Obviously the same strategy would be worse than useless--is a stateless Jihadist intimidated by overwhelming nuclear threat--MAD?

So let's say we buy your theory that we must confront them on a global scale (I agree iwth you, if that is indeed your theory).

We all love peace and hate violence, so let's eschew violence.
What will prevent the jihadists from their evangelical vision of a global Islamic state?

Yep.

Considering that it would only take ONE man and ONE nuclear weapon to make a BIG f***ing mess... and considering that it only took a small handful of men to bring down the WTC and part of the Pentagon....

That "small percentage" assumption, whether true or not, is not very reassuring.

Mike

__________________
_____
1979 300 SD
350,000 miles
_____
1982 300D-gone---sold to a buddy
_____
1985 300TD
270,000 miles
_____
1994 E320
not my favorite, but the wife wanted it

www.myspace.com/mikemover
www.myspace.com/openskystudio
www.myspace.com/speedxband
www.myspace.com/openskyseparators
www.myspace.com/doubledrivemusic

Two entirely different scenarios.

Two entirely different enemies, with entirely different agendas, and entirely different approaches to achieving those goals.

Even deep in the throes of the "cold war" days, you could at least count on the fact that your enemy had a "self-preservation instinct" at least as strong as your own. We can no longer count on that assumption. How do you threaten an enemy who is unafraid to die? How do you negotiate with an enemy who is fanatical to such a degree that he will sacrifice anything, including his own LIFE... perhaps even the life of his family and/or friends... to destroy you? You cannot.

We must use the right tool for the job.

When you need to drive a nail, you don't pick up a micrometer, do you?....

And the only tool in the box that I can imagine will work in this situation is the ERADICATION of all the Radical Muslims. Period.

Mike

__________________
_____
1979 300 SD
350,000 miles
_____
1982 300D-gone---sold to a buddy
_____
1985 300TD
270,000 miles
_____
1994 E320
not my favorite, but the wife wanted it

www.myspace.com/mikemover
www.myspace.com/openskystudio
www.myspace.com/speedxband
www.myspace.com/openskyseparators
www.myspace.com/doubledrivemusic

Not true. Everyone has something to lose. You just have to find it. Be it their son, daughter, dog, cat, stamp collection, etc, etc. We have enough psychopathic people in our mental institutes, why not turn the problem to them?

__________________
01 Ford Excursion Powerstroke
99 E300 Turbodiesel
91 Vette with 383 motor
05 Polaris Sportsman 800 EFI
06 Polaris Sportsman 500 EFI
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Red
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Yellow
04 Tailgator 21 ft Toy Hauler
11 Harley Davidson 883 SuperLow

That is exactly what the KGB used when the son of a diplomat was kidnapped in Beirut in the 1970's, I think. KGB kidnapped the son of one of the kidnapper's family's, castrated him, sent his testicles to the kidnappers. No more Soviet citizens were kidnapped.

I can't imagine that the US Congress would look favorably on that kind of diplomacy, I know I don't. But it sure as hell is effective.

B

I'm sure that folks like Nasrallah would be the last people in the world to volunteer as a martyr. Why not capture him on the sly and place an explosive charge in his basal ganglia. We hold the trigger, he tows the line.

I watch too many spy flicks...

__________________
-livin' in the terminally flippant zone

That is why I believe that having the stones to use what is at hand can be more effective than having all kinds of gee-whiz tech that we are impressed by. You cannot impress me with say tickets to a sold out rap concert. However, Shania Twain concerts are totally different. You need to speak to them in a language they understand.

We tend to be stupid and talk to hostage takers instead of giving them 10 mins to come out or artillery will flatten the place. So, the next guy who wants to do it will say to himself "Yes, that is a good idea and if I plan better, I might get away with it even if the last guy didn't." You save the guys today but screw up more people down the line. If we had flattened a major Iranian city for every day the hostages were kept, we might not have such a problem. However, they know Americans are suckers and will get somewhere with them.

__________________
01 Ford Excursion Powerstroke
99 E300 Turbodiesel
91 Vette with 383 motor
05 Polaris Sportsman 800 EFI
06 Polaris Sportsman 500 EFI
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Red
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Yellow
04 Tailgator 21 ft Toy Hauler
11 Harley Davidson 883 SuperLow

this' a fine peice which should be read and absorbed.
This is highly edited , view the entire document here.
http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2006/08/13/the-de-zionization-of-the-american-mind/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.counterpunch.org%2Fbricmont08122006.html&frame=true

August 12 / 13, 2006
How to Deal with The Lobby
The De-Zionization of the American Mind

By JEAN BRICMONT

Americans are constantly told that they have to defend themselves against people who "hate them", but without understanding why they are hated. Is the cause our secular democracy? Our appetite for oil? There are lots of democracies in the world that are far more secular than the United States (Sweden, France...) and lots of places that want to buy oil at the best possible price (China) without arousing any noticeable hatred in the Middle East.

Throughout the Third World, Americans and Europeans are often considered arrogant and are not particularly liked. But the level of hatred that leads a large number of people to applaud an event like September 11 is peculiar to the Middle East. Indeed, the main political significance of September 11 did not derive from the number of people killed or even the spectacular achievement of the attackers, but from the fact that the attack was popular in large parts of the Middle East. That much was understood by Americans leaders and infuriated them. Such a level of hatred calls for explanation.
And there can be only one explanation: United States support for Israel. It is indeed Israel that is the main object of hatred, for reasons we shall describe, but since the United States uncritically supports Israel on almost every issue, constantly praises it as "the only democracy in the Middle East" and provides its main financial backing, the result is a "transfer" of hatred.


That is bad enough, but why isn't this understood in the United States either? There are traditionally two answers to that: one is that the population is manipulated into supporting Israel by the government, the arms merchants or the oil industry, because Israel is a strategic U.S. ally; the other answer is that the United States is manipulated by the Israel lobby. The idea that Israel is a strategic ally, if by that one means a useful ally (useful to, say, the oil interests, broadly understood), although widely accepted, specially in the Left, does not survive a critical examination. That may have been the case in 1967 or even during the Cold War period, although one could argue that, even then, the Arab states were attracted by the Soviet Union only because it might support them in their struggle against Israel, albeit ineffectively. But both in 1991 and in 2003, the United States attacked Iraq without any help from Israel, even begging Israel not to intervene in 1991, in order for its Arab coalition not to collapse. Or consider the post-2003 occupation of Iraq, and suppose that the goal of that occupation is control over oil. In what sense does Israel help in that respect? Everything it does (the currents attacks on Gaza and Lebanon for example) further alienates the Arabs, and U.S. support for Israel makes the control of oil harder, not easier. Even the Iraqi parliament, Malaki and Sistani, who are the closest to allies that the United States can find there, condemn Israel's actions.

Finally, just imagine that the United States would make a 180 turn and suddenly side with the Palestinians, as they did with the Kosovars against the Serbs--who, by the way, were, like the Israelis, richer and more "Western" than their Albanian adversaries . Such a change of policies is by no means impossible : when Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, the US supported the invasion by providing most of Indonesia's weapons. Yet, 25 years later, the US supported, or at least did not oppose, East Timor's accession to independence.

What effect would that have? Can anyone doubt that such a change of policy would facilitate U.S. access to oil fields and help it gain strategic allies (if any were still needed) throughout the Muslim world? In the Middle East, the main charge against the United States is that it is pro-Israel, because it lets itself be "manipulated by the Jews". Therefore, if Washington switched sides, there would be no more basis for hostility to U.S. presence, including its control over oil. Thus the notion of Israel as "strategic ally" makes no sense.

This leads us to the "Israel lobby" answer, which is closer to the truth, but not the whole truth. To get a complete picture, one has to understand why the lobby works as effectively as it does, and that depends on factors lying outside the actions of the lobby itself. After all, the militant Zionists constituting the lobby are a minority among Jews, who themselves form a small minority of the American population. The Israel lobby does not work like other lobbies, for example, the arms and the oil industry lobbies (which is one of the reasons why it is easy to dismiss it as irrelevant, as long as one does not understand how it really exerts its influence).

Of course, like the latter, the Israel lobby does fund electoral campaigns and its power derives in part from its ability to target people in Congress who deviate from its "line". But if that was all, it could easily be defeated *indeed, there are other sources of electoral funding, the big industrial lobbies for example, and if the pro-Israel candidates could be shown to be paid to serve the interests of another State, their opponents could denounce the people who receive money from the lobby as some sort of agents of a foreign power. Just imagine a pro-French, pro-Chinese or pro-Japanese lobby that would try to significantly influence the US Congress. Certainly, money alone cannot suffice.

What protects the Israel lobby is the fact that anyone who would denounce an opponent funded by the Lobby as a quasi-agent of a foreign power would immediately be accused of anti-Semitism. In fact, imagine that Big Business is unhappy with the current U.S. policies (as it well may be) and wants to change them--how could they do it? Any criticism of Lobby influence on U.S. policy would immediately trigger the anti-Zionism-is-anti-Semitism accusation.

So the strength of the Israel lobby resides in part in this second line of defense, which itself is linked to its influence on the media. But even that could easily be defeated -- not all the media are under the lobby's influence, and, more importantly, the media is not all-powerful: in Venezuela, it is anti-Chavez, but Chavez regularly wins elections. In France, the media were overwhelmingly in favour if the "yes" vote to the referendum on the European Constitution, yet the "no" won. The problem, and that is why the Israel lobby is so effective, is that it expresses a world view that is accepted too easily by too many Americans. After all, nothing could be more ridiculous than accusing someone of anti-Semitism because he wants or claims to put America's interests above those of Israel. Yet, the accusation is likely to be effective, but only because years of ideological brainwashing have predisposed people to consider U.S. and Israeli interests as identical -- although instead of "interests" one speaks of "values".

Associated with this identification comes a systematically hostile view of the Arab and Muslim world, which both increases the lobby's effectiveness and is in part the result of its propaganda. Despite all the talk about anti-racism and "political correctness", there is an almost total lack of understanding of the Arab viewpoint on Palestine, and, in particular, of the racist nature of the problem. It is this triple layer of control (selective funding, the anti-Semitism card, or rather canard, and the interiorization) that gives the lobby its peculiar strength. (And that is also why it is easy to dismiss its strength by saying, for instance, that, obviously, Jews don't control America. Sure, but direct control is not the way it works.)

People who think that it is the arms or the oil industry that are running the show in Washington as far as foreign policy is concerned, should at least answer the following question: how does it work? There is no evidence whatsoever that the oil industry, for example, pushed for the Iraq war, the threats against Iran or the attack on Lebanon . (There is a lot of evidence that the Israel lobby pushed for the Iraq war; see Jeff Blankfort, A War for Israel.They are supposed to act secretly, of course, but where is the evidence that they do? And if they is no evidence, even no indirect evidence, how does one know? Profits from the war, at least for major corporations, haven't materialized yet, and there are many indications that the U.S. economy will suffer a lot from war-related expenses and the associated deficits. On the other hand, it is enough to open any mainstream U.S. newspaper or TV and read or hear opinions expressed by Zionists calling for more war. War needs war propaganda and a supporting ideology, and the Zionists provide it, while none of this is offered by Big Business in general or the oil industry in particular.
What is at stake in the de-Zionization of the American mind is not only the fate of the unfortunate inhabitants of Palestine but also unspeakable miseries for the people of that region and maybe of the rest of the world. The ultimate irony in all this is that the fate of much of the world depends of the American people exercizing their right to self-determination, which, of course, they should.

Jean Bricmont teaches physics in Belgium. He is a member of the Brussells Tribunal. His new book, Humanitarian Imperialism, will be published by Monthly Review Press.

He can be reached at : [email protected]

All we have to do is dezionify ourselves and everybody will love us.

Brilliant.

Bot

Hey now, he's a professor in Belgium, of physics no less. He's got to be right!

__________________
-livin' in the terminally flippant zone

I wonder why people seem to think that you can do this, that or the other and it will be perfect. From what I have seen, there is no perfect move you can make. Makes me think of an unplanned pregnancy. You have 3 simple choices, assuming the fetus will come to term (no stillbirth) if you don't do anything. You can abort it, keep it or adopt it out. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? Which path has no issues of its own? With abortion, you might feel guilty if you believe that it is a child later on. However, you are done with it now. With adoption, you avoid that but constantly wondering what might have happened if you had this or that. With keeping the child, you avoid all of that however, you now have a different set of issues. Is there a perfect solution? Nope. Each way has it's positives and each way has it's negatives.

__________________
01 Ford Excursion Powerstroke
99 E300 Turbodiesel
91 Vette with 383 motor
05 Polaris Sportsman 800 EFI
06 Polaris Sportsman 500 EFI
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Red
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Yellow
04 Tailgator 21 ft Toy Hauler
11 Harley Davidson 883 SuperLow

And this strategy has worked in what part of human history and at what cost?

Worked well in Japan at no cost to our soldiers. Why do we care about the enemy? They don't care about you. That is why they can win. Because they are willing to go ALL THE WAY and you want to fight with one arm tied behind your back with a weight on your right leg.

__________________
01 Ford Excursion Powerstroke
99 E300 Turbodiesel
91 Vette with 383 motor
05 Polaris Sportsman 800 EFI
06 Polaris Sportsman 500 EFI
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Red
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Yellow
04 Tailgator 21 ft Toy Hauler
11 Harley Davidson 883 SuperLow

Don't see any neanderthals today, do you?

__________________
-livin' in the terminally flippant zone

You are exposing the weakness in our approach.... the one that they are already well aware of, and are exploiting quite successfully:

You actually CARE what happens to them. You value your enemy's life.

They suffer no such weakness.

They certainly do NOT care what happens to you. They want you dead, even if it means their OWN death.

Mike

__________________
_____
1979 300 SD
350,000 miles
_____
1982 300D-gone---sold to a buddy
_____
1985 300TD
270,000 miles
_____
1994 E320
not my favorite, but the wife wanted it

www.myspace.com/mikemover
www.myspace.com/openskystudio
www.myspace.com/speedxband
www.myspace.com/openskyseparators
www.myspace.com/doubledrivemusic