QUOTE(ExiledInIllinois @ Oct 5 2004, 10:25 PM)
Oh, I might end up there. Might be my last few years to get 20 years in. Hopefully any RIF will give me the option of staying with my young family.
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That's not entirely what I meant, either. Wait until someone "Insh'allah!"-chanting mother!@#$er pops off a nuke in front of the Sears Tower, and count all the noncombattants among the survivors in downtown Chicago. You'll be able to count them on the fingers of one foot.
Ultimately...insurgency and terrorism require the entire
societal commitment of a country. It's total war even beyond the simple commitment of warm bodies to armaments production, or the bombing of said warm bodies to interrupt it. This type of war requires the
total commitment of
everyone to the concept of winning it.
And given the difficulties of defining the "concept" of victory...you can see why it'll take a few generations. We haven't even started that as a society; again, as I've said before, we have to figure out and make some difficult and
conscious choices about how we want American society to evolve as a society through the course of this conflict, if we ultimately intend to win it.