Violence ALWAYS works. I would submit that if we REALLY wanted to end the war in Iraq very quickly, we can. But since you are squeamish of anyone even getting a hangnail in the name of the Constitution, and since there are too many others like you running around, the suggestion I am going to make to you will make you VOMIT and CRINGE. And it is simple: read very carefully about how the Assassins were defeated by the Mongols. The United States Armed Forces that you so hate are behaving like Sunday Schoolboys by comparison.
Of course (in a huge hat tip to Robert Heinlein), if you are sold on the idea that violence doesn’t solve anything, I will happily pay for your airfare to Carthage so that you can explain this to the Carthaginians, who can doubtless use your wisdom. I will also follow this with a side trip to Constantinople, and you can tell the Byzantines the same thing.

Except when you are issuing blood slander about the military?

“And at my school if there’s a fight, the student who hits first is the one who’s wrong. It they claim it was a preemptive strike, that doesn’t wash.”

Unless the student is Saddam?

Robert, your time is gone if it ever was here.

Did you live in the Sixties: I don’t know your age.
If you did, you’re stuck there, with the crap the stoners emitted.
If not, you got one of the memos they left around.

As I say, nobody’s stupid enough to believe you. Not even you.

If killing Muslim terrorists breeds more, how about Muslim terrorists killing Muslim civilians? Thirty, forty, fifty a day, each with relatives. Man, the al Q guys in Iraq are building up a blood debt they couldn’t pay if they owned a slaughterhouse.

On the contrary, one of my favorite quotes from Martin Luther King is, “If you have nothing to die for, you’re not fit to live.”

There’s are a lot in life that’s worth fighting for. Like, well, defense.

How do I explain the reaction of the Iraqis to the toppling of Saddam’s statue? Well, don’t take my word for it. Google it and you’ll see quite a few people have written about it. The majority of Iraqis who gathered to watch the U.S. Marines do what the network news cameras were hoping the Iraqis would do themselves were not cheering at all. The majority, according to newsmen at the scene, looked either nervous, embarrassed or sad. I wasn’t there, so goole it yourself and read what the cameras didn’t show according to poeple who were there.

I don’t think that even Fox News is disputing now that the majority of Iraqis oppose American’s invasion and occupation. They don’t want us there and they wish we never came. Again, don’t take my word for it. Look at the polls.

It’s interesting — your comment that violence works every time.

That seems to be a belief held by the current administration and it might be the reason things just aren’t working out.

It’s not just Michael Moore and people like him who are against the war right now. It’s 2/3 of Americans according to the latest polls.

If violence worked every time, the mission would have been accomplished by now.

By this time in our history, nobody is stupid enough to find value in the writings of Henry David Thoreau?

At this time in our history, all the Democrats running for president are saying that the war in Iraq was a mistake. They either didn’t vote for it or they wish they hadn’t. The Democratic Party is the majority in the U.S.

You may believe I’m wrong, which is fine, but when you say I’m in the minority, it’s just not so.

Walter,

After reading more about the 1950′s, I’ve changed my opinion about how serious the threat of communism was. I’m not convinced, however, that Viet Nam was part of that threat.

As for the threat of international Jihad, I think that’s real. I think that thousands of babies are born every single day in the Middle East with prayers that they’ll grow up to kill a lot of Americans one day. There are more individuals than ever before who dream of coming over to America to kill us and our children. I fear that before I die that the Golden Gate Bridge will be destroyed and that most of San Francisco will be contaminated by the fallout from a Jihadest’s backpack dirty bomb. Hatred for the U.S. is increasing every day. Hatred that moves thousands upon thousands to love nothing better than the thought of killing American men, women and chilren. I think that threat is real and that it grows by the day.

And I think that invading Iraq, a country that wasn’t linked to terrorism, has been like throwing gasoline on a fire that now threatens us all.

We agree on some things, Walter, but not all.

I don’t think I’m a fool and I don’t think I’m a traitor–though I guess that’s a matter of opinion.

I am a teacher, and I think I’m a pretty good one. (Very few people at school know my political views. For years, it was assumed I was a conservative Republican because I’m a born again Christian and I was the county chairman for the Sonny Bono run for the U.S. Senate.)

And at my school if there’s a fight, the student who hits first is the one who’s wrong. It they claim it was a preemptive strike, that doesn’t wash.

Something else. In my classroom I stress that there’s better communication if people refrain from name calling.

I didn’t know about the tin mines in Malaysia, but I’ll take your word for it.

What I’m saying is, like Henry David Thoreau and Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, that when the military is wrong, it shouldn’t be supported.

There are those who believe the U.S. military is always right. I’m not one of them.

It doesn’t have to do with wanting a “free ride” or feeling morally superior.

There are those of us who believe Thoreau had a valid point and that that point applies now just as it did during the war with Mexico, a war, if you’ll recall, Abraham Lincoln denounced.

And then there are those of us who want to be “Good Germans.”

Well, not me.