Yeah, yeah. People used to get upset over the word "Luftwaffe" too. It was considered synonymous with evil. You know what "luftwaffe" means in the German language? It means..."air force". That is its literal meaning, and that's all it means. "Jagdwaffe" meant "fighter (plane) force". "Kriegsmarine" meant "war fleet" or "navy". None of these terms in any way indicated a symbolic connection with Naziism. They were neutral terms similar to what other countries use to describe armed forces. Needless to say, the modern German air force is again called the Luftwaffe, just like it was in World War II.

It is precisely because people are lazy thinkers that they cannot bother to look beyond a culturally derived word like "luftwaffe" or "jihad" and realize that it is referring to something that they and other people do too...not just the people they are focusing their fear and anger upon.

Martin was singling out Muslims with his use of the term "jihad", and I am pointing out that Muslims are not the only people who go haring off on crazy wars of perceived righteousness and kill civilians in the process. Israelis and Americans do much the same sort of thing, but they call it by some other name. Both sides in the Middle East are engaged in the same sort of destructive actions, using the power at their command. It so happens the Israelis and Americans are powerful enough to do it in the open. Those who are not that powerful do it with roadside bombs, suicide bombers, snipers, and over-the-border rocket attacks. It has ever been so. The powerful march in glittering armies. The not so powerful snipe from the shadows...as was often the case when American revolutionaries took on larger formations of British soldiers in the early years of the American War of Independence. I'm sure the British considered those American colonists to be the equivalent of "terrorists" at that juncture in history.

They were, after all, opposed to the rule of kings! (Absolute heresy at the time...) Why, they were worse than Communists, those ragged colonials, definitely in league with the devil, best just to hang them all. :-)

Yup, that's the way the mighty British Empire saw it. That's the way the American-Israeli Empire sees the ragged people who oppose them from the shadows too. Just barely human...cos they don't have nice uniforms, nuclear bombs, and stealth bombers at their command. They are therefore not seen as morally sanctioned to kill en masse, like American B-52 pilots do.

They do have Saudi oil money coming in, though, to finance their efforts from the shadows...and the Saudis have nice fleets of shiny fighter jets supplied by America in return for lucrative oil arrangements.

Very dirty business indeed. I wonder what Israel has been promised by the USA in return for playing their part in the game? Maybe a nice big piece of Iraq somewhere down the line? Or oil? Or water? I wonder.

These people are sowing the wind, as the saying goes.