What I am saying is that there is no point to preserving a culture that wants us dead simply for the sake of preserving it. It's not like anyone is saying "we should wipe out any group of people we find mildly inconveinent" this has been going on for decades, and has gotten well beyond that.philosophicalbastard said:
Let me put things into context for you. You know the "Aliens" franchise? The basic premise of this series is that you have a race of beings that is pretty much bent on the destruction of humanity in order to propagate itself. According to some of the novels, the central intelligence (Queens) are sentinent and even aware of what they are doing. The Aliens becoming smarter and more adaptive being a theme in the extended canon. The big theme to this books is how inevitably some moron insists on keeping some of these things alive, so they break free and start killing again. The reasons for this vary with the storyline, varying from the moronic/profit-minded/evil like distilling a drug called "fire" from their glands, to the benevolent, with people wanting to harness their restorative properties to cure illness. The bottom line is that since these things want to kill everyone, there is no reason to keep them alive at all, and the people who keep saving some are a bunch of mouth breathers who simply do not learn.
The big differance between "Aliens" and a human culture, is of course the fact that it's palatable when your dealing with an alien life form, but not so palatable when your dealing with our own species. That's a reflex we need to overcome if the world is ever going to progress. Why preserve a group of xenocidal theocrats so they can continue to try and kill us and take over the world? No, they aren't evil from their own perspective, and I can't claim we're exactly paragons of virtue, so the situation is a basic reality based "us or them" equasion. Diplomacy has been being attempted for decades and has consistantly failed.
To put things into another perspective, I again point to World War II. The Nazis were defeated by demonizing them beyond all reality, and then relentlessly exterminating them, including women and children. It went from a huge, international movement, to a tiny underground fringe after the war. We spent decades hunting down survivors even after the war ended.
You have to understand, Hollywood would have you believe that there was a tiny group of Nazis who somehow managed to hold Germany in a grip of terror, with a majority of people fearing a tiny minority of secret police. Somehow this group of people managed to take control of other nations and do the same thing. In reality the majority of Germany supported the Nazis, as did substantial numbers of people in the various countries they conquered, many of these countries providing manpower to the Nazi invasions of other areas. You never see movies where you have say Nazis with French or Romanian accents for example.
The threat posed is by a culture, as long as the ideaology survives so does the threat. You can kill the military and leaders indefinatly, but as long as the ideas remain in force more soldiers and more leaders will eventually rise. In finishing Germany the US and the forces allied with us at the time literally bombed the country into rubble, that included the civilian infrastructure to break the will/culture of the people, cause problems like food and material shortages, and of course reduce the overall population and send the survivors into hiding. Advancing through the cities was building to building fighting, where civilians, many of them defending their homes, were butchered, even those not directly involved in fighting with the Volkssturm. The Hitler Youth engaged in harrying tactics and itself was wiped out (ie children). Even after the end, as I pointed out above, the US and it's allies continued after the war to hunt down people that still held onto the ideas.
Japan is perhaps a slightly better example, as it was an even more closed country than Germany, and had theocratic elements where the surrender of the Emperor was a big deal because at the time he was still viewed as a god I believe. Japan was occupied (and still is to this day), had it's domestic military forces greatly limited, and has been undergoing massive cultural reforms in the intervening decades. A lot of work remains to be done, but the Japan of today is a lot more civilized and progressive than the one that was defeated during World War II.
The enemies we've defeated are those we've destroyed culturally, half-measures do not work. It's when we stopped doing this kind of fighting (with the advent of the Baby Boomers) that we ceased to actually win wars. The Middle East is only the example I use because it's who we're fighting right now. Should it come to a war, I'd advocate the same exact tactics if we got to this point with the same failure of diplomacy and more measured responses that we've seen.
See, the problem isn't just the terrorist, the Taliban fighter, Al Queda member, or any of those groups and their leaders. The problem is the guy who doesn't fight, but believes in the primacy of Islam and the inherant destiny to rule the world. It's about his hatred of infidels, and the fact that seperating the church and state is an anathema to them. Even if that guy doesn't actually DO anything besides mind his own business, he and the other guys like him are eventually going to see people who embrace those same ideas and seek to put them into practice. The people who think like that and will look up to those fighters as heroes is why the people keep coming into existance.
One thing to understand is that unlike movies, the enemy is not stupid. When we have a huge military force in the region nobody is running around screaming "kill Americans" publically. They keep that to themselves when we're not around, and tell us what we want to hear. They also understand propaganda and realize that talking about peace will hamper American war efforts because of our lack of propaganda and information control, and a desire to end the war especially with how long it has gone on. Once we're out of their back yard they can rebuild and come after us for revenge with even more terrorism.
To put things into perspective, like most people on these forums, I'm not a Commando. On the other hand I believe in my country, respect my special forces, and think it's awesome when our guys go into other countries to get things done on our behalf. Heck, I read books, and comics about it, watch TV shows about it, and play video games about it (occasionally, not a big FPS fan). Even if someone wiped out all of our special operatives, as long as the US and people like me were still here, we'd find more people to go into the special ops community and it would continue on. To stop us from doing that, you'd have to level the US as a whole.
Heck, simply leveling the US wouldn't do it. You'd probably have to kill nearly every American. See, the tactics I espouse in warfare are there because I know what it would take to really beat/destroy the US, and extend the same level of respect to my fellow humans. If someone came into the US and managed to level a good portion of the military, while landing troops, that wouldn't be the end of it. Just like the guys in The Middle East we'd be fighting them as insurgents. The whole "Fortress America" thing would go into effect and you'd have Americans fighting in the mountain ranges (some of which are quite strategic), swamps, and forests. It wouldn't be over until the invading forces pretty much killed off the whole idea of America on any sizable level, by not only beating the insurgents, but exterminating those with America in their heart whose existance would create more insurgents. It's foolish to assume that just because we're dealing with a foreign culture, it's easier to defeat than we would be.
All this rambling pretty much gets down to the simple fact that war blows chips, nobody wants to go to war and risk getting shot, nobody wants to go kill some poor schmuck in his back yard, nobody wants to see their friends or family do either of those things, and no leader wants the blood on their hands of having ordered the elimination of an entire way of life, for good or ill. All of these things are reasons why wars are to be avoided, and why you try diplomacy and middle ground responses first. However, once you actually go to war, it's simply "us or them" there are no rules, and no morality, it's all about who is going
to be standing at the end. If I was who I am now, and it was 30 years ago, I wouldn't be advocating the same things (and calling what I am saying insane) because we wouldn't have tried to resolve the situation enough in other ways. At this point however I think anything short of what I suggest is just repeting failed strategies, it's time to "Git er Done" as "Larry The Cable guy" would put it. There is no longer any doubt about what needs to be done when you view things reasonably, it's become an exercise in procrastination... and honestly I blame the mentality of the Baby Boomers for that. If this happened the same way with the World War II generation in power, it might not be pretty, but this whole conflict would be history by now.
