Bane writes: Suffice to say, he thinks we are not at war, and I think we are… .I note his use of the phrase ‘Police Action’….ahhhh. That little dust-up in Korea wasn’t a war, even though we fought it for years, and continue to ‘garrison’ the DMZ to this day. Viet Nam. Not a war. Semantics. Tell it to the families of our honored dead. Cold War? A journalistic buzz-word that caught on. Lasted decades, as I recall. I don’t think it’s over, either. One stupid wall falling does not the surrender of the Red Menace make. The Great Wall in China is falling apart, but no one in their right mind would posit the demise of China from the decay of it’s wall.
Bane, with all due respect, the point that seems to be escaping you is that when the United States fights these undeclared half-assed little “wars” in which the citizenry is barely conscious that anything is going on and half of them don’t support it even if they do, the problem that brought the so-called war about doesn’t get solved. We did not fight a war in Korea, nor did we finish it which is why the situation is more dangerous to us today than it was 50 years ago. Vietnam’s development shows that we might as well never have sent a single soldier over there, as what would have happened if we had not? The North Vietnamese would have taken Saigon… oh, wait, they did. A country dependent on citizen-soldiers cannot win wars that the citizenry does not understand or does not largely support. As TZ ( I think) commented, a nation that will give up nothing to support its war effort is not a nation at war.
I know you didn’t mean the comment about the honored dead as a cheap shot, nor do I take it as one, but I daresay that I have as many members of my family buried at Arlington as anyone. The Commandant of the USMC himself gave my grandfather’s eulogy there a few years ago, after which my brothers and I carried his casket to the carriage. One of the most vivid memories of my life are of the Marines who stand alone at each crossroads and salute the flag-draped casket as the horse-drawn carriage passes them by. It is precisely because I value the lives of Marines like my grandfather and your sons that I do not wish for politicians like George Delano or John Francois to spend them in playing an endless and ineffectual game of micro military actions.
I agree that China is a danger, even though the president and his economic advisors don’t seem to recognize it. (The more pressing danger from them at the moment is actually economic, as they can shut off our debt-funding at any time.) And perhaps “police action” is a poor description, albeit one no less inaccurate than “war”. War implies a major threat to the nation, and its exaggerated use in this case by the administration is clearly being done in an attempt to distract the populace and excuse its numerous failures on other fronts. Lilypad is at least honest about this.
I think there is a reasonable case to be made for a revival of the medieval war against the Turk, despite my doubts about the eventual ramifications of such a war. Europe is once again being overrun, and America has been targeted. But I see no indication that that any decision has been made to fight that war, the uncharacteristically inaccurate vision of VDH notwithstanding.
I’m stunned. I didn’t see Vox as a Kerry voter. A vote against Bush, or a vote withheld, is a vote for Kerry.
I’m not a Kerry voter. The very notion is metaphorical nonsense, as if I wished to vote for Kerry, there is nothing to prevent me from doing so. Meanwhile, my less easily dismissed response is that a vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil. I will almost surely be voting Libertarian, although I will give the Constitution candidate a fair look before actually putting in my two cents.