Re John P’s musings, I’m not exactly Mary Sunshine this morning either. I wonder about this: not just the question as to whether modern enlightened, liberal nations have the will to do what’s necessary to survive, but whether our people can transcend the Alice in Wonderland nature of the world we live in.
We (and this also includes Israelis, Brits, and a few others) would never dream of targeting civilians for any reason – not even in self-defense. In 2002, the Israelis used ground troops going house to house in Jenin rather than attack from the air — though it cost the lives of 23 of their men – in order to spare civilians.
Our enemies can not imagine not targeting civilians – ours – and when they can be used as human shields/propaganda fodder, theirs.
Our people are beheaded on videotape and the world ignores it. We fail to offer the full panoply of the Bill of Rights to the beheaders and the world groans at the inhumanity of it all.
The United Nations Security Council condemns Israel for defending herself from naked aggression and manages to overlook Chechnya, the Chinese occupation of Tibet, every terrorist attack against Israel, the massacre in Rwanda, the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, Serbian acts in Bosnia, and pretty much the entire continent of Africa, which as Kofi Annan surely knows better than most, is a human rights cesspool. As Jeane Kirkpatrick put it: “What happens in the Security Council more closely resembles a mugging than either a political debate or an effort at problem-solving.”
There are millions of Americans who are not deluded by this madness (and we draw our military recruits from their ranks), and yet you cannot escape the times you live in. Lack of self-confidence is eroding our civilization like dry rot. We are not as far gone as Europe – but the glide path is worrisome.