XDA

Mark Steyn has a good column today in which he points out that if 5 years ago one had predicted that there would be no carry on luggage or liquid other than baby formula allowed on British commercial airplanes, he or she would have been considered a kook. Sometimes, he silently points out, the future is truly unimaginable.

The Spanish Civil War, July 17, 1936 to April 1, 1939, is rightly considered a tune up fight for WWII. The deaths the Spanish Civil War caused are not clearly known--estimates vary between 300,000 and a million. Let's choose 500,000--many tens of thousands of which were executions of prisoners. The war that followed (with the same political line up), WWII, cost at least 50 million deaths, that is, it was 100 times worse.

3,000 Americans died on 9/11; 2,600 in Afghanistan and Iraq. Probably 34,000 Iraqis and Afghans have died, The Israeli/Hezbollah first big battles have killed less than 2,000. The butcher's bill for the past 5 years is a mere drop in the bloody bucket even compared to the little war in Spain.

We are now fighting with severe restrictions, as are the Israelis, and history will not be kind to our leadership for our and the Israeli's self-limitation. It will cost us all dearly in the end, an unimaginable cost just now.

I have to say that I can see within 10 years forced deportation of all Muslims from many European nations and the United States (similar to the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII but much more brutal). Strong candidates for cities joining the exclusive club of cities bombed by nuclear weapons include New York, Washington, Tel Aviv (I can't tell about Jerusalem), Damascus, Tehran, Riyadh, Islamabad and Pyongyang. That's not a wish list.

It's clear, however, that we are not serious about fighting and winning the war which has been waged against us by Islamic extremist for about 27 years now and 9/11 did not make us serious enough. It will take another bloody attack and until there is that attack we will not be winning this war.

(h/t Ralph Peters)