Where is Churchhill.....

....when you need him? I'm working my way through this 74 page! document, just as Roger Simon is (from whence I found the pdf copy that I'm reading through now. If Melanie's precis is any indication, the document is extraordinary indeed.

Since we're on the topic of terrorism, you might want to watch the video LGF links to in this post. It's 56MB, so it will take a while to download depending upon your connection speed, but it's worth the wait if you want to understand what's going on in Holland after Theo Van Gogh's murder by an Islamist extremist.

UPDATE: Here's one tidbit from this paper that should make the rest worth the price of admission - "Just as the UN was born from particular circumstances, so too do our particular circumstances require a new response."

UPDATE 2: Here's another morsel to chew on.

Regarding the use of military force, the present difficulty rests on the dual situation of the UN: on one hand, its aim is to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war"; on the other hand, it gives the responsibility for eliminating war to the states on the Security Council (especially the five permanent members). One of the consequences is to hide the fact that the UN itself is unable to provide a military force. Another is that peace can mean breaking the Charter's rule on non-interference in other states.

UPDATE 3: Another insightful morsel.

War is based on the willingness of a group to kill and in doing so to risk death. As such it has a material side (weapons etc) but it also has a cultural or ethos side........The present issue is more the “liberal ambivalence” that has developed in the western intellectual. Here “humanitarian intervention” is good and “war” bad, even if both result in body parts left on the battlefield and corpses in body bags.

UPDATE 4: Write this in stone. "New technology will never be a substitute for willingness to commit troops and no amount of planning can replace risk."