines. We think that a simple button on a web site that says "Do not click if you're under 21" will do anything but cause a person under 21 to click on it. We take a large chunk of the island on which those buildings you destroyed sat and pretend that it isn't a part of our country after all, let people fly into our airports that we want to kill, drive them in limousines to speak against us on this "pretend territory" land, let them drive back to our airport, and let them fly them back home without a scratch. We sell hot dogs in packages of ten and the buns in packages of eight. We can't even decide if pitchers should have to bat for themselves or not. All those baseball fields we've got. None of them are even remotely the same size. We gave millions of dollars to a guy that told us that God was going to kill him if he didn't raise enough money. When he didn't get enough money, he didn't die.
So we gave him more money in celebration of the fact that God didn't make him die. We've managed to keep the formulas for Coca-Cola and Kentucky Fried Chicken secret for decades, we encrypt the most banal communications on our Information Superhighway, and yet we have given away our most important nuclear secrets to the Chinese and Russians at the drop of a hat. And yet, with all this on the A-1 Psycho balance sheet, you still think you're more nuts than us that this won't result in your complete and utter annihilation? One way or another, your way of life will be over, period. Freedom's kind of a crazy, kooky, nutty thing when you look really close at it and all the bizarre and loony things that can result from it, but it's better than any other ideas anybody else has come up with. It's been that way since 1776, and built to last no matter how insanely we try to screw it up on a daily basis.
We are even so nuts and ruthless enough as a nation to start insanely tearing at those of ourselves that even remotely resemble you in such rancorous, deplorable, and angry ways that will make you wonder if Allah has enough glue to piece enough of you back together for a flesh paperweight in Paradise. We may not know where you are now, but when we do, I guarantee you that the majority of our high school children will still have no idea where on the globe you are or where you will end up being buried. But we will send them anyway, and we will allow those of them that went into the armed services because they didn't manage to get into college still rain down Hell and Fire on your worthless hides.
It will all come down on you, because we're nuts enough to give all four of our branches of military services extremely powerful and deadly aircraft even though only one of them is actually called the Air Force. Picking a fight with the most insane nation on Earth with the hope that your message and influence will spread throughout the world, well, that's just downright stupid.
We don't have to break rules to win this war. All we have to do is bury every enemy combatent in pig's blood, and they will back off.
During WWII we had the good sense to hold the citizenry accountable for the actions of their government. Now, we stupidly place our forces at extreme risk by refusing to hold the Iraqis accountable for ferreting-out the terrorists. I say we start bombing the crap out of any building, town, city from which a terrorist attack is launched. Then, the Iraqis will have to choose whether they want to take the risk of retribution threatened by the terrorists, or take the risk of being bombed into oblivion if they don't flush 'em out. They must know where the bad guys are and they must step up and point them out.
Wasn't that tactic used before in WWII?
War happens when rules don't - or won't - apply.
Great post! I agree, she seems to have nailed what was lacking from the threads on Haditha a few weeks back.
War actually forces a society to choose its highest values and then burnishes them in a hot cauldron. If you ask me, that is why the left is so looney about Bush. He puts the morally depraved on edge.
Rightly so.
IIRC, Churchill was half American (his mother married a Brit).
Yep, Winston was half American. He was a hero during WWI and an even bigger hero in WWII. His country did not appreciate him or simply wanted to forget about the war. What ever reason they dumped him after the war and started to slide into socialism.
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