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Why study war?
City Journal via National Post ^ | 2007-08-25 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 08/26/2007 4:56:14 AM PDT by Clive

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To: RFEngineer

I don’t know but I am having my doubts. When the parents go back downstairs after breaking up a little fight between siblings, do thing always stay calm? I have a feeling when we leave our stabilizing influence may leave with us.


21 posted on 08/26/2007 11:17:25 AM PDT by stm (Fred Thompson in 08! Return our country to the era of Reagan Conservatism now.)
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To: ALOHA RONNIE

“President BUSH promised in writing to bring...”

President Bush forgot to ask the taxpayers if they didn’t mind paying for everyone else’s freedom, at the dear cost of their own.

We will fail in every one of the countries you mentioned, including Iraq, because we cannot impose freedom, they need to get it for themselves, assuming they even want it. - and also because the taxpayers won’t agree to pay for it.

We can kill terrorists and secure our country without spending trillions of dollars on third-world countries. Our president just doesn’t want to do it that way.

I wonder why he left China off the list?


22 posted on 08/26/2007 11:21:16 AM PDT by RFEngineer
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To: Clive

there’s a lot to respond to here, so i’ll keep to one point.

our country cannot survive without an informed electorate.

there’s a nativist “know-nothing” attitude that i find intolerable.

combined with the tv 8-12 hours per day,

and a culture of hedonism, drug use, shop-till-you-drop, gangs etc,

this know-nothing attitude becomes destructive.


23 posted on 08/26/2007 11:23:47 AM PDT by ken21
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To: stm

“I have a feeling when we leave our stabilizing influence may leave with us.”

That is what nearly every Iraqi veteran that I have talked to says, unfortunately.

Also unfortunately, this may make the Democrats right, but for the wrong reasons.


24 posted on 08/26/2007 11:26:25 AM PDT by RFEngineer
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To: Clive

“”Numerous causes lay behind the lack of interest in military history in the 1960s when I studied it. The most obvious explanation: this was the immediate post-Vietnam era. “”

Love the article, but I don’t get this timetable.


25 posted on 08/26/2007 11:31:54 AM PDT by ansel12 (Paranoia, conspiracy, superiority, otherness, pod people "The Invasion" 2007 imdb)
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To: RFEngineer

.

To quote former Sen. FRED THOMPSON only yesterday, the Islamic Extremists of the world are preparing for a 100 year long war. They have been fighting Western Civilization for centuries and they feel that they are right on track now.

.

To quote “ALOHA RONNIE” Guyer over the last several years...
...this new 21st Century of ours is really all about Freeing the women of the world...
...to be all that they already are in GOD’s Eyes...
...and all that they can be here on the Earth.

Our Enemies know this.

So must WE.

.


26 posted on 08/26/2007 11:35:29 AM PDT by ALOHA RONNIE ("ALOHA RONNIE" Guyer/Veteran-"WE WERE SOLDIERS" Battle of IA DRANG-1965 http://www.lzxray.com)
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To: Clive
Why study war?

Because peace is so damned boring?

27 posted on 08/26/2007 11:36:51 AM PDT by Lazamataz (JOIN THE NRA: https://membership.nrahq.org/forms/signup.asp)
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To: ALOHA RONNIE

“Our Enemies know this.

So must WE.”

Ok, so who’s going to pay for this?


28 posted on 08/26/2007 11:44:51 AM PDT by RFEngineer
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To: RFEngineer

.

Like it...
resent it...
or not...

...we are already in a priceless long fight to the Death with our Islamic Fundamentalist Enemy.

The Winning belongs to the most committed Side.

This was yesterday’s message from former Sen. FRED THOMPSON.

Sen. FRED THOMPSON is correct.

.


29 posted on 08/26/2007 12:03:25 PM PDT by ALOHA RONNIE ("ALOHA RONNIE" Guyer/Veteran-"WE WERE SOLDIERS" Battle of IA DRANG-1965 http://www.lzxray.com)
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To: Clive
Only unbelievably spoiled fools could twist this issue into this mess. I like VDH, but he is making far too many concessions to an ambient pacifism that is brain dead suicide. The reason to study war seriously is to win at war by learning what works and what fails. The reason to win at war is everything depends on decent men doing so. Fools pretending otherwise are simply riding on past successes they do not understand, and on their unwillingness to face the real consequences of defeat. You can visit eastern Congo or talk to a Cambodian if you are fuzzy about those.

We study war in order to win. Refusing to do so means defeat first and bloody shambles second. The rest is commentary.

30 posted on 08/26/2007 4:33:56 PM PDT by JasonC
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To: Clive
Margaret Atwood has written in a poem that: "Wars happen because the ones who start them / think they can win."

As my friend Rudolph Rummel, of the Political Science Dept. at U. of Hawaii has written, "Wars begin when the combatants disagree about their relative strength. Wars end when the combatants agree about their relative strength."

31 posted on 08/26/2007 4:50:42 PM PDT by JoeFromSidney (My book is out. Read excerpts at http://www.thejusticecooperative.com)
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