Foxy & stevenImeyer
My forebears were Latvian peasants. Goodness knows what they suffered prior to the war under Russian occupation. My Mother’s husband and family were "disappeared" by Nazis.

Pregnant Mother and with two young children were marched to a forced labour camp in Germany. The third child died within the 1st year.
She was in labour camp just outside of Dresden when the city was levelled by allied bombers. After the war they were moved to a 3yr in DP camp in Germany where her youngest, my sister was operated on for rickets (poor nutrition). They were shipped from Naples to Australia.

While in the Australian migrant camp she became pregnant and had me. As a baby I was adapted out to An Ausie couple. 11months later she died of septicaemia. The children were split up.
I found my remaining family a niece recently, 3 years too late to meet my sister; she had died of after a 21 year battle with breast cancer.
My brother hasn't been heard of in 16 years.

Adopted Dad had put up his age to go to war and turned 17 on the infamous Burma Railway. It is fair to say he came home a psychologically damaged and alcohol problems. He married a childhood sweetheart. She became gravely ill unable to have children she was still ill when I was adopted.
After being medically discharged from the army we eventually went to PNG. Where Adopted Dad later became an Assistant Superintendent setting up and running a couple of prison farms. During this time I experienced several indigenous cultures, Daily Contact with prisoners, deplorable “Colonial” and Christian excesses.

We moved back to Aust when I was 15. Within 2 years dad had died from the consequence of being a POW.

I lost TWO families because of ‘dictatorial’ regimes and consequently suffered.

Steven, Sweeping generalizations based on past events ALWAYS fail close examination. ALL Organized religions are dictatorial by definition or they would disappear. My point is “No matter how well you nurse a grudge it never gets better”. One evil never justifies others.

WOW examinator,

That's quite a story.

I do not consider myself to be nursing a grudge.

I am merely stating the BLEEDING OBVIOUS. Totalitarian ideologies should NEVER be appeased. The ideologues, and their apologists, are equally contemptible.

Kipling put it best:

IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:
"We invaded you last night - we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:

"We never pay any one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"

Examinator,

Yes I understand this does not apply literally to Islam. I ask you to use a bit of imagination and see the parallels.

Dear Steven,

As I've written in previous posts, when bombs
are referred to as "little boys,"
missiles are "Peacemakers" and human beings
are "soft targets" in our media, new ways
of thinking are desperately needed.

Christopher Marlowe said it well:

"...Accursed be he that first invented war,
They knew not, ah, they knew not
simple men,
How those were hit by pelting cannon shot,
Stand staggering like a quivering aspen leaf."
Tamburlaine the Great. Act 2, Sc.IV.

In a nuclear war however, there will be nobody
standing, and there will be no leaves remaining
to quiver.

John Dryden said it equally well when in,
"Alexander's Feast," he wrote:

"War, he sung, is toil and trouble;
Honour but an empty bubble.
Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying,
If all the world be worth the winning,
Think, oh think, it worth enjoying."

Foxy,

I am not advocating war.

ON THE CONTRARY.

One of the surest paths to conflict is appeasing totalitarians.

Many historians believe that, had Britain and France stood up to the Nazis in 1938, World War 2 could have been averted. Perhaps. Perhaps not.

But the reality is this. Conflicts often start when the aggressor side judges it can profit from war; or from escalating demands for accommodation and political power as in the case of Islam.

The best way of averting conflict is to spell out clear defendable boundaries. Here I include political boundaries as well as territorial boundaries.

The Roman military strategist, Vegetius, put it this way.

"If you want peace prepare for war."

It was true 2100 years ago and it is true today.

It is also a lesson many people with good intentions find hard to swallow. Well, I won’t bore you with the usual aphorism about good intentions

Steven, as history shows, is undoubtedly wrong - you can always avoid war by appeasing tyrants. All you have to do is capitulate to all their demands.

Fortunately, even the most infamous appeaser, Chamberlain, ultimately realised the folly of that path and regretted his earlier appeasement. Fundamentally, Chamberlain's appeasement thinking, as with that of modern day pacifist/appeasers, stems from an inability to conceive that some people actually want war if they think they can profit from it. The Nazis proved him wrong but the price of that proof was probably WWII.

Militant Islam may yet prove the pacifists wrong again.

The Chinese, whose dabble with market economics has not yet produced a free society, might yet be an even more costly proof that appeasement and concessions are no way to deal with tyranny.

As perverse as it may sound, nuclear weapons have done an incalculable amount to 'contain' tyrants because the possibility of profitable war becomes so remote. Whilst wars continue to rage throughout the third world, those nations under the protective umbrella of nuclear weapons have remained almost free of the direct effects of war since the time they came under that protection.

This is no accident.

The use of nuclear weapons may be evil, but can anyone seriously question the good that has come of nuclear deterrence?

I often wondered about that Vegetius quote.

What does someone who desires war prepare for?

Yep, he was military man wasn't he?