That is actually printed on one side of a Claymore mine.

Actually, I enjoy talking with TB, especially on non-political issues, and in many ways, my political opinions are much closer to his than say, Bowser's. In fact, I often agree with him on many topics, or at least am sympathetic to his views and can see where he's coming from. On the rest of his oubursts, I figure he does his own cause more harm than good, so I simply withdraw and let him rave on. Occaisionally, he comes up with something so outrageous I have to intervene, if only to let him know someone is listening. Sometimes, when I take his attacks as personal, I lash out too, but in general, I rely on his inability to recognize that his opponents may actually have very good reasons (from their perspective) for believing the way they do. This will always handicap him in debate, in spite of his talents, because he cannot understand his enemy.

In a way, this is almost a microcosm of the situation in Iraq, where we are perfectly capable of annihilating our enemy in battle, but are helpless and inept when engaging him in a more complex social and political battlefield. It is this inability to understand one's opponents' thought processes and motives and to always cast them in all-or-none black-and-white terms, (probably due to the homogeneity of American culture and its geographic isolation from others), that has always characterized the American experience overseas. As long as we fool ourselves into thinking that figuring out someone's head is equivalent to accepting their philosophy, we will always be fighting blind.