Firefighters

War as it used to be known in the bad old days is gone for the foreseeable future. It’s really just conflicts, whether they are prolonged or short, isolated or rather large. Countries are no longer vying to take over the world. India and Pakistan may be fighting and the Israelis and Palestinians may be fighting, but those are regional conflicts basically. Nobody is concerned that the president of Pakistan wants to take over the world. Only villains in James Bond movies try that anymore, and it still isn’t working.

Even with all the trouble in the world today, no one is really worried that Islamo-fascism could grip the world, are they? It’s not really a convincing ideology (totalitarianism rarely is) and even more so is far too specific to really attract converts. The American way of life is very convincing, especially in comparison. Poor people can be fat and own TV’s, everybody can vote and everybody gets protected by the government regardless of gender, religion, or race, and most importantly everything is gray. We are a land of averages, compromises, sameness from differences, overwhelming blandness, and a serious case of don’t-take-it-too-seriously-dude.

The terrorists that are proponents of Islamo-fascism can only hope to blow up enough stuff that we’ll leave them alone. Probably not very likely. They might do something really stupid like try to nuke us, which would result in the end of a large region of the earth (and the US finally arming its borders like we should have a long time ago). We’d invite Israel over for tea, and then drop the big one on the whole Middle East. We tried our best, but getting nuked is way too much; our hospitality only goes so far, and then we go nuts. Ask Japan.

What’s pissing them off so much? What’s the penicillin to their vile global infection? What is preventing them getting what they want? No, it’s not the UN (Underlings of Neville) but plain and simple democracy. Democracy, when done properly, tends to weed out the crazies and it keeps them from forcing their will on others. It also tends to prevent the old style war that we’ve almost forgotten, because real democracies don’t fight other real democracies. Just think of all the paperwork it would take to get that sort of thing off the ground.

ETL