While Rome Burned...

...Condoleeza Rice played Brahms. Talk about disconnects! Half a million Lebanese are homeless? Let them eat cake! The only point in all this that seems to be right on target is America's refusal to condemn Israel for defending herself against a foe that desires only to kill her men, women, and children... to the last soul.



But looking back to my previous post... I'm with ER on this, I'd like to see what the headlines around the world spoke of in the run up to World Wars I & II. There's a lot of talk lately that what we are really seeing is the opening salvos of World War III, but I think this displays an inordinate amount of ignorance. Yet perhaps I give people too much credit; that they should have no difficulties recognizing that Change is the one inconstant-- unchangeable --force in our universe. Were it otherwise, entropy and stagnation would kill us all.

The fact is, all things are mutable EXCEPT change, and God. War, then, or rather the faces it wears, changes. And man, short-lived and contextually memoried, finds it difficult to see beyond his own experience. The face of war has changed so many times, but the fundamental, the base elements of war, never do...

"War is like water — its fundamental character remains unchanging precisely because the nature of the humans who fight it is constant over the centuries. True, the pump — the delivery system of flint, arrows, firearms, nuclear bombs, guided missiles and satellite weapons — radically changes the face of battle with each generation. But the essence of war nevertheless stays the same,..."

--Victor Davis Hanson

But though it's base never shifts, as Mr. Hanson points out, War is very adaptable, even if those who fight them are not-- It's the mindset of those who fight their wars I refer to here. The Cold War, was just as much a world war as the first 2... it had it's innocent victims, it casualties, its weapons, its posturing, and its rhetoric.

Could it be that we don't recognize the cold war as a world war because there aren't any standing memorials, no national holiday, or millions buried on foreign fields? Will we miss the significance of this new conflict and not give it the focus it deserves, all because we didn't recognize the opening salvos in 1979, and earlier? Is it not fair to say this is a struggle for ideology every bit as much as the cold war was? Communism vs Democracy? Facism against Liberty? Why is America and the rest of the world so reluctant to see the enemy for who he is? And why are we so unwilling to recognize the very real threat he poses to our innocents, our pocketbooks, our pleasures; in short, our way of life?

Just as not all Germans were nazis, just as not all German's would hand over a wounded American soldier caught behind enemy lines, so too are Muslims. Not all will seek our heads, eyes and limbs. But we didn't balk at doing what needed to be done in Germany because not all Germans were Nazis.

If only 10% of Muslims worldwide espouse the Wahabbist view of jihad, we're still left with a number that describes an enemy 100 million strong. 100,000,000 men and women who seek to see our way of life trodden under foot.

Could we really be seeing the beginnings of World War IV?