<I suppose one could say that in each of these cases there was no unalterable desire to obliterate the other because they didn't. By definition. Then your statement is when I want to obliterate someone there is no coming to peace.

Good clarification. Maybe I wasn't clear about that. I added the phrase "enemy who wants you destroyed" to try and make that distinction. As I clarified earlier in a different post, we are also primarily talking about the attitudes of governments or leaders (more on this idea below).

Obviously, one can eventually come to terms with an enemy. We are not only at peace with Germany and Japan (which we utterly defeated, just to make my point), but have few if any ill feelings about them. God willing, someday it will be the same for adversaries like Palestine and Israel, but this means overriding the radicals on both sides somehow.

I have a general positive outlook about humanity. I believe that your average person, from any nation or culture, wants mainly to be able to get his work done, feed and raise his family, and maybe have a little fun. Getting on with a nice, normal life. I believe that your average person could not care less about politics, except when it gets in the way of his normal life. The salt of the earth. You know...morons. (Sorry. Strike that last. Couldn't resist.)

Seriously, I believe that these average people far outnumber those radicals, worldchangers, and tyrant wannabes who want to stride the world like a colossus, make their marks in history, and win the world for whatever god or philosophy they happen to worship.

The problem is that average people don't have what it takes to stop the world-striders. If it was in their makeup, they would be one of those world-striders.

But, if you can suppress the tyrants, the real people will take the stage, and they're the ones who really value peace. I have no real objective evidence of this, other than examples in my own nation. Washington does not really see the world the same way as a farmer in Kansas.

Still, I think it is true worldwide. No one can be a libertarian without the belief that people will normally do the right thing without being forced.

I have never been to the Middle East. I see the Palestinians portrayed as fanatical, and obsessed with war. I don't think so. I don't think most Palestinians are the ones carrying signs, and dressing their kids in fake bombs. I think most of them are just trying to get by, going to work in the morning, coming home at night, and living in fear not only of the Israelis, but of the world-striders among their own people. You don't see the quiet ones. The ones who quietly persevere under terrible conditions. They don't make good news to outsiders, and the Palestinian leaders would like us to think that their views are universal.

I think that given a chance, it is these Palestinians who will quietly go about the business of building a nation when the radicals are gone.

Now, the $64,000 question: How to get to that point?

BTW, my own opinion is that if North and South Korea were left utterly alone, with no threat of external retaliation, North Korea's army would overrun the south like a horde of locusts. The quiet people are very quiet in North Korea. But they are there.