HERE WE GO AGAIN ...

  HERE WE GO AGAIN

...Mars is in the sights of our space program again.   NASA has said that it really plans to go to Mars and, if that wasn't enough, they plan to take people there.   The plan is considered, by many, to be a one-way or suicide mission, but ostensibly to begin the colonization of another planet.   An interesting concept because we humans have certainly screwed up the planet which we currently inhabit.   Isaac Asimov, Gene Roddenberry and Jules Verne would certainly be interested in these plans, since they all wrote of travel to other planets, and it makes one wonder which one was closest to what may be the truth?

            Are we in the early stages of a World War...again?   Given the spread of Islam, in varying forms, around the world, should they decide that the words in the Quran are more important than any other words, such as in the Bible, could they bring the world to the brink, and beyond, of a world war?   It seems plausible when you read or see what's going on now, by so-called radical Islamists.   World War One was started, so the story goes, by a single pistol shot that killed the Archduke Ferdinand.   World War Two was begun, according to what I've heard, when Hitler decided that it was right and proper to regain any and all German-speaking lands.  Looking back, the big wars started with relatively modest reasons, but isn't what's happening now, around the world, bigger than those two incidents?

            Shall we see the rise of some sort of plague again?   Superbugs, resistant to the best anti this-or-that drug, along with imported diseases that were once thought to be eliminated, have sprung up again.   World travelers, able to make it from one foreign land to another in a matter of hours, may be bringing bugs with them, and not be aware of it.   As it's been explained, some people are simply carriers, and they don't get the dangerous disease that they carry, but others do, and others may die from it.   That's no secret, and it's not a fairy tale, it's happening now, around the world.   Ebola, measles, the various influenza strains, not to mention crippling polio, may be just one airline traveler away from creating a plague that could decimate a population.

            "If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack", this by Winston Churchill.   A brilliant man, a visionary, possibly one of the most intelligent men ever to serve in government.   He believed, for example, in the mass bombing of Germany during World War Two, and we could use that sort of thinking today.  He ultimately convinced the Americans to follow the lead of the RAF, to bomb Germany in a manner that came to be called "carpet bombing".   The losses, to both the American 8th Air Force and the RAF, were staggering, but they persisted...and eventually the plan worked.   This brings to mind the manner in which the United States is conducting its war plan on ISIS.

            To many, in policy-making levels in our government, this is not a war on Islam, but against a radical, fundamental, barbaric, group, split off from the main body of Islam.   How is that thinking rational, when the enemy has made it absolutely clear that it is at war with “the west”, or what we call civilization?   To read the Quran in its original form, not the watered-down version that some Muslim groups present, is to discover that “peace” can only come to the world when Islam is the dominate, maybe the only, “religion” on earth.   When the west realizes that this cannot be allowed to happen, perhaps they will rise up and do what needs to be done…again.

            Do we need a Charles Martel again?   He halted the Islamic advance into Western Europe at the Battle of Tours in 732.   Now, when ISIS says it will get to the gates of Rome, which it failed to do way back when, it has modern equipment, computer-savvy people, and presents horrific videos as recruiting tools, it may be possible.   What would a General Patton do in a situation like this?   "In case of doubt attack" - "Know what you know and know what you don't know" which were just two of his quotes.  Patton was the ultimate soldier's general.  I suspect that he might have subscribed to General Curtis Lemay’s theory that “you bomb them back to the Stone Age”.  So, all in all, the world is in turmoil again.   We, as mankind, may be standing on the brink of extinction, by our own hand.   Again, the short-sightedness of various politicians around the world are considering their little wants and needs more important than the survival of people on earth.   One brilliant man, Albert Einstein said it best…”I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

            Larry Usoff, US Navy Retired     www.AirHumanityRadio.net