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“We are at war” — 49 Comments

  1. We need a new declaration of war or authorization for the use of military force. The beauty of a vote on that type of resolution is that it gets the Dems on the record BEFORE the election. It also forces Hillary to take a position.

  2. Neo:
    “What would it take, and what will it take?”

    The general will of We the People is – and has always been since the Founding Father-activists – a function of activism, including WW2.

  3. I was a kid when 9/11 happened so I didn’t pay attention to global politics, but was there any terrorist attacks in other countries during Little Bush’s administration? I don’t recall.

  4. I spent some time at Daniel Pipes website last week and scrolled through his predictions list. The one that stood out to me was 1995:

    “There Are No Moderates: Dealing with Fundamentalist Islam,” The National Interest, Fall 1995.

    “Unnoticed by most Westerners, war has been unilaterally declared on Europe and the United States.”

    I have thought about it many times this week, and noticed the same thing last night, Neo; suddenly the talk of “we are at war.”

    Pipes list is found here:

    http://www.danielpipes.org/predictions/

  5. NYTimes headline this morning that Trump has said he would ask Congress to “declare war on terrorism.” It sounds kind of dumb to put it that way. When I read the article I only saw that he said he would ask Congress for “a declaration of war,” which to me sounds a bit different. As in, since ISIS considers itself to be a nation-state, war could be declared against the “subjects” of that nation state, wherever found.

  6. And I might add, asking Congress to declare [something] is the way this should be done, as opposed to prior War Powers Acts. A decision to go to war, any war, should be made by the peope, not by the executive. Once made, by the people, the military is authorized to fight with no holds barred.

    And I believe I’m correct that this time around, women would be drafted?

  7. duh…

    (all to happen on the 100th year of the soviet revolution!!!! next year!!!!!!!!!!)

    we have been at war for a while, believing if we didnt decalre it, it wasnt a war…

    Russian Military Expert Igor Korotchenko: The Anglo-Saxon Breed Understands Nothing but Force
    —- Russia needs to declare the entire post-Soviet area as “the zone of its special and exclusive interests” and to “bare our teeth at the Americans and at NATO, because this Anglo-Saxon breed understands nothing but force.” He was speaking on the Russia 1 Sunday evening flagship talk show on July 10, following the Warsaw NATO summit.

    China tells Japan (and usa) to stop interfering in South China Sea
    —-China has refused to recognise Tuesday’s ruling by an arbitration court in The Hague invalidating China’s vast claims in the South China Sea and did not take part in the proceedings. It has reacted angrily to calls by Western countries and Japan for the decision to be adhered to.

    all the other stuff fits the war doctrine that they changed to a while back and i commented on here.

    WWII was the new doctrine of – Total War

    what we are in now is – Unrestricted Warfare
    see Artfldgr Says: March 17th, 2010 at 7:20 pm
    [warned you over six years ago!!]

    a quote:
    Obviously, proceeding with the traditional definition of war in mind, there is no longer any way to answer the above questions. When we suddenly realize that all these non-war actions may be the new factors constituting future warfare, we have to come up with a new name for this new form of war: Warfare which transcends all boundaries and limits, in short: unrestricted warfare.

    while everyone is looking for the traditional form of this stuff, they have moved on to a untraditional way… a way in which many of the actions, not seen as war, confound us and we do not respond.

    stealing money, using proxies, false flag, slow pressure, poison accidents in food or toys, moving manufacturing, being a frenemy, etc.

    islam would not think it could beat the great satan unless it thought or had russia/china behind it, even in silence

    another quote:
    To assess why people fight is not so easy today, however. In former times, the ideal of “exporting revolution” and the slogan of “checking the expansion of communism” were calls to action that elicited countless responses. But especially after the conclusion of the Cold War, when the Iron Curtain running all along the divide between the two great camps suddenly collapsed, these calls have lost their effectiveness.

    yes they have.. they have so much that the american people no longer know who is their friends, who are their enemies, who sold them out like the vichy did, and so on.

    MOST IMPORTANT QUOTE FROM 2010:
    MOOTW, may be considered simply an explicit label for missions and operations by armed forces that are carried out when there is no state of war. The former concept, “non-military war operations,” extends our understanding of exactly what constitutes a state of war to each and every field of human endeavor, far beyond what can be embraced by the term “military operations.” This type of extension is the natural result of the fact that human beings will use every conceivable means to achieve their goals. While it seems that the Americans are in the lead in every field of military theory, they were not able to take the lead in proposing this new concept of war. However, we cannot fail to recognize that the flood of U.S.-style pragmatism around the world, and the unlimited possibilities offered by new, high technology, were nevertheless powerful forces behind the emergence of this concept.

    anyone who bothered to read this in full would realize that the game was to use ambiguity to commit acts of war, that the american and west would not want to fight over, or would want peace so much, they would let slide.. and over and over and over and over…

    they analysed war and the US, and then for decades proceeded to implement this kind of thing, they never gave up world communism, they just went to work at it in a more productive, yet slower way.

    like the john cleese video that shows how much harm you can do by pretending to help!!!

    the documents say whats coming..
    this is going to be an economic war… not a full born military war, as the goal, under tsun tsu idea is to win without doing that.

    what would a 6 month conflict in the china sea do to the world economy which is now selling bonds wiht negative interest? where will the US get the manufactured stuff they need? the capital to do that given the moribund state obama and dems have created? the denuement of the young who would fight, as the old are slammed for knowing more and just not believing that peace is the new way

    sadly we ignored the speeches of gorbachev that laid out that the end of he cold war was not the end, but the start of a new phase. we ignored the defectors that said so, revealed plans were wright and of coure negated by the left who is in the pocket of the opposition

    http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1988/03/17/the-gorbachev-prospect-an-exchange/
    ‘The Gorbachev Prospect’: An Exchange
    Josef Skvorecky, reply by George F. Kennan

    Gentlemen, comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about Glasnost and Perestroika and democracy in the coming years. They are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal changes in the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep– M Gorbachev

    In October 1917, we parted with the old world, rejecting it once and for all. We are moving toward a new world, a world of Communism. We shall never turn off that road.– M Gorbachev

    Those who hope that we shall move away from the socialist path will be greatly disappointed. Every part of our program of perestroika … is fully based on the principle of more socialism and more democracy. … I would like to be clearly understood … we, the Soviet people, are for socialism. … We want more socialism and, therefore, more democracy. … More socialism means more democracy, openness and collectivism in everyday life. … We will proceed toward better socialism rather than away from it. We are saying this honestly, without trying to fool our own people or the world. Any hopes that we will begin to build a different, non-socialist society and go over to the other camp are unrealistic and futile. Those in the West who expect us to give up socialism will be disappointed. … It’s my conviction that the human race has entered a stage where we are all dependent on each other. No other country or nation should be regarded in total separation from another, let alone pitted against another. That’s what our communist vocabulary calls internationalism and it means promoting universal human values. – M Gorbachev

    anyone other than myself realize that in order to believe that they changed you have to ignore and wash away the very words of their leadership talking to themselves and think that gorbachev was lying to his own people!!!!!!!!!!!

    there is SOOOOO much more, but we have the attention spans of a gnat and cant take the volume needed to inform us and make a case other than for entertainment… and it is our undoing as a free peoples.

    🙁

  8. Cap’n Rusty–Pipes has been a critic of the use of “war on terror” from the beginning. He says it’s like saying “war on trenches” and the like. His take is the that we need to declare war on Islamists, which he describes here:

    “Militant Islam is of modern phenomenon a twentieth century phenomenon that basically originates in the 1920s, the era of totalitarian enthusiasm, the era when fascism got going, Leninism got going, so did militant Islam.
    And just as we destroyed the power and attraction of fascism and Communism, now it’s our burden to marginalise and destroy this virulent totalitarian radical utopian ideology.”

    From a 2002 interview:

    http://www.danielpipes.org/439/analyst-calls-for-redefinition-of-war-on-terror

    I’m not sure I see it that way. My take is that “historical Islam” is like the radicals (Political Islam?) of today. But Pipes knowledge so exceeds my own, it has given me pause for thought.

  9. In 1984, former KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn published a remarkable book, New Lies for Old, alleging that in the near future the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, working in collaboration with sister parties worldwide, would feign its own demise for three main purposes:

    1) deceiving Western governments as to communism’s long-range goal of overthrowing the “bourgeois” states,

    2) attracting Western capital to revitalize the Soviet Union’s ailing command economy, and

    3) removing any justification for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization anti-Soviet military posture.

    Five years later, the ruling communist party in Poland invited “non”-communists into the government and, in 1990, the ruling communist party in East Germany “capitulated” by uniting with West Germany. The demise of the Soviet Bloc had supposedly begun.

    His predictions vindicated, in March 1989, Golitsyn submitted a memorandum to the US Central Intelligence Agency, further outlining the Soviet deception strategy in concert with the leaders of Red China. This and other memos were published in his second book, The Perestroika Deception (1995, 1998).

    see Shadow World: Resurgent Russia, the Global New Left, and Radical Islam By Robert Chandler

    and i had also warned and put up
    Russian Red Jihad
    Artfldgr Says: June 3rd, 2015 at 2:02 pm
    article link: http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/asia/item/13069-russian-red-jihad

    Pacepa notes “the day of our ambassador’s murder, Sept. 11, 2012, also happened to be the very day the Kremlin celebrated a significant anniversary – 125 years since the birth of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the KGB, now rechristened FSB.” Pacepa continued:

    My past experience at the top of the Soviet bloc intelligence community gives me solid ground to state that the Muslim attacks on U.S. embassies and the assassination of our ambassador to Libya, carried out with Soviet-made rocket-propelled grenades, Kalashnikovs and Molotov cocktails, were just as “spontaneous” as the May Day parades in Moscow – and that they have the same organizers. (Emphasis added).

    in 1972 with then-KGB chairman Yuri Andropov, in which Andropov outlined a secret Soviet plan to ferment revolution in the Islamic world via the use of anti-American and anti-Semitic propaganda, including the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” translated into Arabic and disseminated throughout the Middle East.

    “The idea was to portray the United States as a war-mongering, Zionist country financed by Jewish money and run by a rapacious ‘Council of the Elders of Zion’ (the KGB’s derisive epithet for the U.S. Congress) intent on transforming the rest of the world into a Jewish fiefdom,” Pacepa recalls Andropov as telling him.

    Pacepa refers to Andropov as the “Father of today’s anti-Semitism and international terrorism.” Most notably, Pacepa recalled:

    Andropov made the point that one billion adversaries could cause far greater damage than could a mere 150 million. Even Muhammad, he said, had not limited his religion to Arab countries.

    The KGB boss described the Muslim world as a waiting petri dish, in which we could nurture a strain of hate-America, grown from the bacterium of Marxist-Leninist thought. Islamic anti-Semitism ran deep, he said. (Emphasis added).

    THIS IS OLD STUFF… BUT ANYONE REMEMBER?

    Pacepa noted his specific role in the project:

    Before I left Romania for good in 1978, my Romanian espionage service alone had sent some 500 undercover agents to various Islamic countries. Most of them were religious servants, engineers, medical doctors, teachers and art instructors. According to a rough estimate received from Moscow, by 1978 the whole Soviet bloc intelligence community had sent around 4,000 such agents of influence to the Islamic world.

    its key to read:
    Soviet power and Islam Unknown Binding — 1984
    by Shaukat Burkhanov (Author)
    https://www.amazon.com/Soviet-power-Islam-Shaukat-Burkhanov/dp/B0006EGFYK
    Moscow, published a small booklet entitled Soviet Power and Islam. This booklet detailed the history of Soviet-Muslim collaboration, starting with the infamous October Revolution of 1917. Muslims living in Central and Eastern Russia initially supported Lenin and his Bolshevik Revolution against what they perceived as the anti-Islamic government of the Tsar.

  10. Bush realized nothing. He wanted war, but not with the real enemy. Tis a pity Saddam isn’t still in power. He knew how to deal with these Islamic radicals.

  11. Statement at the Casablanca Conference, 1943

    At Casablanca, Roosevelt also announced that the Axis powers must surrender unconditionally to the Allies, announced without prior consultation with his British counterpart. “Peace can come to the world only by the total elimination of German and Japanese war power,” announced Roosevelt at the joint press conference ten days after this conference. “The elimination of Germany, Japanese, and Italian war power means the unconditional surrender by Germany, Italy, and Japan.” Churchill seconded by noting that “design, purpose, and unconquerable will [will be applied] to enforce unconditional surrender upon the criminals who have plunged the world into war.”

  12. Golitsyn also confirmed Soviet collaboration in the Muslim world to be used as an instrument of war against the West:
    In March 1965 the First Conference of Muslims of Asia and Africa was held in Bandoeng. Thirty-five countries were represented. The Mufti of Central Asia and Kazakhstan, Babakhanov, led the Soviet delegation. The conference discussed the use of Muslim proselytizing societies as weapons against imperialism. The need to harness Islam to the service of the revolution has been openly discussed by communist strategists. Based on Soviet experience in Central Asia, the problem of achieving this is considered difficult but soluble.

    He also explained the reasons behind the Soviet Union’s sponsorship of terrorism:
    The objective of violence is to create chaos and anarchy, to impose additional strains on ruling democratic parties, to eliminate their ablest leaders, to force them to resort to undemocratic measures, and to demonstrate to the public their inability to maintain law and order, leaving the field open to the legal communist party to present itself as the only effective alternative force.

    Considering Golitsyn’s and Sakharovsky’s evidence, we have every reason to believe that Moscow’s endgame for Islamic terrorism was the establishment of communism. In the “Report of the Central Committee of the CPSU” to the 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev told the assembly of Communist Party delegates, “The banner of Islam may lead into struggle for liberation.”

    In his second book, The Perestroika Deception, published in 1995, Anatoly Golitsyn wrote, “When the right moment comes the mask will be dropped and the Russians with Chinese help will seek to impose their system on the West on their own terms as the culmination of a ‘Second October Socialist Revolution.’ ”

    which is why i keep telling you to pay attention to russia military in europe, and chinese military in the pacific.

    way too much to put up
    no way to do that for people who didnt follow this stuff for 40 years… and so, will result in my being yelled at, and my posts deleted or cut down.

    good luck…
    you will never figure any of it out without knowing what was going on that the ny times and other places, like tv, never bothred to tell you… or professors, or such you have to seek it out on your own, or follow a guide that points them out as there is way too much otherwise.

  13. Neo:
    “the election of a president who wanted to soothe and lull us into thinking it had all been a big bad Bush dream.
    And most people were only too happy to be lulled.”

    To go back to your question of “What would it take, and what will it take?”, a lasting pernicious social-political effect of their successful stratagem to “lull us into thinking it had all been a big bad Bush dream” is that the same stratagem persists at the premise level to schematically order our political mode to preempt and handicap sufficient American action in the present and future.

    Their metastatic stratagem must be eradicated from the social conscience.

    As with any of our wartime Presidents, it’s unrealistic to expect perfection in the details, but Bush got the leadership commitment, scope, and approach right for the generational struggle versus a zealous, smart, and capable opponent.

    The Surge+Awakening in OIF is the closet we’ve come to the winning solution for the War on Terror.

    However, via politics, the OIF winning solution has been discredited for the general public. Within that stigma, the very strong-horse paradigm that the American leader of the free world requires to compete for real again in the War on Terror has been cut off.

    To unlock the paradigm of Bush-period, strong-horse American leadership of the free world needed to compete for real again in the War on Terror, it’s necessary to de-stigmatize OIF in the Narrative contest for the zeitgeist of the activist game. As an element of the Narrative contest for the zeitgeist, firmly discredit every enemy-within who has handicapped American leadership by promoting the prevailing yet demonstrably false narrative of OIF. Interestingly, the enemy-within by that metric includes both major-party candidates for President.

    So, “What would it take, and what will it take?”

    Re-lay the foundation and reset the frame to set up the restoration schematically of strong-horse American leadership of the free world.

    The 1st step of the correction is establish the keystone premise: set the record straight on the why of OIF for the general public. When the keystone is in place, then set about re-crediting the paradigm of strong-horse American leadership that manifested with OIF.

    Lay a proper foundation, then we can work our way back to the point that Obama deviated from Bush and then resume the proper course to go about winning the War on Terror.

  14. Oops. Fix:

    The Surge+Awakening in OIF is the closetclosest we’ve come to the winning solution for the War on Terror.

  15. Unrestricted Warfare
    written in 1999

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrestricted_Warfare

    Weaknesses of the United States
    The book argues that the primary weakness of the United States in military matters is that the US views revolution in military thought solely in terms of technology. The book further argues that to the US, military doctrine evolves because new technology allows new capabilities. As such, the book argues that the United States does not consider the wider picture of military strategy, which includes legal and economic factors. The book proceeds to argue that the United States is vulnerable to attacks along these lines

    Alternative methods of attack:
    Reducing one’s opponent, the book notes, can be accomplished in a number of ways other than direct military confrontation. The book notes that these alternative methods “have the same and even greater destructive force than military warfare, and they have already produced serious threats different from the past and in many directions for…national security.”

    Lawfare
    Economic warfare
    Network warfare
    Terrorism
    Another famous instance of Unrestricted Warfare policy is terrorism. Terrorism is used by a group to gain satisfaction for certain demands. Even if these demands are not satisfied, a terrorist attack can have vastly disproportionate effects on national welfare. One only has to look at the economic crisis that followed the terrorist attacks against the United States, or the extensive security measures put in place after those same attacks. Terrorism erodes a nation’s sense of security and well being, even if the direct effects of the attacks only concern a minute percentage of the population.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=–

    terrorism is a force multiplier and when a proxy is used is a great way to get third world peoples to act out, damage the enemy and take the blame… but how many ak47s are manufactured outside russia for africa, middle east, etc?

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=–

    we are not prepared for this, we are not skeptical enough, we believe erroneous things about ourselves and others, and worst of all, we think “times have changed”, when they havent…

    the world was always the goal of international communism, so what makes you think that they want to share? or have turned? why would they? they are still on the same track as the rest of human kind through its history, we are the oddballs beleiving stupid stuff and laying down with our bellies bared thinking that would lead to peace and prosperity.

    Defense against unrestricted warfare

  16. Even knowing the threat that Germany and Japan clearly posed, many (most?) in the U.S. still opposed entering the war.

    There is a significant percentage of the population that wouldn’t fight no matter what. True then, true now.

    Of course, there is merit to being cautious, and the experience during GWB’s term did much to sour many’s inclination to using military force – from pushing the WMD narrative over other rationale, to political interference in sticking to a strategy that wasn’t working, followed by Obama’s naive withdrawal that precipitated a power vacuum leading to what we see today (to say nothing of the stumbles with Syria, Libya, and Egypt under Obama).

    So, yes, GWB recognized the issue, but he also had a hand in today’s situation. Yet, Dems like to blame him for everything – not after eight years on Obama’s watch.

  17. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct3BsyF64gM

    CIA official: You said a program should be renewed. I’m asking is our strategy working?

    Peter Quinn: What strategy?Tell me what the strategy is and I’ll tell you if it’s working. [Silence] See, that right there is the problem because they – they have a strategy. They’re gathering right now in Raqqa by the tens of thousands, hidden in the civilian population, cleaning their weapons and they know exactly why they’re there.

    CIA official: Why is that?

    Peter Quinn: They call it the end times. What do you think the be-headings are about? The crucifixions in Deir Hafer, the revival of slavery? Do you think they make this shit up? It’s all in the book. Their fucking book. The only book they ever read – they read it all the time. They never stop. They’re there for one reason and one reason only: to die for the Caliphate and usher in a world without infidels. That’s their strategy and it’s been that way since the seventh century. So do you really think that a few special forces teams are going to put a dent in that?

  18. Dutch–You paint with a broad brush. One of the objectives of Bush was to bring the war to them; something quite different than we have been experiencing since his presidency. Hussein was paying suicide bombers and Iraq looked like the most promising place for democracy to take root. The first aim was solid, the 2nd aim required a long-term commitment by both parties of this country. We all know how that turned out. As far as I’m concerned, the enemy within (both the intentional and “useful idiot” variety) are the reason for our current circumstances.

  19. GRA(1:25 pm): Really…? Seriously..?? “Little Bush”?? We’re you (cough) educated in our gov’t schools? Our great, resolute, honorable, patriotic leader 2001-Jan.2009 killed 10’s of thousands of our Islamist & Baathist enemies and broadcast American Strength and character around our planet. NO Terrorist butchery in our country. Our warriors loved that man and trusted his leadership. They, for every good reason, feel neither for His Infantile Majesty Obama. He abandoned our Huge Victory in Iraq. Retreated to the last man. If there is anything that history had taught us it is that WEAKNESS IS PROVOCATIVE. Duuuh.

  20. “Right after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that precipitated America’s entry into WWII, Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is alleged to have said, “I fear that all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” ”

    Perhaps the more relevant statement was VADM William “Bull” Halsey. Returning to Pearl Harbor aboard USS Enterprise on December 8, 1941, Halsey said “Before we’re through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell.”

    Where’s our Bull Halsey?

  21. Iraq is good not only because it had potential for democracy to take root, but also because it’s centrally located in the Middle East. Iraq borders both Syria and Iran, two of the big trouble-makers in the Middle East. And it shares the Persian Gulf with Iran. Successfully installing a free and democratic government in Iraq, coupled with the no-brainer SOFA that Obama refused to try and obtain, would have made it significantly easier for the US to put pressure on other countries in the region with minimal effort.

    But Obama squandered it all.

    On another note, I was listening to a short lecture several months ago about Obama’s Middle East policy. During the lecture, it was noted that one of the overriding policies of the Cold War era was to NEVER EVER EVER EVER let the USSR establish a military presence in the Middle East. The US couldn’t stop the Arab nations from buying Soviet equipment. And it couldn’t keep out Soviet military advisors. But the Soviets were to never establish an actual military presence in the region.

    Obama let the Russians do just that in Syria.

  22. Ken –

    Perhaps the more relevant statement was VADM William “Bull” Halsey. Returning to Pearl Harbor aboard USS Enterprise on December 8, 1941, Halsey said “Before we’re through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell.”
    ————————

    And if we hadn’t dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then Halsey’s statement would have come dangerously close to being true.

  23. Big Maq Says:
    July 15th, 2016 at 2:11 pm
    “There is a significant percentage of the population that wouldn’t fight no matter what. True then, true now.”

    Wikipedia says: “Feb 9, 1933: The “Oxford Pledge” was approved by a 275-153 vote of the England’s foremost debating society at the University of Oxford, a resolution stating “this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country.” Coinciding with the ascendance of Adolf Hitler to the leadership of Germany, the pacifist resolution attracted worldwide publicity and outraged many Britons. Winston Churchill described the resolution as “an abject, squalid, shameless avowal”. As one observer would later note, “Most of those who took part in this debate certainly fought for King and Country seven years later”, after war began in 1939.”

    History repeats itself; the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

  24. Ken:

    Context matters, there was that unfortunate event (1914-1918) that sort of decimated European resolve and the male population that survived. The Somme, Pashendale, Ypres, Verdun, the 1918 offensives…… History matters.

  25. We are not only at war, but at Manichean war, an existential struggle where there are no place for compromis and where the losing side will be totally annihilated. Look for Richard Fernandes “Three Conjectures”.

  26. Roger Simon predicts that Trump will win in blowout and liberal regimes in Europe will fall one after another and replaced by nativist, no-nonsense leaders who will fight Islam with resolve and grim desperation like Andrew Jackson fought Indian Wars. See pjmedia.com/diaryofamadvoter/2016/07/14/will-trump-win-in-a-blowout

  27. Sergey:

    Roger has been in the tank for Trump for quite a while. Maybe, maybe not, he is Trump after all. Andrew Jackson and his pals are said to have become quite rich selling off Indian lands BTW.

  28. Obama spent about ten minutes addressing the attack in Nice this morning.

    Short version:
    We stand with our oldest ally, France.
    War is never the answer.
    Give peace a chance.

    Obama wants peace. We will get war levied against us. Thank you, President Pacifism.

  29. Dutch, your statement is about as inane as any I have had the misfortune to come across.

    Not only are your comments about President Bush unwarranted, your admiration of Sadaam Hussein is disgusting.

    Now. I don’t want to hear about war; not after I constantly hear and read the refrain that America is “war weary”. I guess those who make that statement are talking about fighting the crowds at the mall. America–the country, the population– has not been close to war. A tiny segment of volunteers have fought the good fight, despite pitiful leadership.

    As a kid during WWII, I saw my Dad go to war; I saw the neighbor families on either side grieve for lost sons, and understood that experience was repeated in neighborhoods all over the country. I knew why no one could buy such luxuries as sugar and real butter, and even necessities such as tires. In short, I saw a nation at war. Now, our enemies may be a war; but, this nation is not and has not been for a long time; Vietnam, which ended over 40 years ago, being the closest. I will believe that we are serious about war when I see a commitment from the whole nation.

  30. wrt the term “war on terror” It’s a mistake to think it was to be taken literally. Everybody knows what it means.
    I wonder, wrt the Oxford Union of 1933, what part of that was the perennial undergrad sense of knowing more than anybody and being smarter than everybody and wanting to poke the old folks with a stick. Part of it, anyway.
    However, the idea that wishing will make it so seems to be more common now than previously. So, if we believe really hard, and snap our fingers (and demonize those who don’t believe) somebody or other–I forget who–can actually fly.

  31. Oldflyer,
    Thank you for your comment. Dutch is an idiot.

    I visited the War Cabinet Rooms once when I was in London. In the shop, they had lots of books about the war, including a cookbook to help people figure out what to feed their family under rationing. It was unbelievable. I come from a country family where everyone grew their own vegies and fruits, had cows for milk and butchered pigs for meat. I just couldn’t imagine not having a cellar full of canned foods.

  32. GRA:

    Yes, there were, most memorably Beslan in 2004, , Madrid in that same year, and the London attacks of 2005. I assume you’re referring to attacks in Europe rather than the Middle East; there were plenty of them in the Middle East. Those three European ones (if you count Russia as one) were HUGE in terms of life lost. There may have been more, too, but those are the great big ones that I remember. (I wrote posts about each one as well; if you do a search you will find what I said at the time).

  33. And now – military coup in Turkey. Generals said they took power and arrested the former leadership of the country to restore democracy and secular Constitution, suppressed by Erdogan and his Islamist party.

  34. The answer to why some commentators are awakening to the fact that ‘radical’ Islam is waging war upon the West and, to what it will take for the majority in Western societies to awaken is simple; a personal, existential mortal threat.

    Every public gathering is now a potential death trap.

    Terrorism targets everyone.

    “Nothing concentrates the mind quite so wonderfully as the prospect of being hanged within the fortnight” Samuel Johnson

  35. It’s not “radical” Islam, it’s Islam.

    “In March 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went to London to negotiate with Tripoli’s envoy, ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman (or Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja). When they enquired “concerning the ground of the pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury”, the ambassador replied:

    “‘It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy’s ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once.'”

    —Wikipedia. “First Barbary War”

  36. What it will take is the slaughter of tens of thousands in Europe and North America. Once that happens many millions will need to die, billions if there a jihad coup in Pakistan.

  37. Richard,

    Estimates range from 300 to 500 warheads, plus their ICBMs, and the ability to make more; that makes Pakistan a nation of great concern.

  38. We were at war with Islamic jihadis years before 9/11; no one was willing to admit it.
    * * *
    Sharon W Says:
    July 15th, 2016 at 1:34 pm
    I spent some time at Daniel Pipes website last week and scrolled through his predictions list. The one that stood out to me was 1995:

    “There Are No Moderates: Dealing with Fundamentalist Islam,” The National Interest, Fall 1995.

    “Unnoticed by most Westerners, war has been unilaterally declared on Europe and the United States.”

    I have thought about it many times this week, and noticed the same thing last night, Neo; suddenly the talk of “we are at war.”

    Pipes list is found here:

    http://www.danielpipes.org/predictions/
    * * *
    Thanks for the reminder; I haven’t been following Pipes lately.

  39. France’s National Assembly held hearings about the Bataclan jihad attack, and it was revealed that the bastards decapitated, tortured, castrated, mutilated, and gouged out the eyes of some of the victims — which was censored from the media and public accounts — and filmed these atrocities for ISIS tv. At least one of the murdered men had his genitals stuffed into his mouth; the women were stabbed in their genitalia as well.

    Demonic. Satanic. Death cult.

    http://heatst.com/uk/exclusive-france-suppressed-news-of-gruesome-torture-at-bataclan-massacre/

  40. Parker.
    I once asked a speculative question as to whether there could be a non-nuclear trigger to Fernandez’ Three Conjectures.
    But if Pakistan goes, I suppose it won’t be necessary.

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