1 During the Cold War, few people said, "We have to solve the problem of Latvia, before we can even begin to address the problem of the Soviet Union. "Latvia's problem ? as well as the problems of Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, etc., etc. ? was the Soviet Union. To concentrate on the plight of Latvia would be like treating a runny nose while shrugging off the pneumonia which caused it. Obviously, such analogies can be overdone. But whether you are for the United States coming to the aid of Israel or not, it seems increasingly transparent that the Arab-Israeli conflict will NOT be solved first. The Arabs need to be solved first. Terrorism will not end until the Arabs stop being terrorists. From one end of the Middle East to the other they need to be gutted and rebuilt. Iraq at present is that laboratory. We are learning in Iraq what our ?method? will be for the ENTIRE Middle East. One end to the other, no flinching, war with every single nation that can?t fight their terrorist problems or won?t. Winner take all. No bluff, no compromise. Finish them. You don't play at war. There is no second chance in a war. There are those who believe we must follow the advice of our "friends" in the Middle East, and the Solomons at the State Department and MSNBC who say we must first achieve through yet more TALKING what 50 years of ?talking? could not achieve. Talking is not going to settle the Arab- Israeli situation. War is the only solution to the situation. One side has to win and the other side has to lose. Only the United States (not the E.U. or the Norwegians or the Arab League, mind you, but the United States) can secure a final peace between Israel and the Arab world. The Arab World IS THE PROBLEM. Anti-Semitism and Arab racism is the Problem. And the Problem is not the Jews, it IS the anti-Semitic Arab culture and the Racist Islamofascist nutcase dictatorships and their inability to live in the real world. It always has been, it always will be Israel's Home Land which the Arabs will Dhimmi over until the end of time unless we smack them around and change their minds along with their dentistry. The Arabs need to be smacked. They need to be permanently taken out of the game. It needs to be finished. Peace is only going to be found when the Arabs have their last crutch kicked out from under them and their face ABSOLUTELY kicked in with a good strong boot. They have to have their hopes taken away from them along with most of their fingers and other appendages. It has to be settled. No comebacks. Allah has to get it THOROUGHLY in the ass. No more Shahids, no more fatwas, no more teeth. The Arab states are constantly supporting terrorist groups in the Israeli territories, as well as in Lebanon and Syria. So long as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran (the real Axis of Evil) know that the United States won't try to squash them before there is "peace in the Middle East," there will never be peace in the Middle East. After all, the Palestinian refugees have lived in such dire circumstances for 50 years largely because neighboring Arab states have wanted it thus. Three GENERATIONS of being PROFESSIONAL refugees is quite long enough. They aren?t going to come to any settlement or Peace. They don?t want peace. They never did. All they want and all they ever wanted was to kill the Jews, all of them. They started the war back in 1948 to obliterate Israel, to genocide the Jewish population. It is time we recognized that THIS war needs to be finished once and for all. DONE WITH. The Arabs need to be completely broken, their lands taken away from them and their populations culturally ripped apart and restructured. What they WERE going to do to the Jews needs to be done to them. And then there will be peace. It has to be completely finished and ended. No negotiations, finish them. As the editors of the Wall Street Journal, Bernard Lewis, and others have noted, Saddam didn't increase his payments for homicide bombers to $25,000 per mass murder because he's committed to peace in the Holy Land. Ditto the Iranians, who shipped $50 million to the Palestinian Authority ? or Bashar Assad, the Syrian hereditary dictator who argued that the best way to implement the "Saudi peace plan" would be by increasing the bombings and by forcing Egypt and Jordan to sever all ties with Israel. Let them have what they always wanted: War. Winner take all, no holds barred. Their heads or ours. Let?s FIGHT and see who wins. Let?s shift into COMBAT mentality, forget peace. Give them what they want, and put an end to them. All of them. No half measures, take them all down. Box Allah and ship him. IF the United States is to WAIT for peace between Israel and Yasser Arafat before it continues its so-called war on terrorism, then the war on terrorism is over and LOST. We need to shove it down their throats and let them have the problem. Because it is THEIR problem, not ours. We need to make them eat it. And if they can?t swallow it , let them choke hard and suffocate. Again, you might believe ? as Chris Matthews, Robert Novak, the editors of The Nation, and others seem to ? that Israel is the source of all our disagreements with the Islamofascists and Islamofanatics. You might hold that if only the United States stopped condoning this or that policy of the Israelis ? or stopped supporting Israel entirely ? there would then be peace. You are absolutely blind stupid if you think the Islamists and the Islamofascists will stop with Israel. They want to kill us too. We are all dead men if they win. Our world will have Sharia Law and our lives will be ruled by Mullahs and your wife and daughter can all go put bags on their heads and you can kiss your freedoms goodbye. They want to see us in Hell. It isn?t just the Jews. They want to kill ALL of us too. Let?s give them what they want. Let?s FIGHT and see who wins. I mean clear the board. End it, once and for all. Last man standing. Mecca for a Parking Lot. You want to play, go get your bat. Should the Arab world succeed in its next attempt to wipe out Israel, that still wouldn't be the end of OUR troubles. After all, Osama bin Laden didn't care about the Palestinians until the Palestinians started cheering in the streets on September 11 and licking American blood while they passed out the candy.. And as we all learned recently, Zacarias Moussaoui prays and fights for the destruction of Israel, the United States, and Russia as well as for the return of Muslim dominion over such places as Spain and parts of Yugoslavia., and half of France. That's a pretty hefty land-for-peace plan. If Israel were destroyed tomorrow and the surviving refugees streamed into the United States, Australia, and Canada ? Lord knows the Europeans wouldn't take them ? the mullahs of Iran, Syria, and others would take the destruction of a nation which they regard as a U.S. outpost, to be a sign of our weakness. And weakness, perceived or real, is an invitation for more violence. Let me make that more brutally clear, if you look weak to an Arab he is going to cut you up. Arabs only attack what they see as weak. If you have tanks you can bet that Arabs run. They dress up as their mothers and run. For example, when the United States pulled out of Somalia after the "Black Hawk Down" incident, we saw it as the tragic consequence of a feckless foreign policy and little more. "They don't want our help, screw 'em," was how most Americans understandably regarded the episode. In the Middle East, however, the lesson was that Americans are weak and easily frightened away. And if we pull out of Iraq it will be the same. They will come after us and we will have to fight somewhere else closer to home. If you back down they don?t get the message. Let?s give them the message? barbwire and minefields and tanks. Confiscate the food, turn off the water, send in the Marines, shoot anything that moves, set up curfews, kill anyone who even looks you in the eye. Settle them and break them. Make them crawl naked and beg. Humiliate them and enforce absolute compliance. Don?t leave them a shred of manhood or self respect. Ruin their very guts. An Arab has to learn who has the power, if they want war, give it to them completely. Don?t leave them even a hope of honor. Shove their face in it. Listen to Al-Jazeera they don?t believe we have any altruistic motives? if Osama bin Laden's own words are to be believed ? Muslim ideologues were incapable of believing that the United States' motives were altruistic: as if we were keen on making Somalia, which measures per capita income in fractions of a goat, the 51st state of America, or maybe a U.S. territory like the Virgin Islands. Stop laughing. I'm serious. So, if that is the case we have nothing to lose if we stop having any altruistic intentions. Alright, no more good intentions, Let?s kill them. And I mean precisely that. Pull out all the stops, no more giving a crap for collateral damage. Pave them. Hit the center of town and make sure the Mosque can?t even be found when we drive in the tanks. Total War. Shove it in tight and lock it off. Stuff their turbaned butts till their eyes bulge. Indeed, perceived American weakness in Somalia not only invited further al Qaeda attacks on the United States, but emboldened Israel's enemies too. "The Israelis are just like the Americans," reasoned Palestinian militants, "they can be scared away" (this lesson was further intensified when Israel voluntarily withdrew from Lebanon, a move widely interpreted by Islamists and Arabs in general as an Israeli capitulation ? which makes sense, since Arab propaganda says Israel is implacably imperialist and hence incapable of giving up land for benign reasons). It seems obvious, to me at least, that the destruction of Israel ? be it slow or fast ? would be perceived as further dissolution of the American Empire. So, as a matter of cold political calculation, avoiding war now would only delay the inevitable, leaving Israel at the mercy of States dedicated to its death (or at least its constant bleeding insecurity). In short, the destruction of Israel would launch the next war, it would not avert it. Let?s hit the Middle East first and take the whole thing. Let?s refine our method in Iraq and get a new logistics and training from it. Institutionalize conquest of Middle Eastern countries and build our military to do the job, INVADE, OCCUPY, CRUSH, Restructure and REBUILD. Remake the culture, educate the next generation, and then get the next country and repeat the process. From the Euphrates to the Nile. Let?s finish these people. They want to dance for 9/11? Fine, strike up the band and teach them what the ?Baghdad Hop? looks like. The only dance you do on crutches. "Every five to ten years or so over the next two decades or so , the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little Middle Eastern country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business. Iran and Syria look nice. Saudi can hold our coat and hope we don?t say ?Wahabi?. Saudi needs to change its underwear more often. And if the French don?t like it? well, something can be arranged for the French. Saddam Hussein deserved to be overthrown by the United States at the end of the Gulf War, and it does not seem to me that a statute of limitations ever did expired on that verdict. The Americans who didn?t back the war and served the cause of the enemies of the United States need some Ashcrofting at home. More of it vigorously applied. Let?s take names. Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds. He certainly tried to assassinate the former President Bush. He was dedicated ? explicitly ? to the destruction of Israel and to bringing America to its knees. Just read the riveting cover story of The Atlantic (not on the web yet) ? written by the author of Black Hawk Down ? and you will at least agree that any legitimate argument against crushing Saddam's regime does not include the assertion that Saddam is somehow undeserving of such a fate. He's an avowed admirer of Stalin ? Stalin! ? and considers torture and mass murder to be the workaday tools of statecraft. WE NEEDED TO CRUSH IRAQ. We NEED to rebuild Iraq so it NEVER presents a threat to the United States again. Anything short of this is not acceptable. If there is a problem with the Iraqi people in this matter then the Iraqi people WILL have a problem. We are there to make sure they eat their medicine and hop when we say frog. If they get KILLED that is their lack of commitment to getting with OUR program. No apologies, MOVE you towelheaded goons! But Saddam has very little to do with al Qaeda (as far as we know). The Islamic fundamentalists hate Saddam because he is a terrible Muslim (note: being a terrible Muslim, according to these fanatics, has little to do with murder and torture and EVERYTHING to do with drinking wine and letting women wear skirts). So why make like kissy- kissy on Saddam? He got what he had coming. Now let?s get the neighbors and do them. Iran looks cheesey, lets put them on a slice of ham. There would have been a certain logic to calling for a cease-fire once Allied forces liberated Czechoslovakia, Poland, and ? oh yeah ? France from the Germans. Why lose more American lives, one might reasonably argue, now that we've accomplished our mission to liberate Europe? But we got an attitude and decided to take Berlin and finish the matter. Can you say Damascus, Teheran, and Riyadh, boyz and girlz? It isn?t over until its over. Over means that?s it. Over means they don?t go Ya Allah unless they say ?Please? first. I want Mecca to do a Mother May I? and I don?t think I want to hear any protests on the matter. If you think there is room to move on this opinion I will get some more concrete for your shoes. Few people made this argument of well, let?s leave Berlin intact, back in 1945. The United States understood, in the words of Douglas MacArthur, that there is no substitute for victory. In the Persian Gulf War, the United States changed its mind. As chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell reportedly urged for the cessation of hostilities before the U.S. entered Baghdad. The rationale offered not only by Powell, but by our allies in Riyadh and elsewhere, was that we would fracture the almighty coalition President Bush had assembled. Keeping the coalition, some reasoned, was more important than getting the job done. This is like telling your prom date, we'd better stop fooling around because it might result in the wasting of a perfectly good condom. Whether you think our bellum interruptus was a good idea or not, justifying it for the sake of our coalition was a world-historic example of making the means more important than the ends. Saddam had a second chance. That was very STUPID. Now we have Teheran and Damascus and we can not AFFORD to be Stupid. Quick: Regale me with your favorite reminiscences of all the wonderful things the coalition did for the world. Pay hommage to the sagacity of this decision. Who can doubt that schoolchildren will talk of the Persian Gulf coalition as the great fulcrum of human progress for millennia to come? We blew TEN WHOLE YEARS on watching Saddam bugger the day care, and no-fly zones didn't accomplish a thing. PLUS the Arabs can't be satisfied with anything we do, so why give a fart what they think anyway. Let's just kick the living piss out of them and tell them we don't want to hear it. We are still technically at war with terrorists. Hamas and Hizbollah and the Padaran and the Islamic Jihad... not to mention that old Allah mainsqueeze, Osama 'nd the boyz.....SYRIA IS a Terrorist State. IRAN IS A TERRORIST STATE. We don?t need any justification to go to war with these governments. WE ARE AT WAR and it is against our interests to be in a state of perpetual war on any nation ? it makes us look both cruel and weak. We need to settle them. We need to make them either bend over and pull down their pants or let them hand us the soap while we bend over first. It has to be settled. The most compelling substantive reason, from my point of view, is that Iraq should be a democratic, republican country, with individual rights secured by a liberal constitution. (My preferred governmental model is something along the lines of the Swiss confederation, with Kurds, Shiites, and Arab-Sunnis each having considerable internal autonomy but a shared national government. The country is already split in three parts by the U.S.- and British -- A democratic Iraq with free-market institutions and the rule of law sounds pretty far-fetched, but it sounded pretty far-fetched for Japan and Germany too. The United States, with the help of its allies, pulled that off. We do not have to LOSE in Iraq if we have the WILL. If we don?t have the will then we deserve to die, because we will die. We are dying in Iraq not because we are strong but because we are being too kind and nice. We need to show them what war feels like. We need to be draconian and thorough. We need to flatten a few cribs and park in the kitchen. We need to burn granny in the wheelchair and roast pork weenies and drink beer in the mosques. And if they go Ya Allah shoot them. I have been a US MARINE... you try and argue with me. Indeed, the comparison with Japan is the most apt. Can anyone doubt that Japanese militarism would have been a long-term problem for the United States and the world if we had taken anything less than total victory as an option? And those who decry a war on Iraq as American imperialism should take note: The United States did not try to colonize or acquire Japan or Germany. The United States doesn't fight wars of conquest, at least not any longer. And if Al-Jazeera keeps giving us a problem, then who cares what happens to them? There can be only one winner. If you play at war you deserve to get killed. If they hide behind women and children shoot the whole lot. Shoot the journalists too if they aren?t smart enough to wear sun glasses and act cool. People respect force and they do as they are told and like it if there is a gun under their nose. I don?t care what you think. I know ? from painful experience ? that there are lots of people out there who subscribe to the bumper-sticker slogan "peace through strength is like virginity through f**king." I had to argue with such folks through all of college (and much of high school). Such statements are black holes of stupidity ? idiocy is crammed into such a small space that it folds upon itself and bends all reason and logic in its proximity. If peace cannot be attained through strength, I invite one of these bespectacled, purse-carrying, rice-paper-skinned, sandalistas to walk out into a prison yard. Let's see how receptive Tiny and Mad Dog are to entreaties over the futility of violence. "Sir, there's no need for fisticuffs, I would be glad to share my Snapple with you. Can't you see this sort of conflict is precisely what the multinational corporations want?" Hey screw your peace. Let me p*ss on your Peace. International relations is much more like a prison yard than like a college seminar at Brown. Yes, relations between democracies may be cordial ? but that is an argument for turning Iraq into one, not for leaving it alone. It's ironic: All of these people who think it imperative that the United States broker peace in the Middle East seem to think it's a COINCIDENCE that the United States is the dominant military power in the world. If military might means nothing, why aren't the Arabs and Israelis bending to the will and rhetoric of the Belgians or the Swiss? The next time you snag your tits in the grinder call on Denmark, puppy. It is impossible to read about the Middle East for any length of time and not conclude that that the Arab world respects power and the willingness to USE it more than anything else. When Secretary of State Powell went on his "successful peace" mission , he was referred to everywhere as "General Powell," not Secretary Powell, for the simple reason that being a general is considered a lot more impressive over there than being a diplomat. Arabs suck Big Moustache bigtime. They positively salivate for anything that looks phallic. Allah gets funny in the pants when you slap him around a little. There is nothing we want to see happen in the Middle East that can be accomplished through talking around long tables festooned with bottled water and fresh fruit at Swiss hotels, that cannot be accomplished faster and more permanently through WAR. But there is plenty that cannot be achieved by such gabfests that can only be achieved through war. America's power and influence in the Middle East reached its height after the Gulf War. The Palestinians and Israelis had no choice but to do what we asked. Our "Arab allies" had no choice but to support our efforts. The Europeans may have grumbled about how unfair it was that the United States was calling the shots, but considering the ongoing fire sale of European MORAL authority, we should get used to the background noise of European grumbling. Like the noise pollution that comes with a construction site, the United States will hear such whines for the duration no matter what we do. Europeans are Zeropeans, that?s their problem, not ours. Their choice. In Iran, students chant "U-S-A! U-S-A!" at anti-government protests. What would be so terrible if this sentiment were encouraged? The Saudi didn?t back us in invading Iraq, remember? Because the notion that authoritarian regimes can be changed terrifies these overfed and fanatical monarchs. The Saudis have been financing and exporting precisely the sort of extremist ideology which created Osama bin Laden and his cadres, including in Iraq. So if the Saudis were to tumble in the years to come, I would not weep. Would you? Remember Batista though. Fidel came after Batista.The only Muslim country we'd owe some explanations and deference to is Turkey, but that can be worked out. And now Turkey is learning the hard way what Islamists thinks of them. What they learn from the lesson remains to be seen. Maybe next time they will prove wiser. Would the Arab regimes declare war on the United States, and perhaps on Israel too? Maybe, but I think that's doubtful. You see, Israel alone has defeated the combined might of the Arab world more than once. If a tiny nation of a few million Jews can beat the silly snot out of the entire Arab ganghump, as it were, I somehow doubt Syria and Egypt would be much interested in the losing proposition of taking on the United States and perhaps Britain ? especially when we made it clear that we were looking at the entire Middle East along the lines of the Afghan and Iraqi model. Many Arab nations would have to decide which side of history they wanted to be on and since they tend to side with the winners, they wouldn't be joining Iraq. The Kill the Jews jerkos need to re-assess their position bigtime. History is going to go to who parks the tanks? and the last time I looked it looked like a Merkava. (I'm no general, but it seems to me the only real military fear would be a Chinese invasion of Taiwan while we were distracted elsewhere. But the Chinese, too, understand that the world works according to the rules of the prison yard, not of the seminar, and could be made to pay for playing). China can?t go back to being isolated. We control the future of China if we control nine tenths of the Oil China needs to continue to develop. China won?t go anywhere alone. Especially not as long as we control Central Asia with B-1?s and the Pacific with the Seventh Fleet and can reach you from Outer Space in about ten minutes. But let's be clear: The hope is to do good for the Iraqi people in particular and the Arab world in general. Nothing would serve U.S. interests more than a U.S.-backed Iraq growing in prosperity and contentment and thereby leading by example for the entire region. Is there any doubt that the vast majority of Arabs would prefer to live under Western levels of prosperity? That is, after all, why so many of them want to move to the United States and Europe. If you have concerns about immigration from the Arab world, you might consider that the best way to keep immigrants out is to make it so that they don't want to leave in the first place. The first and only way to make that possible is to WIN. The Arab world respects winners and so does everybody else. It's not less true for being a cliché; success breeds success. In the world of sports we talk of streaks and strings of victory. The phrases "we're on a roll" and "the big Mo" suggest that many of us believe there's an actual law of nature to this phenomenon. Things roll because of gravity, after all. MOMENTUM builds according to the laws of physics. Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion. Winning sports teams tend to win. Psychologists, coaches, and fans may have competing theories as to why this is true, but we all have an innate sense that it is SO. We cannot afford to let Iraq slide. We need to call the shots and deliver. And we need to make Al-Jazeera suck it. But just as international relations isn't a seminar, it's not a game either. You see, if the Giants destroy the Redskins 70-0 on Sunday, some other team will still play the Giants the following weekend. The coach of the Eagles won't look at the staggering Giants victory and say, "Hmmm. We better keep our forces in reserve." If the worst team in the country is scheduled to play the best team in the country, the worst team still has to play. It doesn't work that way in the state-of-nature of the prison yard. Fighting and winning today means not having to fight at all tomorrow ? and maybe, just maybe, changing the rules of the prison yard so that it's not a prison yard at all anymore. You can send an Arab to school and you can hand him a book you wrote and he didn?t get from an angel in the sand pile. He can get that somewhere else. Right now he better get an ?A? in civics and deportment? or he goes down the chute to play with the pigs. The United States either wins or it gets to eat crap. It's either a spoon or a rifle. Pick up what you plan to use.