Replies

Bears repeating again and again ... the purpose of Cold War II is to smash the theocratic power of Islam ... except, this isn't and won't be a 'cold war'. The theocratic 'ism' of Islam (totalitarian actually) sought with 9/11 to bring about a world conflict on their terms, with chaos and mayhem and slaughter such as visits Israel and the Palestinians, Hindus and Moslems, Hutus and their victims ... but we Americans aren't cut from the same 'burqas'. We have at our core an entirely different set of foundational principles. Many of Moslem faith have realized it: we will fight and kill and die if it comes to that, to retain those founding principles, even for the Moslems among us ... as long as those Moslems stand with us. We value honor over living under tyranny, for we are born free and that cannot be taken from us easily. If we are enslaved, we enslave ourselves. Someone else cannot do it. Perhaps that is one of the many differences in Americans and Europeans: submitting to tyranny to remain alive is not living, to US. No, it isn't to be a cold war, for our free blood now runs hot. Islamism shed our blood, now our blood is hot. Now they will bleed, these deluded totalitarians.

We see the future somewhat differently.

I think the Cold War is a good model for what's going to happen: a period of one-to-two generations of low intensity warfare broken by periods of high intensity warfare. In Cold War I, the major outbreaks were Korea & Vietnam, which were moderate-to-moderately high intensity wars. Most people don't realize Vietnam was the fourth biggest war we've ever fought, only modestly smaller than World War I. Unfortunately, I think Cold War II will be marked by high intensity campaigns. My personal opinion is that there will be at least one incident, and possibly repetitive incidents, of terrorist attacks two orders of magnitude worse than 9-11: hundreds of thousands of American civilian dead per incident through a nuclear detonation or the release of anthrax or sarin by specialized crop duster. If a Bush is in office, our response will be tit-for-tat or more. For example if we determine Hamas is responsible for a 10K nuclear detonation in a U.S. city, we will eliminate South Lebanon with a nuclear weapon. Conversely, if we have "compassionate" (i.e. loony left) national leadership, our civilization will end. I don't think human life will end on earth, but survivors will have to begin to rebuild from a fifth century A.D. level of development. That's the world our kids and grandkids will face.

Obviously, the American people are in no way prepared for this future. Bush is a desparate man playing a weak hand masterfully. He understands. At the other end of the spectrum, a large minority think we can appease the Islamists by putting on a nice face to them. They have no understanding that the Islamists are waging a war of extermination against us, that the means of large-scale killing are readily at hand, and the consequences to them and society will be devastating. They have no frame of reference or skills to cope with the threat. 9-11 will never recur, simply because any future incident that requires that level of planning will employ a weapon of mass destruction. I observed NYC leffists immediately after 9-11. They were beside themsleves.

We may be trapped in semantics. Some historians call the Cold War World War III. Call this World War IV.

Personally, I give the U.S. no more than a 25% chance of winning this war without the destruction of our civilization. This is probably a lower probability than winning the Vietnam War in the early 1960s, if we had had a President who knew what he was doing (Eisenhower, Reagan, 43)

That's not a very cheery note to end this post, but there it is.