[fabsroman]

My simple point is that there really is no right or wrong during war. War is ugly, and it sucks that it is sometimes necessary, but that is life.

Washington lead troops across the Delaware on Christmas day and attacked the British the very next morning. I guess that is fine, since it wasn't actually Christmas day. The American militia was seriously struggling at that point though.

What you need to look at is the position that a military is put in. In World War II, Japan was facing a serious shortage of food, metal, and gas. They were waging war in China, Laos, and Vietnam to secure food. Their negotiations with us were for the delivery of military grade metal and military grade gasoline and those negotiations began honestly. Now, if you were about to attack a country like the US, would you honestly break off all negotiations and announce that you are going to bomb Pearl Harbor. I think not. If you say yes, you would be a pretty arrogant person to do so.

The US was arrogant when Pearl Harbor happened. We never thought the Japanese could get torpedos in the harbor because it was too shallow. We never thought that airplanes could do much harm to a battleship fleet. We learned our lesson the hard way. We also made a couple of mistakes that day that could have prevented Pearl Harbor, but the people that made those mistakes just could not fathom that the Japanese would be attacking. The radar operator mistook the blips on the radar for American warplanes, but if he had made a call he would have know that the Army planes were nowhere near. There were one or two more mistakes that day, but I cannot remeber them off the top of my head.

Same with 9/11. We never thought they could actually take down the World Trade Center. We never thought that they could hijack our planes. We just didn't view the terrorists as much of a threat.

As far as I am concerned, the muslim hatred of the US is due to the US backing of Israel which has been taking place for 50+ years. I don't think we would take it too kindly if Mexico were backed by Russia and Mexico was taking land away from us. Granted, that would never happen, so it is rather tough for Americans to understand the muslim plight. They have almost no means to fight Israel, especially since Israel has nukes and the muslims do not. Let me ask this, why did we okay nukes for Israel but not for the muslims? Why is it okay for Israel to have them but not Iran?

I do disagree with the muslim terrorists tactics of targeting civilians, but if on 9/11 they took out the White House, Capital, Supreme Court, and Pentagon, I probably would have considered the civilians on the planes and in the buildings as collateral damage, like the women and possible child that we killed while bombing Zerquaoui. However, they weren't that smart and they targeted a completely civilian building, the World Trade Center. I have no qualms about them hitting the Pentagon because it is a military building and I think almost everybody would agree that if they went to war with the US they would take out the Pentagon if possible.

Now, their killing civilians on purpose, and beheading civilians on purpose, puts them in a completely different league than Yamamoto. Yamamoto struck military targets in an attempt to win a war. We think of him as a bad person because of all the American lives he killed in Pearl Harbor, but that is warfare. Yeah, life would suck if Hitler wasn't stopped, but Yamamoto is no Hitler. Yamamoto did not kill civilians because of the color of their eyes.

If Zerquaoui is to be compared to anybody, it would be Hitler, not Yamamoto.

As far as the "terrorist" tactics are concerned, I would have no issue with their rode side bomb and suicide bomber tactics if they were aimed at military targets, but I don't think that is always the case. I also don't blame them for using those tactics against Israel. They just do not have anything to fight with that can compete with the US or Israel. It would be liek aliens invading Earth and us having to fight any way we can to survive. That is about the only way I can put this into perspective for us high and mighty Americans that have the best technology possible nowadays.

Okay, time to wash the cars.