Just how would you defeat ISIS?

[Richard T. Eger]

Dear Nick, John, Ruy, and the rest of the TOCH! membership,

Besides being who shot down who types, which I find an incredibly boring subject, we do have a huge expertise among our members as to good and bad decisions made in the conduct of WW II. As they say, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past and, since we are a group focused on WW II, we have unique expertise in this area.

Thus, squelching discussion along these lines seems to me to be aggressively heavy handed.

Are the attacks on Paris and elsewhere acts of desperation akin to the V1 and V2 programs, distracting from the fact that otherwise things were going quite badly for Germany. The losses suffered today, while attention grabbers, are of the same low order of magnitude. If we acknowledge that we are at war, it changes our perspective. It doesn't take away from our compassion for losses suffered, but it does give us a chance to do more.

What other parallels can we apply to our current situation?

Regards,
Richard