War, what is it good for?

Ok! It's time to change topics for awhile.
Some people, reading my discourse on humor and war, might think that I am a pacifist. I am not at all. It's like the Bible. In the ten commandments it doesn't say "thou shalt not kill" it says "thou shalt not murder". There is a great difference between the two.
Let's try to differeciate the different wars that have been fought by this nation and others.


We must first start with the War of Independance. That created the nation and allowed the flourishing of democracy, unless you believe that there is another nation in the world that has given more towards the rights of man and democracy, that was a good war.


The War of 1812, again a war fought to preserve our nation as an independant state.


The Civil War, a war fought over culture and preservation of the nation. It brought about the end of slavery.




I doubt if I need to discuss the World Wars.



The question is what are we fighting for in the war on Islamic terrorism? We are fighting for our freedom and culture. So what does Iraq have to do with the war on terror?

In order to win this war we need both a carrot and a stick. The stick is the direct fight against the major Islamic terror organizations like Al-Qada and Hezbollah. That is the obvious battle. So what is the carrot? The carrot is a long term plan to create a relative democracy with a stable growing economy within the Islamic world so that parents of young Islamic children can see the possibility of their children living better and therefore teaching them to live rather than teaching them that dying for Allah as a suicide bomber is what they are here for. This is not easy but it is necessary. Why is it necessary? Because there are over one billion Muslims in the world. If only 5% are radical and only 1% of them are willing to die in a suicide attack there are still 500,000 people who are willing to die to destroy our nation and our culture. The only way to beat that number would be to use nuclear weapons across the Muslim world, and I don't think many in our nation would be able to handle the mass murder required to win. On the other hand if we can teach about a modern society where people with different ideas can line together and have enough faith in their G-d that they don't feel a need to kill those with different beliefs.