I would compare the case examples to the Sunni and Shia conflicts in Iraq. While the Sunnis were either participating passively or actively in killing American occupation forces with AQ, there was a potential to get the Sunni tribes on our side. There couldn’t be a blanket amnesty for hard core fighters, due to AQ infiltration and hostile Sunni tribes. So the amnesty was a one time deal, given to those Sunni tribes that were fighting the occupation, but not directly involved in AQ’s killing of civilians or military personnel. Mostly.

However, after a certain point of time… there is no more amnesty. People have made their choices and they will have to deal with it, one way or another. We can’t have people hopping around from AQ to Shia to Sunni whenever they feel like it, at the moment of the month.

The Sunni were correct to think that American democracy and power is a poison, that infects a nation and leaves it weakened. They were also right to think that Americans would leave when we felt like it, and not when it was best for Iraq. They were wrong about AQ though and they were wrong about Bush.

Give them a choice, if they still want to contribute resources to the enemy, then the lines are drawn. And there are others that don’t have any resources to speak of, so it doesn’t matter which side they join, exactly. They are more like “human shields”. That’s a different issue.

A very apt description of what I referred to above as “the go-along-to-get-along, socially correct more than consciously politically correct liberals.” And so beautifully succinct!

Yep.

For a very long time I saw the opponents merely as the opposition (although *never* as the loyal opposition). No, I never fancied their minds might be changed substantively, only incrementally and glacially, but I’ve given up on even that flight of fancy.

It is only in the past decade or two that my own eyes have been opened to the sheer determination, the single-minded vicious hatred, of the opponents. They HATE me and all I stand for, and they won’t cut me any slack when push comes to shove. “All’s fair in love and war” goes the saying, and this is indeed WAR.

I (we) have to balance our individual integrity with the need to win decisively. Preceding posters have expressed this very, very well, and I commend one and all such for these expressions.

All that said, we still need to distinguish between the hard left (enemies) and the go-along-to-get-along, socially correct more than consciously politically correct liberals. These latter still *may* be subject to incremental change, albeit very slight, one micron at a time, but is that even worth the effort?

Such socially correct liberals (I know a few) do *not* hate me, and I need to remind myself of this in social situations, even as I recognize that they are nonetheless dangerous: they are the Marxist/Leninist “useful idiots”, and we need to rout them as well.

T, 3:18 pm — “Conservatives will only begin to succeed to the point that they recognize their opposition as inimical rather than misguided.”

Yep again. Well-stated.

When I speak of tactics and strategy, I am speaking of the real, cold, hard, line operations that either have taken place or will take place. They are not analogies.

I’ll support whichever candidate/faction that demonstrates they have the will to destroy the Left.

Their politics never really mattered to me. There was a reason for that. It’s not that the Republican establishment’s policies are crimping my style. Rather, that working with the Left is the same as working with the Islamic Jihad to me.

I repeat the link for convenience:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/02/obamas_fate.html#ixzz2tB70A3jE

Again, I agree. As you point out while misguided and evil may have a functional distinction, it can always come a point where the difference is academic; the results are the same either way.

I also agree with your description of Walker in Wisc. He seems to be working to change the paradigm and seems not to be distracted by the superficial (unlike Christie IMO).

Our problem is that it’s hard to uses warfare analogies without sounding like fascists. The left can get away with doing this because the media is in their pocket (have any news reports noted what party the convicted mayor of New Orleans belongs to?) and so just overlooks this. Chris Matthews consistently uses the Nazi analogy on adversaries, but then clutches his pearls and runs to the fainting couch when he hears the same from Ben Carson.

The right, among other things, needs to stop living in fear of being called a Nazi, a racist, a misgynist, etc. As long as we allow such name calling to tie our hands we are always fighting at a disavantage.

BTW see the last two paragraphs of JR Dunn’s essay that I linked to above. He discusses his take on the possible tipping point that might “get the ball rolling.”

An example of a relatively unknown strategic front is Chris Dodds, the MPAA, the RIAA, and internet “pirates”.

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/page/3/?s=Chris+Dodd

That is a strategic front that the Democrats control almost entirely, but few conservatives know what is actually going on there and why what happens there has strategic implications on the rest of us.

Without the knowledge of war and the art of war, people generally ignore this stuff because they cannot process the information in a way that makes sense to them. They can’t connect the dots. So they can’t stop 9/11s.

Another strategic front is the state which Governor Walker is cleaning of corruption vis a vis whacking on the unions. This isn’t merely forcing unions to bend, but changing the rules in such a way that union power is broken and replaced (counter insurgency wise) by a local militia (teachers, parents, kids) that are actually interested in saving life. But instead of looking at it as a political issue given the state’s voters and electoral votes, I look at it in terms of the state’s population. Walker can effectively free the entire state’s population from the Leftist slavery system, mind, body, and spirit. That is not only a tactical victory but a strategic one, although one that can be easily crushed if the other 49 states surround and exterminate the rebels.

It’s not that being misguided makes someone better or good. But being misguided means they are not allowed to participate at the strategic level, the end game construction and planning. Then they wouldn’t be misguided, they would be active participants in the art of war.

At the tactical level of SWAT teams busting in your home and killing everyone in it for “resisting arrest”, then being misguided is tactically the same as being evil. Since a misguided family giving your weaknesses, identity, and address away to the Regime, accomplishes the same Tactical Objective as one that did it knowing what would happen to the soon to be Jews.