Blood, Death, Horror…Yee Hah!

That fine, upright Christian man Dr. Earl Tilford of Grove City College graced the editorial page of The Bucks County Courier Times again yesterday with more pearls of wisdom.

War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale. Countless duels go to make up war, but a picture of it as a whole can be formed by imagining a pair of wrestlers. Each tries through physical force to compel the other to do his will; his immediate aim is to throw his opponent in order to make him incapable of further resistance.
– Carl von Clausewitz, On War, page 1.

As I read this, I imagined a steel cage match between one-time WWWF wrestling champion Bruno Sammartino and George “The Animal” Steele in which the latter started eating the turnbuckle again and the camera zoomed in for a closeup (yep…REALLY dating myself with that one).

Don’t you just love how Dr. Tilford finds a way to take all of the stuff that we have come to associate with about war - the carnage, bombed-out rubble, dismemberment and shattering of people’s lives and that of their families and friends - and turn it into something as clean, wholesome and antiseptic as what he describes above?

I’ve included a photo from Canadian photographer Robert Fisk with this post (apparently of a roadside IED exploding). I could have found photos from Fisk that were much more brutal and practically nauseating that I could have included here, but I chose not to do that. However, they would have been more representative of what Tilford imagines above.

World War IV, a duel between competing world views — a total war for cultural, religious, political and economic hegemony — has entered a new phase. For the moment, and perhaps for some time to come, al Qaeda and associated groups remain at the center of this war; but their roles have changed, and there are new antagonists.

As I read this, I also realized that Dr. Tilford missed his calling. He should have been the narrator for those ‘50s teen, cheesy 8-millimeter makeout flicks with tape across the eyes of the actors onscreen that they used to show in sex-ed classes so you’d know not to try to cop a feel from Betty Lynn Flynn in the rumble seat when parking in Dad’s Roadster down by the malt shop. He REALLY could have scared everyone into not touching each other, let me tell you!

Nearly five years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden, as well as his deputy, Egyptian terrorist physician Ayman al Zawahiri, and al Qaeda’s head-thug in Iraq, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, remain at large. They must be hunted down and eliminated.

Now I KNOW Armageddon is near. Tilford just recycled a DNC talking point (remaining at large because of the inept President you support and his regime, by the way).

The good news is that while figures released by the National Counterterrorism Center indicate that terror attacks worldwide increased nearly fourfold in 2005, to a total of 11,111, the nature of those attacks has changed. For one thing, 30 percent of terror attacks took place in Iraq.

Yep, thanks to our invasion and the vacuum that was subsequently created while Dubya posed for his “Mission Accomplished” moment, filled by al Qaeda and their minions.

While terror attacks have proliferated, al Qaeda itself seems less awesome, with its primary capabilities now manifested in occasional videos calling for jihad.

In all seriousness, we should all hope and pray, remain vigilant and do what we can as we live our lives to ensure that it stays that way.

Moreover, there have been no al-Qaeda strikes to rival those well-planned events that took place over the last 13 years, from the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993; through the attacks on U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es-Sala’am, Tanzania, in 1998; to that fateful September 2001 day of viciousness that will forever remain etched into our national consciousness.

Dr. Tilford, I don’t know about where you live, but in Bucks County, we lost 19 people on 9/11. I don’t need you or anyone else to remind me of what that day means.

In the last three years, attacks like those in Madrid, in the Egyptian Sinai, and in London were conducted by local groups inspired — but not directed — by al Qaeda. Globally, the worldwide response to these attacks must be ruthless. Suicide bombers determined to die are impossible to dissuade, but the terrorists who recruit, arm, and dispatch them on their deadly missions can be ferreted out. All terrorists must be faced with one simple reality: terrorism will get you killed.

The flaming-hot, almost messianic jingoism and attempts at whipping his audience into a lather of fear and eye-bulging paranoia is only part of the reason why I’m highlighting Tilford’s column, by the way.

World War IV, however, is intensifying. Iran’s determination to build a nuclear arsenal and its vow to wipe Israel off the map, along with similar threats it has made to the West, have escalated the war to new levels.

Threats don’t escalate war. Destruction escalates war (surprising indeed that I have to point that out to a member of the military).

While the United States and Iran have been at war for decades with Hezbollah and associated terrorist groups, which have attacked Americans and U.S. interests throughout the Middle East and elsewhere, a nuclear-armed Iran is strategically unacceptable. When all else fails (and “all else” likely will fail), the world will look to the United States to prevent an Iranian-fostered nightmare.

The Iranian situation is difficult partly because their “leader” AdMADinejad is so unpredictable (but is Dubya really that stable also?). The ridiculous rhetoric about the destruction of Israel coming from Iran hasn’t helped either, of course. However, the mere existence of Tilford’s visions of utter destruction apparently make it inevitable to him.

American air-strikes may well be answered with new waves of terrorism against the West. Nevertheless, on the bloody scales of total war, what nuclear detonations can do to major American and European cities far outweighs the destructive potential of even a legion of maniacal suicidal Jihadists.

Yes, that’s why we have to monitor Iran in concert with the U.N. and the world community (and by the way, an important player in this would be Russia; the problem is that Dick Cheney just got Putin so POed during Cheney’s recent visit over there that they now think we’re crazier than anyone in Iran. Good job, Dick! Why don’t you just run along now and accidentally shoot someone else in the face for good measure?).

Meanwhile, the Axis of Evil (Iran, Syria and North Korea) may soon grow to include Cuba, Venezuela and Colombia, emphasizing the global and total nature of what will be a very long war.

To me, this association of the latter three countries now puts Tilford in the Wingnut Hall Of Fame.

Why would Colombia attack us when we’ve partnered with them in the illegal sale of guns and drugs? Venezuela wouldn’t want to blow us up either because they’ve done well feeding our dependency on oil, which we crave like a junkie pleading for a nice, warm “spike.” And to think that Cuba could do anything to us is a total joke (such reactionary fears have been another dependency of sorts for the Repugs for years though, I’ll admit, especially in South Florida, giving rise to the careers of people like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen).

Since Tilford has made this particularly crazed observation, it would be nice if he could actually offer some proof, wouldn’t it?

No such luck (and in fact, except for some statistics early on, there’s no attribution anywhere for any of these claims).

However, one thing Dr. Tilford WILL do for us now is provide a history lesson for no apparent reason (set the “wayback,” Sherman).

In 147 BC, during the Third Punic War between the competing empires of Rome and Carthage, Rome dispatched its legions under Scipio Aemilianus to end definitively a century of conflict. Upon arrival in Africa, Scipio vigorously pressed a land and sea blockade of Carthage, enforcing starvation and disease on the city’s population. The next year, a determined Roman attack resulted in bloody house-to-house fighting in which 90 percent of the population of Carthage had perished by starvation, disease or had been killed in battle. By order of the Roman Senate, and despite Scipio’s objections, the city was then completely destroyed and the survivors sold into slavery.

Didn’t ABC make a miniseries out of this in the ‘70s (something Alex Haley plagiarized, as I recall :-)?

Over the next four centuries, Rome led the Mediterranean world. Although never loved, Rome was feared by its foes and respected by kingdoms submissive to Roman suzerainty. During the next few centuries of the Pax Romana, Western civilization based upon Judeo-Christian principles of human dignity and justice took root.

Notwithstanding the fact that Rome stole like crazy from the Greeks during that time (and were eventually overrun by the Mongol hordes anyway...sounds about right).

World War IV is a war for the future of humanity. The evil that emanates from Tehran, Damascus, Havana, Bogotá, Caracas and Pyongyang can prevail only if the United States fails to lead. The United States alone has the power to prevail over these threats. This deadly duel between competing world views — between good and evil — will define both America’s place in history and the future of humanity. And this is a duel to the death.

I don’t know what it means exactly (and at this moment, I’m not going to waste precious calories trying to find out) that a newspaper with a reasonably significant circulation like the Bucks County Courier Times would give someone like Dr. Earl Tilford a forum for his terminal delusions of epochal, civilization-ending horror without some consideration of another point of view…namely that of actual reality. However, the fact is that they have done so.

Yes, we are definitely in a conflict (I hesitate the use the world “war” in as sterile and theoretical a fashion as Dr. Tilford) with people who want to kill us, and probably will be for quite a long time. However, in the face of that fact, we should exercise courage, determination, and resolve, and also LIVE OUR LIVES. We must weigh the reality that we know and act accordingly, not give into delusions that we are to be attacked by Hugo Chavez, of all people, and also not imagining a pair of wrestlers throwing each other all over the ring in the name of the continuance of civilization as we know it.