jallman

No, I don't think the current generation would have the grit to fight a war like the Great Wars. War has become so detached and mechanized that we have lost our instinct for brutal warfare like our forefathers fought. I think this is in large part due to the coverage that war gets and the spin the media puts on it. Our media blurs the lines between innocent and enemy and so our compassionate impulses are magnified and our ability to realistically recognize danger is suppressed. In the past, winning a war was acheiving not only a surrender of the enemy, but leaving them with a long lasting reminder of what it meant to challenge a country's might and global dominance. Wars today are no more than skirmishes when you compare them to the epic struggles of the past. I think this, in the end, is worse because I believe these skirmishes will just be more and more frequent and ultimately more destructive. In the past, when a war was fought, the face of the earth changed and the wheat was separated from the chafe. The way we fight a war today, nothing is ever really accomplished and the underlying causes of the conflict are left festering. Eventually, I think it is all going to boil over and we will see war of the likes we have never seen and there is a strong possibility that life on earth will be changed forever in a way that may destroy all that we have accomplished.

The worst things that ever happened to this planet were the development of ballistic missiles and their importance to diplomacy. The arms race forced diplomacy to be the crutch of the weaker nation and over time that use of diplomacy has undermined our natural, human instinct to destroy an enemy. We have become soft.

__________________
I don't care if McCain and Palin have to dine on mentally handicapped babies with the devil himself to deliver us the White House. If that's what it takes, I'll personally put in the order for a case of barbecue sauce myself.