Reply #9: Weakness [View All]

and necessity. Virtually every family in Lebanon is affiliated, however loosely, to some kind of militia. The same would be true of most people from the former Yugoslavia.

The first terrorists were the Sicarii (the Jewish zealots that killed other Jews with Roman sympathies). The second terrorists were the Hashashins (the Arab anti-Saladin mercenaries, from whence we derive the word "assassin").

Whereever you have weakness, there terrorism lies. When you don't have enough conventional strength you push the British out of Palestine, or Israel out of Lebanon, you use terrorism.

The Ho Chi Minh rule applies: kill enough of them, and they will leave. It is a rule that is as universal as the sky. It strikes me as quixotic when I hear Americans say that no level of casualties will deter them in Iraq. In Vietnam, the price was 50,000 dead. All indications are that the American stomach for war has taken a battering since the Vietnam years, and that the public would simply not tolerate anything near that level of casualties. To say nothing of the impact of three trillion dollars in direct and consequential costs.