re: #119 goddamnedfrank

In WWII, we had easily defined enemies, and what we had to do to defeat them was pretty much straighforward - keep killing them until they stopped trying to kill us. Because we were at war with whole nations, we didn’t have to worry about collateral damage, we didn’t have to worry about hearts and minds. Just kill them till they stopped killing us. THEN worry about hearts and minds.

So many times after 9/11 I heard people talk about it as if it were the same, as if all we had to do was keep killing till the killing stopped, as if there was a defined population of individuals, the Terrorists, and if we wiped THEM out, it would all be over. No thought about where terrorists come from, or how to separate them from the population at large. Killing civilians wouldn’t be a problem, because our cause was RIGHT, and they’d understand, or something.