Nice post by Flea. Go check it out!
Not everybody's a history buff so this is a valuable link if you are in that category or know someone who is (and who doesn't?). He shows how our "unique" historical situation in Iraq is not so unique, and we therefore have much to learn from how such conflicts were handled in the past. Flea also addresses the impact of new media technologies on war coverage, and how they impact people with no context in which to evaluate what they are being shown.
I'll just add that the Nazis did try to create an underground terrorist network called "Operation Werewolf," which was supposed to do the kind of things we are seeing in Iraq. It never really took off. Germany was reeling from the bombing and five years of war. People just wanted normalcy to return as quickly as possible. Even terrorists have to eat. There was also no precedent in German culture to draw on for such a thing. The only thing close was the Nazis themselves and they were discredited by the war.
In Iraq the jihadis have yet to be discredited. I'm not sure how that is to be done, but I am sure it needs to be done if the West is to succeed in its aims.
Ecce Homo I haven't done a quote from Pope Ratzinger's Introduction to Chistianty in a while and even though I have finished the book there are still one or two passages I want to share, including - perhaps even especially - this one. When I first began to look over what Christianity teaches, to look at the gospel story and to try penetrate why it has been so compelling to so many for so long, this was one of the things that leapt out at me. I was happy to see our Pope confirm it. Expanding on the Apostles Creed where it says "... suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried," Ratzinger writes: The fact that when the perfectly just man appeared he was crucified, delivered up by justice to death, tells us pitilessly who man is: Thou art such, man, that thou canst not bear the just man - that he who simply loves becomes a fool, a scourged criminal, an outcast. Thou art such because, unjust thyself, thou dost always need the injustice of the n...
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