26 January 2005
Punitive Expeditions and Policy
Churning this all up with the earlier today posted "Nuke the Moon" option is a heady brew to contemplate. As I continue to do so, there is one quote from Pournelle I would like to pass along directly:
"The American people are warlike, particularly the Scots-Irish and German populations; but we are also Christian and ashamed of being war-like; so if we go to war, it must be for a Good Cause against an Evil which Provoked Us into War, and thus the Evil must be destroyed By Any Means Necessary. Which is why we could bomb Tokyo and kill over 100,000 with one fire raid, and then send another, but decry the rape of Nanking and the bombing of Rotterdam.
A note to the above. Kipling could write stirring war poetry about the good that the Empire did....America's war poetry is different: we have the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Enemies of the United States would do well to remember that. We play at war, we have debates on the justice of this or that war: until we are provoked and aroused, and the Battle Hymn is sung. Bush heard that hymn in the National Cathedral after 911. So did much of the nation. It was a defining moment."
