"It's time for us to stop being terrorized" Paul Mulshine

"The media — and the leaders of both parties — are not doing us any favors by overusing the term "terrorist," said Pat Lang, an author and former Vietnam Green Beret who has years of experience doing intelligence work in the Mideast.

"It implies a kind of national hysteria over the idea that anyone who attacks us is a truly fearsome opponent," Lang said. "The whole al Qaeda thing has been hyped to just ridiculous levels.""  Mulshine

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Absolutely!  Think back to what a really big war was like.  pl

http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2012/10/its_time_for_us_to_stop_being.html

Comments

[John]

“Think back to what a really big war was like.”

Well, I think back often to my “big war.”

I know war. I know the terrors of war. Nevertheless mine was still far smaller in scope than the World Wars. Yet I knew war’s terror on a personal level, as does any experienced combatant.

While our troops may have seen and know war, most of our people have not experienced the countless terrors of war, thankfully. I sometimes think of Europe’s civilians on farms and towns on both the Eastern and Western fronts during the ‘Great Wars’. That was terror of the highest degree, with many non-combatants - including the old, the sick, women and children - suffering incredible atrocities and death. But it was still war, was it not?

The majority of Americans will never know how fortunate we are to have only endured the extremely rare and isolated acts of war on our soil in our lifetime. Nevertheless there are still some (too many of whom have never seen combat) who want to exaggerate our threats, and want to point out how unfortunate we are to the threats of terror to serve their own selfish, political purposes.

[confusedponderer]

Put into that perspective, indeed, America is indeed fortunate that her cities have never been bombed to rubble and walked over by invading and retreating armies. May it remain that way.

My mother still owns a silver spoon that she found when playing in the rubble of their neighbours house. When she asked my grandma whether she can keep it, grandma told her that she can keep it because the neighbours no longer need it.

When I drove to uni on the train every morning, I always passed a number buildings with the characteristic 'pock scared' facades. The lack of aesthetics in the city I live in is testimony to the utter destructiveness of the numerous allied 'thousand bomber raids' that she was subjected to.

When I look at my mother's reactions towards fire even now at her advanced age - she's a 1940 vintage cellar child - I am tempted to think that the trauma created by 9/11 is by an large a hysterical one for those who have not lost friends and relatives there. For the vast majority of the ~300 million Americans it was a TV delivered virtual experience after which they continued their life as usual. No offence.

[Mj]

I have always remembered and interview with Eugene "Sledgehammer" Sledge by Studs Terkel. In a very non-judgmental way he explained that people that were 100 yards behind the front lines in the Pacific really did not know what true combat was really like. That is a pretty high bar but, having been one of the probably 75% of people who served in country that was not "in combat", I'm thinking he was correct. Sure, we "saw" the effect of war in a much more close up way than most of our fellow citizens but not nearly as much as those who truly bore the brunt of battle.

[Clifford Kiracofe]

...."The war was the single greatest calamity to occur in seventeenth-century Puritan New England. In the space of little more than a year, twelve of the region's towns were destroyed and many more damaged, the colony's economy was all but ruined, and much of its population was killed, including one-tenth of all men available for military service.[5][6] Proportionately, it was one of the bloodiest and costliest wars in the history of North America.[7] More than half of New England's towns were attacked by Native American warriors.[8]...."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Philip's_War

[turcopolier]

CK

One of my forebears wa a militia officer in KPW. He was a Marsh I think. I will look it up. pl

[turcopolier]

mj

Don't beat yourself up too badly. From Sledge's perspective that may have been true, but only from his perspective. pl

[turcopolier]

cp

"her cities have never been bombed to rubble and walked over by invading and retreating armies." That's true of Yankee cities. Look at the photos of Atlanta and Richmond at the end of the WBS. Think of the total destruction of the Shenandoah Valley by Sheridan. I could go on. And, there was no Marshall Plan for the South just the occupation and administrative rule. pl

[Babak Makkinejad]

Actually worse than that - she was not left alone; she had to be crushed after defeat - ergo "Reconstrution".

[Cliffiord Kiracofe]

Very interesting.

Drakes, Border Wars provides excellent context:
online at:
http://books.google.com/books?id=L_AXAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=drake+border+wars&hl=en&sa=X&ei=CXuOUK7bKqbo0gHHt4DgBA&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA

Many current textbooks on US foreign policy start around 1775. When I teach this topic, I start in the 15th century in my introduction for the first week. We take note of Spain, Portugal, and Henry VII of England. Move on to the Elizabethan period and then into Jamestown which was a military post in the beginning. We consider the threat from Spain, France, and unfriendly Indian tribes. We note Miles Standish and his experience in the Low Countries. We then consider our 17th century the border wars, particularly KPW. We note the manipulation of hostile Indian tribes against us/terrorism by the French and also later by the British. And so on. By the end of the first week students grasp the concept that we have never been "isolated" from the dynamics of international relations to include terrorism.

Yes, we are in a whining, hand wringing mode of hysteria about "terrorism" promoted by the media and by politicians. IMO, we need to deal with the threat in a determined manner from the shadows and silently.

[confusedponderer]

Mr. Lang,
I was thinking of this century only. And indeed, we in the west were lucky to have had the Marshal plan.

The second after I pressed *send* I thought of the American civil war. Alas, too late, and indeed, your are, as so often, correct.

I think it is something that a non-Southerner doesn't see as easily, and a non-American even less. Excuse my German-centrism.

[turcopolier]

CP
My childhood memory of Bremen, Hamburg, Frankfurt et al are very much like the pictures of the South in 1865. Generations of children suffered from dietary deficiencies resulting in pellagra, ricketts, stunted growth, etc.
and a culture of povery grew up in which Southerners still have the ingrained habit of giving each other food cooked at home. pl

[Al Spafford]

TV TERROR! I read several yrs back that the average US citizen has watched replays of the 9/11 attacks up to 100 times, with replays still playing from time to time. So, the TV TERROR continues on and on.

[Fred]

CP, don't forget 1864 - Sherman's march to the sea. Not to mention the siege of Petersburg or the battle of Fredericksburg. Then there's always King Phillip's War and Blackhawk's rebellion (amongst others) - but that's ancient history in America.

You're certainly right about TV though.

[mongo]

Hello, Sir:

The phrase "war on terror" is allegorical, so the direct comparison to a real war (Iraq, Afghanistan) is difficult for me. I see it more as policy -- a license, if you will, to take extraordinary measures to meet a threat that defied our preconceptions. In terms of breadth and scope, I think it can be fairly compared to the breadth and scope of a big war in terms of the domestic and international changes that have come as a result.

As an aside, I hope that you and any others near Sandy are safe and sound.

Regards,

mongo

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151202408468236&set=a.106798673235.92882.100490833235&type=1&theater

[The Twisted Genius]

Clifford Kiracofe,

Thanks for the link to that book. This is excellent reading while Sandy rains down upon us. Growing up in Connecticut and going to a grammar school called the Algonquin School, I was much more aware of this history than those outside of New England. I still remember our first reading in American literature in that school... a Cotton Mather sermon.

[turcopolier]

TTG

Apropos of nothing, I was once in the Algonquin Club on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. I looked up at the wall and saw Senator Charles Sumner's portait. Aaargh! pl

[Clifford Kiracofe]

TTG,

Glad it is of interest, I have a book around here somewhere on our alliance with the Iroquois and will locate it for you. Glad your school maintained tradition.

Although I am in Virginia these days, I graduated from Deerfield Academy in the Massachusetts town where the famous massacre took place so I also have a similar interest. I spent an additional three years in Boston later so the years of my life spent in New England were seven.

[Jackie]

Al,
I watched it maybe three times and figured it would only disturb me if I say that again. I have gone out of my way to avoid 9/11 photos, etc since. I didn't want it to be used against other people or countries. Maybe I'm weird that way, but it was used against Iraq.

[The Twisted Genius]

PL,

I can certainly understand your disgust at seeing the portrait of Sumner. I can't hold his being an abolitionist against him and he did do some good works. However, he was an arrogant ass in his dealings with Southerners and nothing more than a mean spirited vindictive bastard after the War. He deserved the caning only because I doubt he would have been man enough to accept a challenge to meet at dawn in the Alexandria coal yard.

[Ursa Maior]

According to Huntington, the US, like any/all nation needs an enemy, an image of an enemy.

Also by Huntington first there were the catholics, then the germans, after that the soviets, now they are the muslims.

[Bill H]

The most recent episode of "Blue Bloods" revolved around a member of NYPD who had been in Malaysia on an "antiterrorism" mission and was subsequently kidnapped in New York by the Malaysian drug gang to gain the realese of the drug runner who was the brother of the Malaysian terrorist who ran a drug, prostitution, extortion and kidnapping ring in Malaysia. He also spoke English with no trace of accent. They threw a bit of the "terrorist" thing in there and "we do not negotiate with terrorists" but the only acts which either of the borthers were ever said to have committed were civil crimes of drugs, etc.

Clearly, the only reason the "terrorist" thing was in there was for the "we don't negotiate" bit and because all of the crime/action dramas on television today revolve around terrorist plots. That is the theme of the day.