"Iran's nuclear program can be thrown back by years in a ten day attack using thousands of Tomahawk cruise missiles," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel is quoted as saying on background in a recent interview.

No doubt true, however, the more significant question is: What happens next.? Does Olmert expect Iran to just slink off like a kicked dog, and hide under the porch waiting for its master to stop drinking and be more forgiving? GIVE US A BREAK YOU IDIOTS!!!!

Every national leader, who still believes military force is an option in our complicated world, including the leaders of the so-called axis of evil, needs to be taken out to the woodshed and instructed in the complete lack of evidence in modern history for such a view. MILITARY FORCE DOESN'T WORK. WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO GET IT!?!?!?!

Not to say we don't have to have a reasonably effective standing army. Nope, that is needed, for Teddy Roosevelt had it right when he said: "Walk softly, but carry a big stick". The United States already has a big stick (well, sort of, our dear leaders in their wisdom seem to have wreaked the National Guard and the Army and Marine Corp), but in terms of strategic potential nobody comes even a close second to us.

The advantage of having a big stick is not found in waving it around in a threatening manner at every vain warrior-like impulse, but you just hang it from your belt when you walk into the conference. Everyone knows we can whip all kinds of behind, so much so that it is pointless to point it out. Just think how weird it would be if a future administration were to leave the violence rhetoric (like Olmert above) outside, and just walk in the room and say: Lets find a solution to our mutual problems.

The real nature, of the fact of potential violence among Nation States in our time, is that the little guys know quite well that they don't want to wake the sleeping dog (let sleeping dogs lie). Oh, they love to posture and the more we posture the more we encourage them to posture. The less we posture (stop acting like the biggest bully in the school yard), the more we take away from them any significance for posturing, because if we aren't doing it, that means they are the only ones acting on the world's stage like at ten year old. See my last post on China, for example.

Of the 8 Democratic presidential candidates who recently debated, only Dennis Kucinich actually seems to almost get this, which means - of course - that he hasn't a chance in hades because the Military Industrial Complex loves their wars, the rest of us be damned. (literally, because if they can create hell on earth in Iraq, how far behind such foreseeable consequences do you think is the continental United States?).

I'm beginning to think we have to consider getting a bit more radical (by "we" I mean the ordinary people who are so much more at risk than are the generals and the rich).

"I believe -- and this goes to the question you asked earlier, just a few minutes ago -- global war on terror. I think there are dangerous people and dangerous leaders in the world that America must deal with and deal with strongly, but we have more tools available to us than bombs. And America needs to use the tools that are available to them so that these people who are sitting on the fence, who terrorists are trying to recruit, the next generation, get pushed to our side, not to the other side. We've had no long-term strategy, and we need one, and I will provide one."

John Edwards at the recent Democratic Candidates debate.

People need to understand simple English and logic here. In order for the phrase "a War on Terror" to have any meaning in the real world, there has to be an object "Terror" on which to make War. But this kind of War (similar to the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs) is not a War at all, but a kind of smoke and mirrors done by a politician in order to have a rhetorical phrase (a War on Terror) that is so empty of real meaning, that they can do anything they want and hide the real motives behind a completely false front.

That some people use the means of "terror" to seek to achieve political ends is nothing new in history. Alexander used it, it was the point of the Blitz applied by Hitler on London and the Shock and Awe Campaign at the beginning of the Second Gulf War was a very intense practice of the application of terror. History also shows that it seldom works (the raw application of terror). It mostly tends to create a stronger opposition, because as an application of force (causing terror) it only makes folks angry and is so indiscriminate in its victims (far too many civilians) that as a real strategy in war time it has too much of a down side. I could go on, but anyone who thinks this is a viable strategic doctrine or even useful in a tactical sense doesn't know anything about history, about war or about psychology (which pretty much sums up the thinking of the Bush administration).