How Can You Laugh at a Time Like This? is a Dream Machine Site The Dream Machine --- The Imagination of the World Wide Web

The Media is irresponsible and uncaring about "collateral damage" they might cause.
The Administration did not mobilize fully for all out war.
The Congress put partisanship above the war.
The Bureaucracies did not coordinate with one another.

Sanchez is using basically the same arguments that led us to our folly in Vietnam. Citing the total mobilization of World War II and how it ultimately led to the defeat of Germany and Japan, also committed to destroying our way of life, he forgets one little thing. Germany and Japan arguably had a chance of actually carrying out this madness. They had the war-making machinery, the will and the near total support of their people. Even the Soviet Union had an outside chance, despite the predictions of a number of brilliant people that their system would rot from within, lacking the productive capacity of free market capitalism. Recall that this is exactly what ultimately happened. It also happened to Germany and Japan, a little faster given our and the Soviets TOTAL mobilization. Do militant Muslim's really have anywhere near the wherewithal to carry out THEIR insane desires? We don't think so. 9/11 was awful, but NOTHING compared to what World Wars...One, Two or Three...did or could do to us.

Secondly, we do NOT have a dictatorship. During World Wars I and II we almost got to that point under total mobilization. Henry Kaiser did not invent an assembly line for building ships because a "free market" demanded so many, but rather because the Roosevelt administration ORDERED him to do so. Total war produced a gigantic "market" for more and more of them just as the war on the Eastern Front, that was devastating the Soviet Union, produced a "market" for all the trucks we were producing and sending them.

Nowhere in Sanchez's lengthy diatribe was democracy or freedom mentioned. Nor did Henniger deem to mention them either. When he complains about the irresponsibility of the media, the lack of total mobilization, the partisanship and the lack of coordination, he conveniently forgets just what things about "our way of life" we are trying to protect.

Finally, he forgets some other "unpleasant truths." Germany and Japan both had "reasons" for going after us. The treaty of Versailles...which plunged Germany into anarchy and chaos...the draconian pre-war trade restrictions on Japan...both gave THEIR dictators the platforms they needed to lead their people into the ensuing madness.

Similarly, our invasion...near the end, when the Soviets were already soundly beating the Germans...or our dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan right after the Soviets had declared war on Japan and moved all their armies to the Far East, gave THEM "justification" for the subsequent Cold War.

So ask yourselves. Would this small group of militant Muslims have any justification for going after OUR way of life and trying to organize the Islamic world against us, if we had not previously tried to deprive them of THEIRS? What if we declared peace...tomorrow...and stopped giving them further propaganda tools for mobilizing their disgruntled masses. What if we replaced weapons with assistance, force with reason? When are we going to learn...as countless scholars have advised us throughout the ages...that evil contains the seeds of it own destruction. OUR OWN evil could do the same to us!

In short, isn't it time...in Nancy Reagan's prescient advice about the drug use...to "just say no?" Just as drug abusers can not change until they realize that this is their only real recourse, we must ALL realize that we can never have peace until we just say no to war. They say we can't "get out of Iraq" because the result would be worse. They say we SHOULDN'T have gotten out of Vietnam because look what happened after we did. Again, they forget that NONE of it would have happened if we had just left Southeast Asia alone, had we not invaded Iraq. Vietnam would have "gone communist"...but it did anyway. Militant Muslims would have continued their evil ways...but they are and they will anyway.

The best thing we can do is bring all our troops home immediately, ignore the opposition and give them a "fair chance" to impose their will upon us, if they're crazy enough to keep trying. When we have actually DEFENDED ourselves...rather than waging wars of aggression...we have ALWAYS succeeded in protecting our way of life. German, Japan, the Soviet Union could not prevail. Neither will Al Qaida. JUST SAY NO!

Talk to you later...

...the best independent ISP in the Twin Cities