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America in Iraq in in very much the same position as the Napoleonic army in Spain during the rebellion. Unlike the French leader back then I cannot see them adopting and learning the necessary lessons, instead they mess thigs up with public relation desatser like the CIA flight over Europe and secret interrogation camps onEuropean soil - an affront. Well, I am the last to claim Bush shares Napoleon's understanding
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Yeah, but Napoleon didn't have to deal with a democracy (At last a theoretical one) at home, which makes things a lot more difficult.
I want to thank Skybird for his straight and sincere vision of the war. I think he is partially right, i.e., he who uses all resources and tricks at his avail has more chances to win than the one who limits them voluntarily. And because the winner always will write the history afterwards, he will also be able to tell the future generations that he did it in a clean fight
I might be a romantic guy, probably due to the fact of my family descending straight from Middle Age Knights and such, (They were in fact mercenaries and not the noble knights usually seen in Hollywood, but anyway...
) and still believe in the need for a logical, philosophical reason for war, as well as I believe in conducting a war with honour and respecting certain rules. I myself know because of my job what it is to look each morning beneath your car in case a baske terrorist has put an explosive there, or to look behind you regularly in case someone with a pistol is coming, and have learned that I fight on the side that tries to respect rules, against people who will not respect any. And true, this all is just putting a handicap over you, which is not good when your enemy does not the same.
In the nature, few animals of the same race fight till death, they have instead an ellaborated code of signals for telling the other that you give up and surrender, and normally you will expect to save your life then. In the human species this is unfortunately not so, and thus war is probably more efficiently conducted like Skybird suggests.
But then...where will we stop? If killing the enemy by shooting from his back is allowed for the sake of winning, why not kill also his women and children to prevent future generations from trying to revenge? Where is the difference? If you win a fight not respecting anything, will you be able to survive your own cruelty later or will you be sad for the rest of your life? Probably the answer to that question tells on which side you are. And worser, the fact that the most cruel survives and kills the most noble is a good explanation on why our modern world looks like it does. There has been a natural, darwinianan selection but not choosing the most prepared to survive....but the most cruel one, and the one that has less consciousness.
We are a sad race, and have constructed a sad world
