If you can read this essay and still not support the full mobilization of the US military against all nations that have sponsored terrorism against the US, [b]irrespective of civilian loss of life[/b], your cognitive ability is questionable.

[url]http://www.aynrand.org/medialink/endterrorism.shtml[/url]

It is NEVER time for total war. War is the health of the state. We are in deep trouble if we go to total war. Total war started with Lincoln in the War of Northern Aggression.
This is going to be a never ending war against terrorism, just like it is a never ending war against drugs, or poverty, or guns.
Total war will only make things worse. The reason we are at this point is because of our interventionist foreign policy. If we heeded George Washingtons words, 9/11 would not have happened.

I think you cognitive ability is questionable, or at least or knowledge of history is lacking.
I refer you to :
[url]http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=811&FS=Alternative+to+Unending+War+[/url]

I agree that these enemies of America should be dealt a terrifying blow. Our reaction should have been a surprise nuclear attack on the capitol cities of any arab country supporting terrorism. Iran, iraq, libia, sudan, syria and afghanistan should have been made an example of with the push of a button! What are we waiting for, them to aquire weapons of mass destruction to use on us first?

As far as our interventionism being the cause of terrorism, I say BS! This is good against evil, us or them.

Yes...[IMG]http://www.theunholytrinity.org/cracks_smileys/contrib/aahmed/sad.gif[/IMG]

KILLTHEM ALL AND LET GOD SORT THEM OUT!!!!
I mean that.

We should have have launched intercontinental ballistic missiles against all of the Islamic capitols 15 minutes after the New York attack.  Weapons of mass destruction have been used against us.  Baghdad, Terhan, Kabul, Damascus and Beirut should no longer exist.  
If we do not now do this........we will one day soon lose a major city to a deadly disease or a suit case nuclear weapon.  If my innocent children die, then the leaders of this nation will be responsible.

At this point the president should inform Muslim leaders that if another strike against us occurs, we will nuke all their major cities...and if more occurs after that that we will completely irradiate their countries leaving them uninhabitable for 25,000 years.

There is no compromise here.  These people are dedicated to killing us all...it is now just a question of who kills who first.
Self defense and survival are a human right.
Kill the b_stards....the sooner the better!!

Gentlemen, I am not trying to come off as a leftist peacenick; but; we must refrain from using nuclear weapons as a means to quickly end our current conflict. As Bush 42 has said time and time again this is a matter that will take time and resolve to get through. Our cause is just and our course must remain true.
I'm really not attempting to bait anyone but is it possible that the past 8 years of Clinton lobbing cruise missles at every tinpot despot that reared his head above ground has jaded your thinking?
I for one pray that this is not the case.
stay the course!!!

I couldn't agree with an article more. Destruction, occupation & rebuilding worked well for Pappy in Europe and Asia, it will work in the Mideast as well.

While I am a staunch political isolationist, and hence agree with SOME of the article you posted, that will not stop the war that has been declared on us.

Had you read the article I posted, as the message suggested you do before posting your follow up, you would see that using all of our military capabilites against our enemies could bring this war to a close relatively quickly.

To summarize the article, we have been attacked because we do not fight back. Our policy of appeasement has only encouraged attacks. Both our Civil War and WWII in which total war was used demonstrated that it is effective in bringing conflicts to an end. The South has not risen again and neither Japan, Italy, or Germany have since bothered us.

Vietnam, Korea and the Gulf War have shown the flawed mentality of limited war. Korea is still at war, we were forced to concede the South to the Vietnamese Communists and Iraq has continued to terrorize not only the US but the entire world.

Even prior to the supposed creation of the Total War concept during our Civil War Genghis Khan demonstrated that displays of limitless strenght cow the enemy into submission, i.e. kill every living thing in one town and offer the other town peace if they submit.

We NEED to wipe Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya off the map immediately in order to let others know that while our interventionist policies may be morally wrong, killing our citizens does not solve the problem.

Please read the link I posted, Mr. Peikoff's ability to succinctly sum up the need for total annihilation of our enemies is astounding.

Why should we not the most effective weapon in our arsenal? A weapon that can inflict horrendous and immediate damage to our enemy without a single casualty to our side?

Why do we continue to allow what is in the best interest of our enemies to guide our warfighting principles?

My knee-jerk reaction is nuke all those immediately and secondarily responsible.  After much thought and historical reflection my reaction is to..... nuke all those responsible in any way and restore our place at the top of the totem pole.  Anything less reveals the feminisation of our foreign policy and national thought as a whole.

During the week following the attacks my thought on our response was, "If we bother to respond at all it must be spoken of in hushed voice a thousand years from now."  I still believe this.  If not, I would rather we refrain from any response.  Planerench out.

NoFFL, I fully suport your view.  The article is clear and IMHO very accurate.  We need to kill these vermin,- in large numbers before they will comprehend.  (And before they do it to us!!)

I fear that it will take the next attack, or the one to follow before America will understand.  Some 6000 are dead already.  MANY thousands more of us will die in coming attacks until we make the price of attacking us too high for vermin to even consider it.

Liberty 76, I resent your choice of alias because I consider you no friend of liberty nor a loyal American.  IMHO you are a traitor.  Stay away from me!

Well if we are going to talk about " questionable cognitive ability" lets look at the way you seem to feel the war on drugs is in some way the same as the war on cowards.

And history HA! people that know history could tell you that the only way to win a total war is to fight a TOTAL WAR! and a total war is just what the evil muzzies has set out on.

Sorry I've been away from the board for a while.
To answer your question, the reason that we need not use this weapon is because( mind you I regret that this is the reason) this tenuious coalition(?) of countries we are aligned with  would unravel.Also it's not bad enough that an amazing amount of them consider us the great Satan but to act in such a rash manner would validate that and perhaps galvanize more to their cause.
The American arsenal has so many wonderful toys that to let the nuclear genie out of the bottle at this time seems rather hasty. However I do not think that our enemies dictate our responce.

JonD...to hell with "The Coalition" of nations we are allied with.They need us a hell of a lot more than we need them.
KILL THEM ALL.Dead people are not trouble makers.They are just dead,and when they are our enemies this is a good thing.If any remaining enemies somewhere else feel like we are the "Great Satan" and cause trouble,well then let's show them just what a "Great Satan" is all about and make them ALL DEAD TOO.Now they are no longer any trouble as well.Any one that is still so stupid as to not see a pattern developing here deserves to die.The lesson being F*ck with the U.S. and you can absolutely expect TOTAL death and destruction,no mercy,no exceptions.End of story.

I'm not argueing the dead aspect of it, just the modis operandi. dead is dead,hell I don't care if you want to kill them 7 generations deep, the use of high yield nuclear arms is saved for the gravest extreme. Don't try to say that this is that scenerio is the gravest extreme because it's not. Escalation in use of chem/bio(by these skanks) this is a possibility now that would warrent a retaliation of low yield or battlefield munitions.

Lets face it, we will never be able to destroy all of the terrorists.  Eventually they will get a nuke or smallpox and millions of Americans will die.  The only way to stop this is too make them so fearful of us that their they will police themselves.

This little campaign we are engaged in right now is hardly going to make all of the Arabs quake in their boots.  It is more of the same type of pathetic reaction we have shown to their provocations for the past 50 years.

I think a nuclear attack on a some capital cities is a good idea.  Another idea would be to eliminate every man, woman, child and goat in Afghanistan with NBC weapons.  This would send a strong message.

We have lots of NBC weapons laying around right now, slated for destruction.  Why not put them to good use?

The Muslim terrorists will be coming after our homeland with the NBC weapons, probably sooner rather than later.  We must make it clear to them that we have the will to survive, and we will take any steps necessary, including the elimination of every Muslim on this earth, to protect ourselves.

The squemish little show we are throwing now is hardly sending that message.

"It is NEVER time for total war"  ........Tell that to a WW2 veteran. I think YOUR knowledge of history is lacking.

I disagree with Peikoff's insistence that terrorists must have state sponsors:

Did the Unabomber, Eric Rudolph or Tim McVeigh have a state sponsor?  Does Aum Shinrikyo have a state sponsor?  Do the eco-terrorists have a state sponsor?  Do the Sikh terrorists have a state sponsor?  

Terrorism is a tactic, not an organization.

They have attacked us many times in the past and we did little in return.They have watched us turn into a country of feminist and political correctness,gays in the military,women in combat,hate crimes,gun control mommies,for the children bleeding heart liberals,save the trees,save the endangered this,that and the other,let`s not dare offend anyone,don`t dare speak your mind or you will be demonized, led by the nose softies.So they upped the ante on 9/11 and probably thought our response would be about what we are doing,the usual bombing and blustering and unfortunately they are right.Until political correctness has a dagger run thru it`s liberal ass,and the hawks and real americans regain the power in this country,the closest thing to a nuke your going to see anytime soon is some old bikini atoll film footage...

I guess that is were we disagree


I doubt that. As in the article I posted, using all of our forces against our enemies will only provoke them further, because we will kill innocent civilians.


Total war is a very evil scourge upon our planet. Many innocent deaths result. The speed in which wars are fought is not worth the price of human life. Only tyrants fight total wars. We beat the British in 1781 and 1812, and they have yet to come back. We did not fight a total war, and that conflict is long over.


Is it not odd that all of the wars you have cited for the rational for fighting total war are the same wars that were started because of interventionists? It makes sense to me. Those who would intervene in the affairs of other are required to use total war to bring the nation to heel. We would not need total war to stop these wars if we did not intervene in the first place


Wiping our enemies out will not solve the problem. That is because they are not all in Iran, Iraq, etc. The are spread out in many countries. We wipe them out, and that only strengthens their resolve. And it will only bring in other Muslim Countries, and it will end up in a world war. Total war is indeed terrible


He is wrong on many points, which I posted above.

Another article on total war is here:
[url]http://www.lewrockwell.com/stromberg/stromberg22.html[/url]

Why do some people always say this to me? Have you read Washington's Farewell address? Have you read Jefferson's remarks on this? Maybe you should. If you think I am no friend of liberty, then you are grossly mistaking. What evidence do you have that I am not? because I will not indescrinately kill civilians? Because I refuse to meddle in the affairs of others? Because I follow TO A T the beliefs of the Founding Fathers? Please, i want to know.
Am I a loyal American? Only to the Constitution of the Federal Gov't and My State. But not to their respective governments. BIG DIFFERENCE

Please explain. Total war is the death of innocent civilians to bring a nation to its knees. I oppose that. For a history of Total war in the US, see [url]http://www.lewrockwell.com/stromberg/stromberg22.html[/url]

libertyof76:

I agree that interventionist policies have brought us here. No disagreement. Where we disagree is how to extricate ourselves.

I contend that we are at war with organizations that are harbored by nations. We cannot wipe out terrorists or the organizations since for every one we kill 10 more can take their place.

But we CAN wipe out nations that support them. We can make it impossible to support terrorists because our response is so massive and crushing and detrimental to their existence that the very thought of condoning terrorists is impossible.

Japan surrendered after the massive damage wrought by nukes, though they had millions of citizens ready to fight to the death against a CONVENTIONAL invasion.

I understand that war is disgusting and vile and a blight on humanity, but it is better to wage war and kill 1 million in one day that fight for 30 years to reduce our enemies suffering and drag out our own.

Would you have rather saved those 250,000 Japanese incinerated by nukes so we could land and kill off millions of our boys and Japanese in a more humane and palatable conventional invasion?

A total war, including a nuclear response with many non-combatant casulaties, will prevent me, my children and my children's children from having to fight this "War on Terrorism".

And it my book it all boils down to what is best for the USA.

I am thinking that nation building will not work in Afghanistan, why?? Because Nation building only works with civilized people. People that want a government of some sort.  The Afghans have shown themselves to be a nation of Nomads, Tribes. When they have noone else to fight they fight each other. There is not a man around to unite everyone. Nor anyform of government.  

The guy that wrote this is lost when it comes to the definition of total war. Any one who contends that Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War were total wars is not using the term as used by warfighters. I suppose this is how we ended up with the AR-15 being called an "assault rifle", academics misusing terms that have proper meanings.

Just because you bomb a power plant does not entail total war. Total war is the use of military strength against any possible target that may effect cessation of enemy resistance, including purely non-combatant targets i.e. firebombing Dresden, bombing dikes in North Vietnam, burning down plantations in GA, poisoning reservoirs and nuking the capital of terrorist supporting nations.

In short there is no such thing as a non-combatant, if you aren't actively supporting us, you are against us and thus a legitimate target.

Nukes will not solve the problem. Take Kabul, a once fairly civilized city on the Khyber Pass trade (and invasion) route. They had trade, an "okay" standard of living for that region, educated professionals, educated women, western cloths, TV, etc. They didn't have the level of freedom enjoyed by the west, but they were not fundamentalist either. Then the Taliban came in, established their fundamentalist dogma, and took what rights the people enjoyed. We should support the people of Kabul, not nuke them. Our goal should be the eradication of the Taliban, not the destruction of Afghanistan.

Some have said the country should be subdivided and parts given to Iran, Pakistan, etc. This may work, although the Afghanis may not be happy since they consider themselves citizens of the Afghanistan nation.

In my mind, we should destroy the Taliban and install a half-way descent government. I don't know if it's possible, especially if the NA gets too powerful as they have their own agenda. But if we could do it, it would send a hell of a message to fundamentalists worldwide.

In the end, the moderates would understand our actions and may even thank us. The fundamentalists, the mullahs, the clerics, etc., will never accept what we do, so we should not even bother trying to win their vote. Their agenda is the destruction of secularism -- the rise of Islamic states. This is not acceptable in the modern world.

In my opinion we should use whatever means to exterminate these crazy bastards. They would not hesitate to use weapons of mass destruction against us. They have openly declared a holy war against all of us, and have acted. They will not follow the guidelines as set by the Geneva Convention, and will continue to kill non-combatants. I'm thinking if I lived in Afganistan I would have gotten myself and my family out of there by now. Or be willing to accept what comes. I say nuke the place and make an example of what will surely happen to any country that supports these terrorist groups. Total destruction, there are no innocents.

With all due respect, the United States would not be here, if France hadn't intervene during the Revoutionary War, Gen. Wash. was having some real problems during the early parts of the war.

Ask this question again after we suffer another "attack" on American soil.

Yes, it is time to seperate our friends from our enemies. They either participate in the destruction of our enemies or face destruction as an enemy.

There are NO innocent civilians in this. Anyone who is Moslem and in one of those countries which support terrorism is our enemy. This is a clash of ideologies. Because you can't kill ideals, you must kill the people who hold those ideals. Anyone who is innocent should renounce Islam.

I'm sure that bin Laden and company used the same reasoning to rationalize their attack on the WTC. [rolleyes]


Is that how we won the Cold War?  By killing every person in every communist country?

How about a few examples of why we sometimes MUST wage total war? Nanking, Bataan, the Warsaw Ghetto, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Treblinka, Dachau.....to name only a VERY few. Ever been to a concentration camp? I didn't think so. I've been to Dachau, and still you can smell the place long before you see it. Think the German civilian population didn't know exactly what was going on? Keep dreaming. If the civilian population stands by and allows such atrocities as the concentration camps to operate, they are as guilty as if they themselves shoved people into the "shower rooms", and deserve to be blasted into oblivion. Tell you what.....get your nose out of history books, and go put your feet on the ground at Dachau, or Auschwitz-Birkenau, and then come back and tell me that Germany didn't deserve even worse than they got.

Zardoz, I have not been there either.  I did have the opportunity to speak at length with a survivor of the camps.  Henry Free (Polish) is gone now but I remember, and always will.  He certainly convinced me!!

A German friend of mine was a young teenager during the war.  According to him it was known what was going on.  He also tells many interesting stories about the war and how he survived.