Comments on: Blinding Them With Science

By: BillT

BillT — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 07:33:14 +0000

Perfect analogy, angus.

By: BillT

BillT — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 07:30:31 +0000

Reminds me of the time I was giving a Hangar Tour to a group of high-schoolers — I explained the anti-tank role of the TOW missiles on our AH-1Fs and that our doctrine was to engage from beyond the range of an armored vehicles anti-aircraft weapons.

One teacher opined that that didn’t seem to be fair, to which I replied, “You don’t pay me to fight fair. You pay me to *win*.”

By: ProwlerAMDO

ProwlerAMDO — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:52:14 +0000

Well put. The very heart of any conflict is that two different groups have staked mutually exclusive claims to something and are willing to fight rather than compromise, and usually think they have some decent chance to win.

Whether or not we believe that strongly in our way of life . . . I’m afraid too much nihilism and relativisim has infected our civilization with a significant amount of rot, and that this is giving the takfiri terrorists so much belief that they can win. How many reversals of the Jihad Jane example do you see out there? Far more westerners, with closed minds in the Allan Bloom sense of refusing to make value judgements and left in a society that offers nothing of historical majesty in its traditions or higher than materialistic/if-it-feels-good-do-it purpose in its future, are converting to Islam than the other way around. This cultural rot may have a lot to do with why birthrates in so many westernized nations are languishing below replacement value. From not wanting to put up with babies because it could cramp their lifestyle, to not wanting to bring children into a “polluted unfair” world, to trying to provide the absolute best possible material life to your children driving many to have only one they can lavish optimally all mean that right now the West is being solidly “out-evolved” by a highly fertile Islam. Survival of the fittest, with the fittest being defined as the ones that survive of course . . .

By: angus

angus — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:28:58 +0000

The assumption that the terrorists are born out of marginalised youths is flawed. The majority of islamist militants are local and Al Qaeda performs a subsidiary role. Al Qaeda is dedicated to the support of islamist struggle worldwide. There are islamist insurgents in Afghanistan, Algeria, Burma, Chad, Chechnya, China, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Pakistan, Phillipines, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen that are locally staffed. These conflicts vary asymmetric to symmetric, depending on the local enviroment and opposition.

An ongoing focus on Al Qaeda is understandable, because they are the only ones attacking us over here. But it doesn’t get anywhere near the core of the problem to focus on the recruiting patterns of Al Qaeda militants. Imagine we were conducting a clandestine war with France, would we win by developing the perfect plan for defeating the French Foreign Legion?

By: SCOTTtheBADGER

SCOTTtheBADGER — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:46:52 +0000

“Our adversaries not putting much stock in our belief that we have gotten it right, and they have not” That is a fantastic summation. So many of the left do not realise that the opposition do not think like us. They have thier own, and to them, quite valid world view. We cannot just expect them to play nice with us, because we want to be liked. They belive just as strongly in thier position as we do, and will continue to do so. I do believe that, in time, we can convince them or the superiority of our position, but we must insure our survival until we can do so. The time has not yet come to put down the pointed stick.

By: ProwlerAMDO

ProwlerAMDO — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:13:17 +0000

In the life and death situation of war, yes that sums it up rather nicely