Emmanuel Gustin wrote:
"sddso" wrote in message


Point 1 has it completely backwards. As George Orwell pointed out circa
1944, the objective result from war protesters is that the totalitarian,
non-civilized powers (aka enemies of the United States and Allied
nations) are given aid and comfort;


By your reasoning, democratic powers should be at a disadvantage
in warfare. This runs contrary to the historical evidence. States with
democratic, law-abiding governments have a better record in war
than dictatorships: They are both less likely to start unwinnable
conflicts and more efficient in fighting the war they get involved in.

M. Gustin has neatly neglected to point out that success in armed
conflict is composed of two elements:

1. Build a force.

2. Employ it.

The Western Allies -- largely through US know-how (not quite the same as
deliberate efforts) -- have become talented at Element One's physical
logistics aspects, and tolerably proficient at Element Two when one
confines the analysis to the operational level and below.

At the national/grand strategy level, Western nations are
quintessentially unwarlike, willfully unengaged until ire is aroused.
Problems of national consensus building and retention have yet to be
fully described, let alone analyzed and solved in stable, repeatable
fashion. Nations need to have the will to fight in the first place, the
fortitude to keep it during the struggle, and the patience to slog
through reversals.

The very openness of Western governmental structures makes them fertile
ground for antiwar groups, who have propagandized themselves into the
belief that they are the foremost moral agents now existing. The
populace in general is guilty of ever-shortening attention spans, which
the antiwar elements exploit to great advantage. Flaccidity of purpose,
and self-indulgent infatuation with comforts are also evident.

Allowing criticism makes government more efficient, not less.
An answerable government can call on the loyalty of the soldiers
and citizens, and unaccountable government can expect support
only as when it has victories to boast of.

Everyone who is foolish enough to beleive in 'efficient dictatorship'
should study the history of WWII more closely. The waste and
stupidity of which dictatorial regimes are capable are almost
beyond belief.

Too true. This can engender a sense of inevitability quite contrary to
the correlation of forces at the time. Anybody believing that Allied
victory in WWII was somehow preordained in an abstract sense has little
familiarity with the facts.

First, the Red Army did most of the gruntwork of destroying Nazi
Germany's armed forces. It's no great chore to argue that if the USSR
had not become involved, the Third Reich might still be in existence.

Second, the Western Alliance (read: Britain, the US, Canada, Australia,
and New Zealand, with gallant help from a collection of stalwart but
tiny contributors, and China absorbing horrific punishment in tying down
a great chunk of Imperial Japanese forces) more fully developed and
exploited radar, and worked to huge advantage in exploiting
cryptanalysis and COMINT breakthroughs. Hardly any doubt remains that
that atomic bombs ended the War, but radar won it.

It is submitted that all conflicts in which the US has engaged have been
less than efficient, uncertain of outcome, in some cases real squeakers
(WWI is a notable case). Significant segments of the citizenry were in
most cases strongly opposed to the war at hand. This kind of runs
counter to the sly assertion that the country has been dashing about the
landscape, committing depredations against helpless victims where and
when the whim struck.


Navel-gazers and perpetually indignant activists who concede that the
likes of Saddam Hussein are unsavory, yet leap to condemn the Western
powers because the stray mass murderer is punished, or full (read:
ever-mounting) funding rarely gets bestowed on their pie-in-the-sky
fantasies like free health care, bureaucratically micromanaged child
"development," or arts grants for trashy garbage, suffer from the
odious, willfully uninformed thickheadedness known as moral
equivalizing. At best, they should be ignored; that their existence
continues to be suffered at all is a tribute to the forbearance,
strength, and patience of the Allied nations.


"I have heard a lot of old lunatics rave, but never one like
this" -- Hannibal Barcas.


Argument by dismissal is the tactic of losers.

I invite the group to consider the truth of something David Hackworth
(COL, USA, ret) noted in public, about one month after the airliner
attacks over two years ago.

The terrorists, he said, are unable to go at it toe-to-toe with the
armed forces of their enemies, so they choose instead to perpetrate
terror attacks against civil populations. Such tactics are aimed
directly at morale, at the will to resist.

Any effort by antiwar groups in nations targeted by the terrorists are
also aimed at the morale of civil populations. Thus, no difference
exists between the terrorists and the antiwar groups, so it's quite
proper to consider the antiwar groups as treasonous. The absence of
action against antiwar groups is in no sense a comment on the
righteousness of their cause.