Valuable (?) military skills

Submitted by Michael S (United States), Apr 6, 2015 at 03:30

Swagatnam, Debanjan

I seriously question, whether the "skills" these terrorists learn in fighting one another will do them any good in a war fighting... whom? the West? And what, do you propose, they will gain in fighting -- yeah, even defeating, if it were possible -- the West? Will they be able to replace our decadent Western science with Boko Haram Universities teaching them how to abjuct children? Will they start treating sick people by rubbing camel dung on them?

You seem to have alluded several times, to the Thirty Years War, fought between 1618 and 1648, largely in Germany. That war killed about half the German people, and left Germany trailing the other European powers from that day forward. Even Hitler, with all his mad energy, couldn't undo the damage; whereas before then, Germany had been a cultural center of Europe. Now, most people of German descent speak English instead of German; because our ancestors fled the chaos of that war.

What good came of the Thirty Yeas' War? I'd say the greatest good, was Anabaptists fleeing the war to Switzerland, Alsace-Lorraine (and on to America), undamaged parts of Germany, etc. and becoming the spiritual progenitors of the Baptists, Methodists and Evangelicals; who, in turn, spread the Bible and the gospel into all the world.

From a Jewish point of view, the Thirty Years' War paved the way for the Chmielnicki Uprising, in which thousands of Ashkenazi Jews were slaughtered. In England, it led to the Civil War against the Stuart monarchy, which ended up with the Stuarts being returned to power. The Netherlands had won its independence before the world began; and it fell from dominance shortly afterward.

The ones who seem to have benefitted the most from the bloodletting, as a ruling entity, were the Stuarts and Hanoverians of England, who participated very little in the hostilities. What they DID benefit from a great deal, were the likes of Galileo Galilei, Antoine van Leeuwenhoek and Sir Isaac Newton, who brought about the Western Learning that the Muslims seem eager to destroy. None of them learned any "military skills" (such as rape, pillage and burning people at the stake) in the war; rather, they fled from the conflict.

Shalom shalom :-)

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".