First!

Knowing when to drop a project that's not working is difficult. I'm sure I speak for a lot of people when I say it's too bad about Tribes, but it'll probably come together when you're least expecting it, and in the meantime, welcome back!

Bill- one good way to eliminate most or all comment spam is to require regisstration to comment. It's a minor annoyance for some folks, but those who really want to comment will suck it up and do it. You could also implement one of those security image doo-dads, where you have to type some word or number before you can enter a comment.

Here's a cheap and easy fix that will thwart the spambots ... log into your site via FTP. Go to your MT directory /cgi-bin/mt/ and rename mt-comments.cgi to something else ... like talkback.cgi or whatever. (When I was still on MT, I renamed mine to babble.cgi) Download mt.cfg and open with a text editor. Find the section that starts with:
"# By default, the script that Movable Type uses for comments is called
# mt-comments.cgi,"

and a few lines below, change this:
# CommentScript mt-comments.pl

to this:
# CommentScript talkback.cgi (using the example renamed file above)

Then, rebuild your site.

You can also install MT-Blacklist which is an excellent plugin, but keeping up with the spammers by updating the blacklist constantly is almost as much of a pain.

If you want to upgrade MT and need an assist, I would be more than happy to help. Just shout ...

Or maybe consider an alternative to MT. ExpressionEngine kicks serious butt. It's very easy to import your MT entries, and it's almost invulnerable (is that a word?) to comment spam.

I would also vote for MT-Blacklist. I had some comment spam probelms and this rocks. Spamers keep coming up with new URLs to spam but one or two clicks and I can get rid of each new infestation.

You can also go through all of the comments on your blog and de-spam them.

It uses a list of known bad URLs - the MT-Blacklist site has about 2,000 of these so you are off to a good start.

The only other thing you will need is an FTP client since you need to twiddle the permissions on the folders a bit and FTPing with your browser doesn't allow for this.

I like SmartFTP - free for personal non-commercial use, $30 if you want to send them some money. Free 30-day trial anyway which will get you through the install...
http://www.smartftp.com

Give me a holler if you want help. I looked at upgrading and installed MT-Blacklist instead. Took about one hour from printing out the couple pages of documentation to killing the spam on my system and keeping it off...

Here is a potent curse to lay on the spammers, which seems to have worked so far on my blog:

Death to Spammers!

I desecrate and despise you spammers, you dung-eating spewers of sewage from your mouths; I call the VENGEANCE of Heaven down upon your loathesome keyboards, and implore the Almighty God to set needles of FLAMING PHOSPHORUS in the tips of your FINGERS with which you tap out the tattoo of mercenary avarice.

From the teeth of my mouth I spit venom in your offending eyes, which you use only to seek new chinks in the walls guarding the TEMPLE of my BLOG.

Open running sores will be the countenance of your face, when the avenging claws of my hands have raked and flayed the flesh of your cheeks.

Better that you had cast your leprous body into the LEAPING flame of the WEBER grill, than to have pressed that button marked “POST” with your blaspheming and shameless commercial message.

I don’t want your stinking VIAGRA!

NEITHER do I desire to play Texas Hold’em Online!

The Size of my urogenital member, puny or great, is not your concern!

Nor is it my will to re-finance my abode with your kind and unselfish investors.

If I had a button that would give you spam-posting bastards instant everlasting hemmorhoids, my finger would get a blister pushing it over and over and over.

Hey, look! Everyone should be allowed to make a living. But there's a limit.

We keep the drug pushers away from the elementary schools.

We don't allow testing of nuclear weapons in the vicinity of shopping malls.

And we shouldn't have to put up with ASS-HOLES clogging our conversations with their stinking unsolicited, intrusive, un-paid commercial butt-ins.

Spammers, you tread a slender branch above an abyss of blistering blackness.

Keep it up, and I’ll let loose the lawyers on your asses.

When I’m dictator, your heads will be on PIKES by the roadway, as a warning to the others.

Heads on Pikes...

See, it's an idea that many of us are ready to revive.

I think I've discovered the true meaning of "WHEEE!"

'Tis good to hear from you, Bill! I'm looking forward to reading some more of your sage words!

Rob

Steven, I had the same problem with crud-head spammers and they nearly drove me crazy. I recently switched from Moveable Type to Expression Engine which requires registration. EE has an MT import utility and the switchover took less than a day. My readers never complained and my life is much quieter nowadays. Try it, you'll like it.

How goes the instrument ticket?
When will you pilot SS1?
Damn, what a flight that was.

Bill,

Glad to hear you're still breathing over there! I hope that GHS's plane survived the latest hurricane... I got to fly down to the FL coast and air taxi some brass around to view the damage. Pcola beach has been relocated to downtown Pcola, and 90% of the structures on the island are a total loss. Looked like a war path.

We use MT Blacklist, and though it's not perfect, I prefer it to forcing people to register to comment - I no longer comment on any blogs, that force me to register. It's never simple or quick and my time is too valuable.

LissaKay's suggestion sounds like the simplest and most straightforward one I've seen yet - and doesn't require an upgrade. Even with almost zero valid traffic, I was still getting lots of spam comments so I closed them off. I'm going to give this a try.

In the meantime, while I haven't read EVERYTHING this guy has written (in the interest of assessing consistency, etc.), I've found Victor Hanson's recent stuff to be extremely on target - http://www.victorhanson.com. 'The Perfect Storm of Hating Bush' is particularly insightful, FWIW.

I like part of Dave's first comment. Requiring registration might turn off a lot of commenters, but having a password might be good if was the same for all of us.

There's probably a way to have it work like this:

GHS shows up and clicks on Comment.
He sees a window that says "In order to read and/or leavce a comment, Ye must give the secret Password. The secret Password is EJECT. But, don't tell anyone, m'kay?"
GHS types in the word eject and gets into the Comments.
While any breathing person will be able to get in, the spambots will be thwarted.

Heehee!!!

Of course, I have no farkin' idea HOW to set that up, but I'd like to know so's I can do that on my own blog. Anybody? Beuller?

You'd cure a lot of spam if you simply added a field in the form "type eject in this field unless you want your comment deleted. Call it the "Fast and weak" cure for this problem -- the bots understand Name and Email and URL and Comment but they won't know what to make of this extra field, bet you $1.

I upgraded to MT Blacklist, and I think it's very easy to use. Should do the job.

How to upgrade to MTBL? Kathy Kinsley of Site-Essential is trying to make some money on the side. She'll do it for you (she did it for me and I have zero complaints). Just go on over to blogmeister -at- bloghouse.net and explain what you want.

Her fees are very reasonable ($20 or so), the upgrade effort free on your part. And she lives in Florida and is trying to rebuild after the hurricanes so you'll be helping your fellow bloggerkind. Can't recommend it enough.

James

Bill:

Without MT Blacklist, Moveable Type is pretty much an exercise in futility, as you're unfortunately finding out. And LissaKay's suggestion to rename the comment script is also essential.

Those 2 things combined will pretty much eliminate the majority of the problem, and make the mopping up of the few remaining messes vastly more mangeable.

I agree with others' comments - if a site requires registration to comment, I just skip it.

Lastly, there is a simple, elegant little plugin that allows you to tell MT to close comments on all (or specified) posts after a certain period of time, and insert a (customiseable) line that says "comments have now been closed on this post. If you wish, you may email your comment instead." Email me if you'd like more info.

Paul

PaulT, you just stole my thunder!!

Closing comments threads after, say, a month or six weeks will probably eliminate 95+% of your spam. While you may not want to stop the back and forth of a thread, really though how many threads are still going after a month? I'll bet that the vast vast majority -- of not ALL -- of the spam dumps are being posted to threads that are two months old.

That's the easiest thing to do and you can do it today and poor ol' GHS can have a break from de-spamming immediately. :D

as per request, more of what I saw along the coast in FL...

First we flew from Hurlburt Field (FWB) west to Pcola along the beach. Any structure that was on the island from Pcola Beach to Navarre was majorly damaged. There were some taller buildings that were still standing but had structural damage to include sand halfway up the first floor. Some buildings that were still under construction were more damaged.

Even the homes on pylons were damaged; roofs collapsed, decks destroyed, etc. Gulf Breeze also took a beating. A lot of the homes had significant structural damage, no roofs, 2nd stories collapsed, etc.

We didn't actually fly over the city, just along the beach to NAS Pcola (which was pretty bad, too). Then we picked up our brass and flew back along the same route, over the base housing at Hurbie (lots of blue tarp-like patches on the roofs there), and then over to Eglin.

East of FWB the damage wasn't as bad as what we saw in Pcola, but it was still pretty devastating. All the sand on the beaches had been pushed up past the dunes and farther inland; there are now pretty sizeable "cliffs" butting up against the back of beachfront houses that go down to the water. Looked like 10-15 ft drops from the air.

All in all pretty damn bad. I'm sure central FL looks about the same after getting hit by 3 hurricanes in the span of a month.

Bill: I write a monthly column for a small local conservative newspaper and believe me, they are not nearly as intellectual as your essays are. I too, get a sort of writers block on occasion. I usually get my ideas while working at my real job and will jot down a few notes, but when I try to resume writing I cannot recapture the same train of thought. I generally revert to writing things that do not expand my universe of thought, but after I submit them, new ideas jump into my mind. You might try this diversion theory before giving up on Tribes. If you want to read my musings, send me an e-mail and I will give you the website to check the archives. I would post it here but I don't think the server could handle the traffic your webpage will generate, either good or bad!

"$@%#&*!!"?

Wow. According to my theory of cursing, the Amish only know "!" (capital 1), school children typically learn "@#" and maybe "$" (2, 3 and 4), you learn "$%" and maybe "^" (4, 5 and 6) when you learn to drive and have to share the road with $^# idiots--but you have to try to build a house by yourself to get all the way up to "&*" (7 and 8). My personal experience anyway.

I knew that Bill is a pilot (now instrument rated or well on his way to it! Congrats!) but I didn't realize he'd done construction work too.

Email is sdippolito at cyberian dot com. (Damned spambots....)

Steve

Patiently...but really ANXIOUSLY...awaiting your remarks re the debate. Get to it, young'un.

Registration. Don't shy away from it. People want to Comment the least they can do is return you the favor by this MINOR act of grace. Thus sayeth Sharps.

Registration is not a detriment to me. It is the price I pay for the privilege of commenting on somebody else's blog. I have contributed to several including this one and if you don't want to register - then don't. You can go elsewhere - for a while. When the others get fed up with the spam and moonbat scum they will do it or quit. I for one, don't mind the couple of seconds required and since I use Firefox am not concerned about security so the registration to sites is automatic and it causes me little concern.

Bill, keep on keepin on man! I love your stuff and eagerly anticipate the next in the saga.

Dear Mr. Whittle -

I have no idea whether or not this will have any relevance to anything you are writing now or intend to write soon, but I was so struck by the relevance of this to current goings on, that I wanted to give it to somebody who might be able to make good use of it, and you are my favorite writer that I have found on the web.

It is a passage from the personal memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, page number 30 of the Da Capo Press trade paperback edition.

"Experience proves that the man who obstructs a war in which his nation is engaged, no matter whether right or wrong, occupies no enviable place in life or history. Better for him, individually, to advocate 'war, pestilence, and famine' than to act as obstructionist to a war already begun. The history of the defeated rebel will be honorable hereafter, compared with that of the Northern man who aided him by conspiring against his government while protected by it. The most favorable posthumous history the stay-at-home traitor can hope for is - oblivion."

It is hard for me not to think of some names.

Good luck in your efforts, sir.

Regards,
William L. Dewhurst

Promises, promises...

:-)

My sentiments eggzackly, Kevin. It's been 48 hours since Turbo made his promise "I’ll be back within 48 hours with some helpful debating advice."

Ahem ;^)

If President Bush showed up with the quote from Ulysses S. Grant tattooed on his forehead, that would be fine with me.

Henna tattoo would be sufficient.

From Winds of Change---
(http://windsofchange.net/#005641)

Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has urged his country's weapons developers to step up work on making a nuclear bomb, a U.S. official said, according to Geostrategy-Direct, the global intelligence news service.

According to the official, an authoritative source in the Iranian exile community has stated that Khamenei met recently with senior government and military leaders on the nuclear weapons program. Khamenei told the gathering, "We must have two bombs ready to go in January or you are not Muslims," the official said.

The full article is available at WorldNetDaily website: http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40723

WoC contributer "Cicero" in the same post quotes a Chicago tribune article citing a statement from Barack Obama:

"U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama suggested Friday that the United States one day might have to launch surgical missile strikes into Iran and Pakistan to keep extremists from getting control of nuclear bombs..."

-----
Highly interesting stuff.

Heya Bill,

Long time fan. :)

I moved a few months ago from MT to Wordpress (http://www.wordpress.org) and I really love it. A lot of MT users moved back then because of MT's pricing fiasco which was through the roof. I see a lot of people also moved to MT 3.11 with nice goodies etc...but wordpress works very well. Easy to use and it took about 5 minutes to import everything pretty much flawlessly. It's also nice to have a dynamic site instead of having to rebuild every time. That pretty much did it for me. Dynamic URLs really are amazing and also help with google et al. I haven't looked back but I'm curious about MT 3.x now because I've heard they've implemented a lot of those features, finally. WP also has an MT type of spam blocker plugin which works nicely, but it also (without installing that plugin) holds comments for moderation if they have a certain amount of URLs in them (mine is set at the default - five urls and the comment is automatically held for moderation). That does work very nicely.

The good thing about MT is that it has that typekey thing which I registered for the other day and is global to all MT blogs now, I believe. That's a nice MT feature which I like and WP should probably go and do something like that as well.

If you can, I'd check out MT's dynamic capabilities first before you decide on anything. That's really the best thing, regardless of which software you use. Rebuilding is so...1990's. :) Seriously, whether it's MT or WP, at least make sure it's dynamic. It's a great feeling. :)

Sweet fancy Moses! Something to look forward to on a Wednesday. Thank you Bill!

I've seen the trailer for Celsius 41.11. The producers are likely to catch some heat for using images of 9-11 for political gain. Well at this point it bears repeating that Mickey Moore used that precise image in his work of cinemanure, "Bowling for Bullshit Columbine". And he used the shot of the Second Plane after a long, semi-coherent montage of alleged sponsoring of "terrorism" around the world that would appeal to a few people I know in the tinfoil-hat brigades.

Tell me again about using 9-11 for political gain?

On the spam deal. Perhaps an old tried and true method would work. Since what you are getting are responses to an essay of yours, somewhere in the essay put a string of 8 nonsense charcters such as 3rt56ipw. Everyone who wants to respond must put that string in there. Set up a verification querry that checks posts for that string and then assigns it to the correct essay. And if it doesn't have that string it deletes them.

How about shutting off comments and opening a message board where everyone can comment on the essays and interact with each other. Keeps the main page clean and troll free and allows you to moderate in an easier way. I've moderated 500+ member boards and know a few more people that would offer up services.

How would a moderated message board connect to the site of the essays? Just a notice somewhere in the blog? Sorta like the way people put their e-mail address in spelled out text: "human-at-crouton-dot-net"

The main goal, if I understand it, is to free Great Hairy One from spambot clearing activity, not to prevent actual disagreeable posts by real humans, even trollish ones. I don't think either Bill or GHS shrinks from battle with contrary thinkers.

More likely they grow rather than shrink.

We embrace multi-culturalism and diversity and moral relativism.

We EMBRACE'em like a boa constrictor.

Hug 'em & squeeze'em till they little heads pop.

I wonder how long we'll be waiting for Bill's extended happydance over SS1 to complete before the next essay?

"Tribes" sounds like an essay that's destined to come, but I understand how it can feel to push and push and have it keep on not coming _now_. We will wait...if not patiently, then at least politely.

:)

My name is Michael W and I am a 30-year-old National Guard infantryman serving in southeast Baghdad. I have been in Iraq since March of 04 and will continue to serve here until March of 05.

In the few short months my unit has been in Iraq, we have already lost one man and have had many injured (including me) in combat operations. And for what? At the very least, the government could have made sure that each of our vehicles had the proper armament to protect us soldiers.

In the early morning hours of May 10, one month to the day from my 30th birthday, I and 12 other men were attacked in a well-executed roadside ambush in south-east Baghdad. We were attacked with small-arms fire, a rocket-propelled grenade, and two well-placed roadside bombs. These roadside bombs nearly destroyed one of our Hummers and riddled my friends with shrapnel, almost killing them. They would not have had a scratch if they had the "Up Armour" kits on them. So where was W on that one?

It's just so ridiculous, which leads me to my next point. A Blackwater contractor makes $15,000 a month for doing the same job as my pals and me. I make about $4,000 a month over here. What's up with that?

Beyond that, the government is calling up more and more troops from the reserves. For what? Man, there is a huge fucking scam going on here! There are civilian contractors crawling all over this country. Blackwater, Kellogg Brown & Root, Halliburton, on and on. These contractors are doing everything you can think of from security to catering lunch!

We are spending money out the ass for this shit, and very few of the projects are going to the Iraqi people. Someone's back is getting scratched here, and it ain't the Iraqis'!

My life is left to chance at this point. I just hope I come home alive.

MT-Blacklist works pretty well. I imported their recommended list, and it took out a lot of the crap that'd been infesting my comments. (And come on - I get maybe 20-30 hits a day, I'm no high-traffic site - why infest MY six-month old comments?)

Oh, and Michael W? Thank Kerry. He voted against your armor.

J.

Your Oct 6 entry is right on the money.

William Loeffelr

The Oct. 6 piece "Deterence" is the best thing I have read in a long time. Great job!
I may be wrong on this, but it occured to me that the only service Kerry is providing America with at the moment may be to encourage and thereby draw more insurgents on to the Iraq battlefields where they can be eliminated by our troops more conveniently than if they were scattered all over the place, causeing brush fires before going to cover. This is not good for Iraq, but in a strange way it is helpful to us.

Great Job...brilliant essay.

Dan Cary

I was touched by your admission that you voted for Walter Mondale in your first eligible election and then later regretted it. I thought I was alone with that shame. Former Mondale Supporters of the World Unite!!!

I have been a fan for more than 3 years. Bill, I don't know quite why, but your stuff has never failed to have me in tears. You are so absolutely On the pulse of the present, I look to you first to decide where to direct my thinking. You have chosen a Very Rough Path and I salute you for it. Be assured that I will pass your messages verbatim to the people I think need to hear it most! As well as some who just (like me) appreciate having their views echoed so very eloquently. You have a Gift. Please continue using it. If you ever want to run for Prez, you have my vote.
Laurie Lovell

I just finished reading DETERRENCE and have immediately alerted all my family members to it as a brilliant must-read. I never thought I'd see the day when all my jumbled and incoherent thoughts about Kerry vs. Bush would be expressed with such stunning clarity, with spot-on historical references, and an eloquent passion that took my breath away. Thank you and God bless you!

I read Deterrence 1 and 2 and hope to spread it to as many as possible - it is excellent and well-said. My fervent prayer is that more people see (and vote) for substance over image. The debates have filled me with sadness and fear that image might win out -- in which case we are in for a bad time of it.

This is my first trip to your blog. It certainly won't be my last. Your "Deterence" article was beautifully written and very thoughtful. I'm hoping the American people understand our existence as we know it is depends on our ability to deter the terrorists. I believe a nuclear bomb in Manhattan was mentioned. That would certainly ruin things for a lot of folks including us here in Texas. The threat is very real. I liked the quote from Grant and yes it fits Kerry like a glove. We've leaned heavily on Bush's strength and leadership these last 4 years. I doubt seriously we'll oust him because he was out debated by a slick pompous windbag from the senate. Oh, I got to meet Ben Stein recently at a book signing. I wanted to introduce myself as Beuller but my kids wouldn't let me.

Roger Hedgecock on Rush just mentioned that the $4,000 a month combat pay is tax free. The supposed $15,000 pay for contractors is probably at the 50% bracket. (still not enough pay in my opinion)
I would like to be able to verify this National guardman's where abouts at the time of his posting. If he is truely in combat in Iraq, my apologies ahead of time.
My understanding is the Humvees are being fitted with armor in record time. If our troops are not adequately equipped, I would take that up with Clinton, certainly not George Bush.

Super, well thought, clear! Thank you Bill._Joe Rose

You make some interesting points in deterence 1 and 2. The problem with your whole piece is that you dont reallize that Bush is a dumb military strategist and is creating more terrorists than he destroying. He can not win the war fighting this dumb. He may or may not even reallize that he is not even fighting the real war. He is going to destroy the US or the Arab world (the innocent and radical). Maybe not during his term but he has set WW3 in motions. Unforunately if he wins the 2nd election you will find out that I'm correct.

If you don't know who is friend and who is foe you have to kill both or you will lose.

This is the best thing I have ever read on the Internet. Seriously.

I linked to it on my blog. I just want to say thank you for taking the time to say it. I wish I could articulate it as well as you have. Fortunately in 2004, all I have to do is link to it instead.

Carry on, sir.

Respect.

cw

I finally found someone who could make compelling arguments on this war in Iraq, and this election. I just wish folks in the Bush camp could get help from your wise words.

You simply kick asses!

Your words are so right on!! ThanK you!!

I am wondering if the recent increase in the murder of Iraqi muslins by the Islamic fascists may signal a MAJOR turning point in WWIV.

I can't help but remember that several months ago the fascists kidnapped, and then released an American soldier because he was a muslim. Would that matter to them today, or would it be 'off with their heads' American non-true-believer muslims.

If anti-fascist Iraqi's stand by us in the war, and fight as (or more) determedly as our enemies, may this be one of the most significant developments since 9/11?

Who can deny we are at least making progress? May the optimists venture that we are winning the war because muslims are in the fight. (We should not forget the Afgans who are also standing by us.)

Could this be the beginning of a reformation (stick in the eye reform) of Islam in terms of redefining jihad/murder?

Thanks again for your brilliant article.

In reply to the deterrence essay....

I hate liberals. Before we go any farther, I would like to establish that as a fact. I do not hate liberals because they go against everything I hold dear, or because they want to take away my guns, or any of that crap. I hate liberals because I agree with almost every goal they hold before us, and yet they will never make any of these goals happen. Instead, they will tarnish and stain these goals with an unending variety of tawdry lies and underhanded tactics in an effort to force those of us who do not march in lockstep to comply with their vision.

Yet, as I said before, I agree with their goals. What I don't agree with are the methods I see used. And nowhere is this more evident than in the area of combatting terrorism. The war on terror is nothing new. It has been going on for a minimum of two decades now, being waged nonstop and with a minimum of remorse. In many of the areas which provide manpower for the terrorists, it has stripped an entire generation of its best and its brightest, leaving these areas desolate and barren of any hope of any substantial self-improvement at anytime within the next sixty years (twenty years for a new generation, another twenty to force the old generation out, and a final twenty to begin the process). Terrorism is evil, yes. But the ultimate evil in terrorism is that it tells good people that this evil is in fact a holy act. That the best thing they can do for their country, for their people, and for themselves is to strap a bundle of dynamite to their bodies, and detonate it in such a way as to cause the greatest possible casualties. And for ten years before the fall of the Soviet Union, and for another ten years after, we did nothing to stop this.
It is no wonder that many Arabs feel resentful of America. If America had stepped in to stop this immediately after the fall of the USSR, perhaps this would never have become an issue. If America had, for the second time within a century, shouldered the burden of rebuilding the world, this problem might never have seen the light of day. But to act to prevent it, America would have had to literally rebuild the economy of the entire world. A herculean task by any measure. And one that is made all the greater by the simple fact that in order for us to do this, many of the societies in the various third-world countries would have had to have been remade in our image. This is not a insult to our ability to be multilateral. This is the result of a simple communications barrier between cultures. An entirely different conception of the world, and of a person's place in it, than is present in almost any developing nation. America does not, I am told, have the right to remake an entire world in its image, and I happen to agree with this. There are thousands of other cultures in the world, and they all have just as much right to exist as does our own. However, the only cultures we can aid are those where it is possible for us to speak to and understand the common people. Preferably in writing.

Perhaps we blew it in the years after the fall of the USSR, when terrorism was still a local and easily contained anomaly. But the sad truth of the matter is that no matter what people may think of our actions, we would not have--could not have--acted any differently. America was still trying desperately to recover from the economic and social strain of the Cold War. Our society has never been one for protracted wars, and a forty year war was by far the longest war against a single foe in our history. It left our society in shambles, our political will exhausted, and placed our economy under nearly unendurable strain for two generations. If we had been any nation besides America, we would have failed, and, in the end, perished. The Cold War would have been lost.

Nobody sane likes to be the international version of Superman. To shoulder the responsibility for the safety of the free world is a heavy burden for any nation, but particularly so for a nation so physically isolated from much of the rest of the free world. To do so for forty years was more than many thought we could withstand. It is, perhaps, understandable that we be perhaps overly eager to put that burden down. To say to the world "Okay, we've done our part. Now it's your turn. Go out there and make us proud." And that is just what we did, secure in the knowledge that people were basically good, and that the only disputes we would be forced to settle would come from mutual misunderstandings. We could let the world be.

So there may be some truth in the cry that this is America's fault. If we had intervened sooner and more forcibly to stop terror as it was first began to appear, perhaps none of this would ever have happened. But if the events on 9/11 are truly America's fault, it is because we did not destroy the Taliban sooner, did not topple Saddam Hussein in 1991, and did not utterly and completely destroy the nation of Libya Ghadafi first struck our at us with weapons of terror. But better late than never, as they say. Civilization, and the West, still has the ability to destroy this plague of barbarism and savagery before it begins. We may not wish to, and we almost certainly will shudder at the cost, but we still have the ability.

George W. Bush is not the only man who sees this. The domestic issues might not have been far different in this election had he lost. In fact, they would probably be identical. But when, in the end, we did have to combat terror and its backers, be it ten, twenty, even thirty years down the road, the coast would ultimately be far higher, and we would probably be substantially less prepared, and quite possibly alone. America cannot, I am afraid, singlehandedly take on the entire world, not now, and probably not ever. And that is certainly one of the very real possibilities of attempting to ignore the fray.

For ten years, while America held its head in the sand regarding terror, Europe stood as the front line in the world's fight against evil. Not militarily, for in the end most of Western Europe, excluding Great Britain, does not possess the military might of a half-rotten banana (and that assessment does not include countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, et al). Not diplomatically, nor even abroad. Instead, it fought terror at home, pusuing terrorist into its home turf only when absolutely necessary because those were the only times such an action was possible. I must here point out that despite all the American contempt for the French, Europe is winning their war on terror. Slowly but surely, the various law enforcement agencies of Europe are proving that an established free democracy can triumph over terror without fundamentally changing a single aspect of their government. This is a colossal achievement, and one that is worthy of respect. Israel, fighting for its very existence since its founding, has proven that a democracy can be established in the face of constant and continuous invasions, acts of terror, and nearly unrestricted warfare against its civilians. They have fought for more than forty years--often alone, frequently despised, and almost always surrounded by enemies. More on what this means later.

Europe can aid the United States in our war on terror, and aid us greatly. Senator Kerry, you have a very good point there--though Europe has never experienced any attack on the scale of 9/11, it has fought with terror for far longer than America has. There are few tricks the terrorists know that some European police force has not seen at some time or another. In order for America to be safe, we will need Europe, just as Europe needed America during the Cold War. The debt will be repaid in the end.

But the time for European aid in the war on terror is not yet. For the first part of the war on terror, America must go it alone. I am sorry to say that we will, for a time, need to be the cowboy, the new sheriff, sent by the US government to take charge of this here area and bring some measure of law and order to the environs. Without first doing that, the war on terror can never truly be won. Containing terror is not enough. To combat it effectively, we must first seek out those who allow it flourish, whether through design, as did the Taliban, or through sheer incompetance, as in the possible case of Saddam Hussein, and we must destroy them. No amount of invective against Bush will change that, sir. No amount of liberal hatred, no amount conservative arrogance will change the fact that in order to successfully combat terror it must be stopped at its roots, and the forces of law and order cannot fight terror at its roots unless there first exists some measure of law and order. This is why the United States did not protest the coup in Pakistan--yes it overturned a lawfully elected government, but it did so with the promise of bringing some measure of law and order to a country that had none.

In the end, terror will only be defeated by sheer economic prosperity and personnal security. When the peoples of the Middle East feel that they are safe, that they are prosperous, and that nobody will ever be able to take that away from them, then there will be no more terror in the Middle East. Crime there will be, and plenty of it, but the terror will be gone. Crime is something a local government can handle. Terror is not.

Now, then, to concentrate our focus a little. Consider the Middle East, so-called hotbed of terror, and the current focal point for terrorist activities, be they against Israel, Turkey, or the United States. Nearly all of this terror springs from the world of Islam, so we will concentrate upon the Moslems.
Before we go any further, we must consider the conditions in which the Middle East, and, indeed, nearly all of the Moslem world, finds itself. Ten centuries ago, the world of Islam was great. Of all the Christian nations, only the Byzantine Empire could claim to be able to economically and militarily compete with Islam. Of all the nations in the world, only three could rival the nation of Islam in terms of cultural glory and political power--China, Byzantium, and India. By the early 1600s, Islam had, ultimately, outlasted them all. Though some might argue that Islam's glory days were over, the Ottoman Empire was still feared by nearly the whole of Europe, the Saffavids could fight any army in the world to a standstill at worst, and the Moghuls were slowly but steadily subjugating India.
Today, the world of Islam finds itself very much a forgotten place. Where once the world trembled in fear at the sound of Moslem armies, today a tiny nation of barely half a million Jews can make itself into the local superpower, and all the strength of the faithful can do nothing to stop this from happening.
Israel in particular is a goad to many moslems, not because of the fact that it is a Jewish nation, but because of the fact that it forcibly demonstrates, to a very large extent, just what the world of Islam has lost. No longer does the world revolve around Islam and the Middle East. No longer do the sultans of the great Moslem nations hold the power to change the course of history. Instead, they are powerless to stop a tiny band of Jews from settling in on one of the richest areas in the Middle East and building a prosperous nation from it. For many of them, it is the death knell of Islam. For if Islam cannot compete with the West economically (something which many of the leaders of the terrorist movements have subconsciously accepted as fact), and it is so weak militarily that it cannot defend one of its holiest sites, then what is left for it? What is there to prevent Islam from being added to the list of failed religions, a list that includes many thousands of other religions, some of which had far more success than Islam. For many this is unacceptable.

Which brings us to Iraq. Iraq is the single most important battle in the war on terror. Should Iraq be able to form a functional democracy, should Iraq be able to actually compete with the nation of Israel, if not with the United States, than there is hope for the Middle East. To the leaders of Al Queda and others of their ilk, this hope is dangerous. Their power, their life, their very means of existence come from preying upon the envy and the bitterness of Moslem youths who quite simply lack the education to understand why the West has succeeded culturally and economically where they did not. These leaders do not want to see that hope bear fruit. To them, where the nation of Israel was a potential enemy, the American rebuilding of Iraq is a very real and very urgent threat to the very heart of their power. Make no mistake. The leaders of the various terrorist movements, the more radical clerics and the more totalitarian governments of the region will fight against this with everything they have, because to lose is to lose their power within their nation. So, yes, casualties will get a lot worse in the end. In the end, we will be facing a far greater cost to rebuild Iraq. But if we succeed, and if we follow down the path we currently follow, we will succeed, if we succeed, we will have begun to win the war on terror.

To fight terror successfully, one must first reduce a terrorist to the level of the common criminal. To do this, one must be able to arrest the terrorist. This cannot happen as long as there exist governments who will not extradite criminals to other nations. Standing these monsters before the World Court is not an acceptable substitute. They must be extradited to the nation where they commit the crime, or the nation in which they have taken refuge must inflict a harsher punishment than would have ordinarily been the case. One certainly cannot arrest terrorists if there exist nations that accept them with open arms and hail them as heros. These nations, not American aggressiveness, form the biggest barriers to combatting terror. If their governments can be persuaded one way or another to realize the error of their ways, all well and good. If not, they will have to be dealt with. And folks, once that is done, somebody is going to have to clean up the mess. History, if not common sense, should tell us that.

Under Kerry or under Bush, we must stay our current course. We must finish the race, we must win this war, because otherwise, ultimately, civilization and all that it brings with it is lost.

well said.

to Draconis, that is. not to the two others that sneaked in before my post posted

Looks like the spammers have targetted a recent post.

*shakes head*

And, btw, I call bullshit on that comment by Michael W.
He just doesn't seem t' me to write like a 30-yr-old soldier.
2 cents, please.

If you wish to hear only what you agree with, you will always be right, or at least understood. I try to listen to both sides, but rarely do both sides listen. I have never chosen a side, as fiddler has noted, decent as he is, he is toying with emotions. I did not create this war, nor shall I win it, we will. The indignation that one lost a family, while another has not...again, I will shut up.

Rik

Wow, the Deterrence piece blew me away. The only thing I saw in it that I thought was off-base was the implication that Kerry at the helm would have been acceptable in another war, another time. How could a man who betrayed his comrades-in-arms and his country EVER be considered by a thinking and moral people who appreciate their military veterans as acceptable to lead the country and be the commander-in-chief?

This is my first time posting a comment on a blog. Just recently discovered the wide world of blogs around the time of MemoGate. Now I'm as addicted to blogs as I am to talk radio. Thanks. Will make a donation, albeit small; so many great causes, so little money...

Bill, DETERENCE was inspiring.
You've hit the nail on the head about the flaws in John Kerry's world views as well as inviting all the people of the cyberworld to our current battle with a reason and a cause.
I used to just think that liberals were a bunch of dumbasses. Now I see that it really is a disease. The good news is that there is a cure. You are living proof of that, Bill.
Get that book out there and count me in.

"Stolen Honor" (www.stolenhonor.com) is a documentary of John Kerry's betrayal of his fellow Vietnam vets. His testimony before the Senate "permanently branded in the American psyche the image of Vietnam veterans as murderous “baby killers” and “drugged out losers,” a perception that persists today, one deeply embedded in our history."
The video is also available on EBay by several sellers.

I found your article very interesting - and entertaining at times. You might want to go back and correct the comment in the section on the US and Britain in Tunisia during WWII - flying under a UN mandate . . . since the UN was not formed until 1945.

Bill, Your article on Deterrance was inspiring. I have passed it along hoping that the eyes of others will be opened. It is a must read for those "sitting on the fence". I can't imagine Kerry in the White House now! Thanks. (Do you work in the film industry?)

Bill - I upgraded to MT 2.6 and installed MT Blacklist. Cleaned up existing spam immediately. Still get stuff from Bobxxxx with new URL's but one click and the comments are gone and the new URL is added to the blacklist. You could probably get Rachel to do the upgrade for you.

Bill, thank you.

you're far from useless; keep writing, keep the torch lit, hold back the long, dark night.

El Bandito

Best work I have seen. "Deterrence" is not only true, but the most common sense aproach to the debates that I have ever read. Soldiers would do well to read this piece, it motivates and inspires. Thank you