[Bill Murray]

Evening Sunray:

Firstly, I definitely do not wish to hijack Hanno's thread. The story of what happened to the Jewish people in Holland and even the action of some of the Dutch population is an important story and I hope it is pursued as an event in history that we should all be aware of and learn something from.

However, you too bring up some important points that may need to be remembered as well. We humans have been slaughtering each other since time began it would seem and we continue to do so to this very day. That really saddens me that all of these centuries of development of social systems and political systems such as one or another form of democracy has not eradicated that kind of activity.

As you point out as well, were it not for this fact there would be no field of military history for us to explore and no reason for the MLU Forum to exist. Ponder that for a moment.

Perhaps your best point, and I will twist it a bit, is that as societies in the so called Western World move more to what might be defined as a "civilized" approach to solving problems and living together that puts us at ever more risk with respect to defending ourselves against those societies that have for whatever reason chosen to remain mired in the middle ages.

To be sure, we Western civilizations have our anomolies, Hitler being the worst example. I suppose the Balkans may not qualify yet as being in the civilized Western camp but if so, they and their recent "ethnic cleansings" would be an anomoly as well.

Your sub point about the lack of strong leadership in our relatively newly "civilized" Western countries is a bit of a two edged sword, isn't it. My current President is exhibiting rather stark and clear leadership against what he percieves are my countrie's enemies and the rest of the world doesn't know what to make of that kind of leadership. Personally, I am not quite sure I know what he is up to either but Bush sure as Hell has no misgivings about what he is doing. He sees a problem and he is going to fix it no matter what the rest of the world thinks and to an extent, what a lot of his own constituents think about it.

What is it then that we really want? A strong leader/leaders?
Of course, but God forbid they should actually do something pro-active would seem to be the international concensus.
Without going too far off the deep end, I would have rather Bush picked from my own personal list of countries that need a good hiding than the one he did. I also fault him completely and totally for listening to his Cabinet and their Number Twos and Number Threes who whispered in his ear that we can do Iraq on the cheap and with little planning for what happened after the "War" but that is another story.

So, my friend, we are sort of hoisted on our own petard, aren't we. We don't want any more Hitlers, but they are out there, we want strong leadership but don't want any combat if we can avoid it and as all this goes on we have one or another type of war going on all over the bloody planet.

Hell of a quandry, isn't it.

Maybe we need to start a new thread. "When Armageddon".
Bill