Commentary by H.G. Listiak

Thursday 4/8/2004

Welcome to My World, where I found an interesting letter to the editor in the paper from a guy who really gets it. This guy, Manuel Jaramillo, should be holding seminars for our politicians. He writes, recent events in Fallujah are very disturbing for several reasons. Fallujah, a Baathist stronghold, is similar to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, where key cities and towns were especially prone to the fanaticism of the time. The difference is, the destructiveness of the battles of World War II clearly demonstrated who the victor was by the end of the war. In today's world we attempt to reduce collateral damage to make war humane. The problem with that philosophy is that those who lose don't always understand they have lost because they have been minimally impacted. They've obviously not been disarmed, suffering only minimal destruction. Allowing this behavior to continue without a swift, harsh response, has only exacerbated the situation. It also has a demoralizing affect on our troops. We are not letting them win. Young and old in Fallujah have shown they miss the good old days with Saddam Hussein. We will continue to see this and worse until we clearly demonstrate those days are over. Signed Manual Jaramillo. Sir, I don't know if you listen to My World or not, but your premise has been correct for a lot longer than just the atrocities at Fallujah. We saw it in Korea, Vietnam, and again in Desert Storm. We have this penchance to be humane during the bloodiest, most barbaric behavior of mankind, war. And as we continue to see, it just doesn't work very well. We play by a different set of rules than the enemy, as we are seeing now in the 9-11 hearings, sniveling over past mistakes, paying more attention to that than we are to the impending dangers of our soft, humane attitude toward war despite the fact we are the most powerful force on the planet. Unfortunately, whether you like it or not, that has to stop. As we sit in Washington crying over spilled milk, there is a lethal enemy out there ready to tip the glass again, as I see it ... I'm H.G. Listiak.