Re: War on US Soil

["J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>]

Henry,
      The "French and Indian" War, the American Revolution,
and the War of 1812(-15) were all fought on U.S. soil.  But,
they were long ago and not all that bloody, although the
last one did include a torching of the White House.
Barkley Rosser
----- Original Message -----
From: "Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; <gang8@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 4:16 PM
Subject: War on US Soil


> US attitude toward war has been influenced by its unique history.
> Except for the Civil War,
> American experience with war has been remote, being that all recent wars
> were fought on distant foreign
> soil or international waters.  This has given Americans a notion of war
> being heroic and romantic and
> not particularly terrifying.  Also Americans entertain an illusion that
> its wars can be stopped by political
> will, i.e., when Americans decided that they have had enough, they can
> just pack up and go home to
> find better things to do.  That was the experience with all US wars
> after WWII.  The US might not
> achieved victory, but it was never exposed to any danger of real defeat,
> in the sense that Germany and
> Japan experienced defeat and occupation.  Thus to Americans, war is a
> controlled exercise, with
> comfortable downsides, not much different than a long football game,
> with a little more blood.  Lately
> even the blood part has been eliminated.  The Gulf War produced less US
> casaulties than any long
> week-end on american highways.
>
> With the globalization of violence through asymmetrical warfare, the
> situation has changed.  Death and
> destruction can rain on US soil, on US properties and citizens, without
> the need of an organized military
> machine, but only a handful of committed suicidal warriors.
> Furthermore, the superior military strength
> that the US has built up proves to be useless, because of lack of
> symmetry. A technological army needs
> another technological army to fulfill its full potential.  Bombers with
> cruise missiles that cost millions are
> useless without pricey targets.  Also, safe airports against terrorism
> turn out to cost much more to
> achieve than sophisticate missile defense systems, and even then full
> security cannot be guaranteed.
> The nature of terrorism is that the astronomical cost of hyper effeorts
> to maintain high security is the
> damage.  Yet this self-inflicted damage cannot stop, for that is when
> terrorism will strike again. Thus
> with zero cost, the opponent can drain US resources at an alarming
> rate.  As the Reagan adminstration
> pushed the USSR into financial bankruptcy and political dissolution by
> forcing it to squander its
> resources on Star War, the terrorists are doing the same to the US, by
> forcing the US to self-destruct its
> excessively sophisticated economy of maximum leverage and just-in-time
> inventory.  It forces the US to
> adopt redundancy which is the fatal enemy of productivity.  The fear of
> another terrorist attack and the
> cost of trying to prevent that possibility will be hundreds of times
> more damaging than the attack itself.
> In the end, the US would have to negotiate and sue for peace, because
> counter terroism will prove more
> costly than terroism itself, and retaliation will end up blowing up
> empty tents and vacant caves with
> million dollar missiles, not to mention the toll on civil liberty and
> other life quality issues that the US
> values.
>
> Fighting terrorism with terror means to win is to lose.
>
>
> Henry C.K. Liu
>
>
>