The resolve to fight and those who attack it

The first thing I knew was...dust started to fall on me. The floor gave way...and I immediately realised what was happening. The roof came down...I covered my head with my hands...and wondered - frankly - whether this was the end.

- Description from a bomb blast survivor in London during the Blitz

Israel is not the first Nation to undergo direct bombardment with indiscriminant bombs and missiles. During World War II an intensive effort was made by Germany to subdue the British population by the bombing of airfields, first, and then using incendiary devices against cities along with standard high-explosive, fragmentation and delayed blast ordinance.

'It was just about 7 o'clock, last Thursday night. And my sister was with the lady next door...and they saw some planes flying high in the sky. And she said, 'They're flying high' and the lady said to her: 'They are, but they're all right.' Next minute, she said: 'Look, something's dropping from them.' Next minute we heard two big bangs. My Aunty, who'd just left the house with her three children, was standing out in the street. I dived under the shelter, but before I could get to the shelter, two bombs had already dropped...and blew me. My Aunty screamed, and said that our front door was blown down. And she screamed for help because she had three children...'

- Another bomb raid survivor describing a bomb raid During the Blitz

Targeting of Cities and urban areas and outlying population centers was done to break the will of the British people. By all theories of pre-World War II aerial bombardment, this was *the way* to bring a Nation to its knees.

Would not the sight of a single enemy airplane be enough to induce a formidable panic? Normal life would be unable to continue under the constant threat of death and imminent destruction.

— General Giulio Douhet, 'The Command of the Air', 1921

(Source: Great Aviation Quotes: Air Power)

And so it went from attacking the warriors and their machines to attacking the source of those machines: the industrial might of the Nation which rests upon its civilian workforce.

The bomber will always get through. The only defence is in offence, which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves.

— Stanley Baldwin, British Prime Minister, House of Commons speech 10 November 1932

Source: Great Aviation Quotes: Air Power)

This conception of warfare led to the direct and mass targeting of cities for that very purpose of breaking will power. Strangely this was not unforeseen even before the advent of the modern, fixed wing aircraft.

The time will come, when thou shalt lift thine eyes
To watch a long-drawn battle in the skies.
While aged peasants, too amazed for words,
Stare at the flying fleets of wondrous birds.

England, so long mistress of the sea,
Where winds and waves confess her sovereignty,
Her ancient triumphs yet on high shall bear
And reign the sovereign of the conquered air.

— Thomas Gray, 1737
(Source: Great Aviation Quotes: Air Power)

And that day would take centuries to come, but come it did. And so did a somewhat later thinker's view on what one could do with airpower.

And where is the Prince who can afford to so cover his country with troops for its defense, as that ten thousand men descending from the clouds, might not in many places do an infinite deal of mischief, before a force could be brought together to repel them?

-Benjamin Franklin
(Source: Great Aviation Quotes: Air Power)

Which gets us to the modern day. Today we see terrorist regimes supplied with long range artillery rockets of the multi-fire, ballistic fired and generally aimed but unguided sort being used in a piecemeal way to bring terror to civilians. Israel is taking the brunt of these attacks and responding in the respectable way a Nation State responds to being attacked by *killing* the attackers and destroying their equipment. Terrorists target Civilians to break their willpower by any means possible, either by guided or unguided munitions, be it a suicide bomber intent upon self destruction to kill others, or a quickly fired and retreating foe that timidly puts out rockets and tries to have damage inflicted upon others and not *stand* to take the retaliation.

These are acts that are not those of 'brave warriors' for a cause, but timid barbarians that only seek harm and do not seek battle against a foe. When attacked they rush to conceal themselves amongst innocents and thusly cause more harm. And when they do attack in a suicide way, they know that this is the only way they can attack as they lack the courage to stand and fight.

When Nation fights Nation in the modern conception of Total War when the Nation State is put at risk by other Nation that fields arms and armies to attack it, then the full train of supply and production is target. The Mass Warfare of World War I led to Total War in World War II so that it became the principle goal to find weapons that would destroy the most of the economic and production infrastructure of an enemy at least cost. This paradigm led to the nuclear armed stand-off of the Cold War and a change of attention from mass destruction for Total War to pinpoint accuracy against opponents to remove their capability to fight at the Nation State level.

Guerrilla movements, however, were facing better and more heavily armed and capable Nations, even those that were unpopular and authoritarian. Undermining such required a move away from population centers to draw out militaries and wear them out in rural warfare, and then striking at military and industrial support targets deep in population centers to demonstrate that the National military was ineffective against such insurgencies. That worked well until it came time to actually *institute* reforms and hold elections more than once. Soon Guerrilla organizations found that those things that they fought for were not so easily implemented, and that on election eve they found themselves on short ends of things while more legitimate political parties moved to the forefront. Change had been instituted, just not the change that was envisioned. In many places the elections were overturned or rigged in Soviet style of one-party, one-choice and the Nation thus ruled became a totalitarian State. And if elections could be enforced, and the 'reformist' guerrilla party had lost they faced either to be in the minority or to take up arms again.

Terrorism was used as a tactic by guerrilla forces so as to enforce the conception of a weak National Government upon the people and put forth that being able to strike at random at important targets made the authority of the government questionable. If, however, the guerrilla fighters were small in number and unpopular, then terrorism was used as an emotional grievance strike: first against government targets and then at the population itself. That change was a conceptional one that moved from making a New Government with support from at least a plurality of a population, to one of trying to enforce a doctrine via terror without any path to establishment of legitimacy.

Terrorism started there and moved into further realms joining up group-based population theories of governance being pushed by Communists, Socialists and others, with the umbrella term of Transnational Progressivists finally being used for those wishing to remove National Sovereignty and replace it with proportionate, non-democratic, group based rule. Transnational conceptions joined with terroristic means and Transnational Terrorist organizations were the direct result of this cross-pollination. And because terrorists have very little actual support at a Nation State level they can claim to be of the highest status in Transnational Progressivist parlance: VICTIM. They have to be awarded the most political power as they are the smallest of minorities and being 'oppressed' by the Majority and trying to assert their goals and being 'repressed' in doing so. Thus any illegitimate means to use terror tactics is legitimized by Transnational Progressivist concepts, including endangering innocent civilians by hiding amongst them.

Good deal, isn't it? Get to be a barbarian, cause terror and death, have innocents killed around you and claim that those innocents were *victimized* by those retaliating against you!

Such a sweet deal!

Heads, I win; Tails, you lose.

And now they seek to wear away at a Civilian population of a *minority* grouping in their region by trying to put the stick in the timeline at some point favorable to themselves to claim that only THEY have legitimate rights to land being 'occupied'. So you can 'lose' wars and still 'fight' them! What makes these wonderful folks so sure that even if they did win, that the exact same thing would not be turned completely around on THEM?

They apparently don't think that far ahead. Cause and effect beyond the scope of reason.

This idea of 'Ethnic Cleansing' is decried in the Balkans... but terrorists in the Middle East get recognition and legitimacy for the exact same thing. Let people of color practice it in Africa or South East Asia and hear the outcry... or lack of it... then see 'noble warriors' who cannot even stand up to fight get lauded for their timid atrocities. So 'Progressive' to hate one action by one people and decry it, then laud the exact same action by another people elsewhere. That is not even 'Moral Relativism'.

It is a lack of having ANY moral and ethical standards to live by and actually judge events by those standards.

And *that*, of course, is not 'Progressive' at all! To actually *judge* someone based on their *actions*. Instead of taking compassion for their motives and intent and try to mind-read those and find 'why they hate us'....

Tell you what, you get an operational veridicator and then we can talk about intent, ok? And, once done, if the intent is malicious, then there is ZERO excuse no matter 'how bad their upbringing' was nor if they had 'bad parents' or lived 'in a bad community' and had no chance to be enlightened as YOU ARE. Because when you use those things to *excuse* actions, you are describing something that is *not* a human being, but a robot. Pre-programmed by background to do things.

Except all of those with the same background that do *different* things and try to make their lives better. Strange, isn't it? All those bad things and some people find ways out and flourish and others become anti-social, destructive and hateful. Maybe its not the background at all, but the basic personality. But since every 'social science' has *refused* to actually come up with a valid, testable and repeatable way to measure and delineate personality, and prefers to go with subjective ways of describing it, we can never, for good and all, find a way to find out what personality actually IS. Lovely.

Tell you what: do the hard demographic work of studying large population groups, dileneating basic personality types and sub-types in a measurable way, define how events impinge upon personality to a predictable methodology that is as good, say, as quantum mechanics for describing particle behavior, and THEN we can talk. Yes, get an objective way of doing these things not based upon 'intuition' or 'feelings' but a way of describing how feelings work within personality types and classes and then you might have a point. Maybe. My guess is that the quantum work will prove to be the large key and something like *individual free will* is something that you cannot pin down as to position or speed simultaneously, but can get a good overall measurement of at a somewhat larger scale. Go for it! You have only had... well how many decades since the Myers-Briggs test came out?

Those that are supporting terrorism and all sorts of other 'group based' models have no foundational studies nor ways of measuring things in a concrete fashion. Even lie detectors can be thwarted by those who care to, and are still prone to the whimsy and knowledge of the subjective test giver. A bit more handy than a dart board, but something far, far less than the veridicator. And even then the mentally unstable can get around that as their fantastic world view guides their thoughts.... and actions.

Something like, say, restoring the Caliphate.

Just because they believe in a fantasy does not mean that they are unable to deal with the real world. They just give weighting to things that only *they* can see and then skew their weighting of everything else because of it. So Osama bin Laden really *did* believe that the US would collapse in upon itself after 9/11, or be so horribly chastened as to remove itself as an actor from world events. Notice that the Transnational Progressivists, with their *own* group-based system of thought want just that very same thing. And Hezbollah believes that it can *bluff* its way to legitimacy via threats and intimidation against Israel. Notice the good folks at the UN doing everything they can to HELP this, and the current government of Lebanon, too, as they will not disarm Hezbollah.

And that gets us back to the lessons of the Blitz and the Will of The People of Israel.

The terrorists have this belief that if they just keep on hitting Israel, keep on attacking, keep on doing all of the disgusting and barbaric things they have been doing for decades, that Israel will just 'go away'. That is their fantasy. It was a fantasy to believe that airpower without proper military back-up on the ground would win wars, too. Even with nuclear devices, that is not *winning* a war, especially if the other side is armed with same.

It is suicide.

Thus, all of the terrorist organizations, many of which were around *before* Israel was ever founded, have centered on this belief that Israel is the *cause* of their problems. Some of them still grumble about the after-effects of decolonization, fall of the Ottoman Empire, and the various schismatic conflicts that were going on before that... probably some still having problems with the concepts of Persians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Egyptian empires and their aftermaths... throw in the Romans, too! Then there are the Hittites... yes, ancient grudges everywhere.

Their fantasy is that by their showing of timid terror they can overcome the will of a Nation.

Terrorize a people and win!

Except for one, small item.

The cohesion of a National population. The attacks against Great Britain, Germany and even Japan before the final two nuclear detonations, SOLIDIFIED the population to keep on suffering so they could win. Only absolute and total surrender by Governments got an end to World War II. Anything less than showing the capability to remove the entire fighting force of a Nation, its industrial capacity, its Government and even show how complete genocide can be completed at low cost... only those things will bring victory.

Anything else brings on this unmeasured thing amongst people who adhere to a Nation: RESOLVE.

Terrorism is the weapon of those that cannot gain legitimacy because a government lacks the will and resolve to use legitimate means. As a tactic it is effective at killing, but does little to break the resolve of those being attacked. But it can break the will of those HELPING them. That is the lesson of Vietnam: make the fighting seem endless and senseless and you can dishearten a population you are NOT actively attacking.

They will dissolve that will all by their lonesome.

Once irresolute, then others can step in and bring other attacks in distant lands against such a Nation.

And *then* those can bring the fight to the shores of that Nation, and maybe, just maybe, hope to win.

Fantasy belief, but helped by folks who believe in something similar.

The question is: Can such a people, who have shown ill resolve, find a way to gain resolve if they are not attacked upon their own shores on a daily basis?

The Free Peoples of the World await that answer.