Firstly, a small point: WWII in Europe lasted 6 years, not four.

Secondly, a much bigger point: wow, your political position is rather extreme. You seem to think it would have been a good idea to nuke the Middle East on September 12. Let's put aside the fact that there are plenty of Americans (and other foreigners) living in the area (so American lives would have been lost). Let's also put aside the fact that a good proportion of the world's oil is in the area. And let's also put aside the fact that there are hundreds of millions of Muslims who live outside the Middle East (Indonesia, Pakistan, etc.). The bottom line: slaughtering innocent people is bad and is thoroughly inconsistent with the West's values. Nuking the ME in no way would have counted as a "victory".

Thirdly... are you really suggesting Anne Coulter would make a better president than Senator Clinton? You realize Coulter is crazy, right? You realize she's a creationist, right? You realize she's deeply ignorant, right?

Lastly, there is a much, much better theory of why big countries lose small wars: the lunch/dinner principle. See http://www.jstor.org/view/00438871/di971198/97p00662/0

I was rather alarmed by this post, so I've written a response: http://ionian-enchantment.blogspot.com/2008/03/crazy-kanazawa.html

This post goes beyond ignorance, well into intellectual delusion. This sort of pseudo-educated ranting is what gives evolutionary psychology a bad name and leads thoughtful non-specialists to dismiss what are often reasonable insights gained by EP. Clearly, the capacity for hatred is natural in humans -- as is the capacity for love, boredom and in your case, deep confusion.

Is it a fair summary of your post to say that you think we need to hate our enemies more and a good start would be to nuke the middle east?

Although your view is a bit extreme, I do think you make several very valid points that Americans have become too afraid to admitt to. There has been a push in this society, stemming back to the 1960's, wherein "open-mindedness" is equated with higher intelligence. There is truth to this concept, however, it has gone too far, promoting the asinine concept of "cultural reletavism." Using an open mind to constructively observe and form intelligent judgements has been reduced to total lack of judgement. If you aren't making real judgements, then you simply aren't thinking. How intelligent is that? I believe this war has been such a disaster in part because we are no longer allowed to form judgements about the enemy. Obvioulsy these people hate us, but to imply that a culture exixts that promotes dualistic, crazed, obsessive, hate, is somehow "insensitive." I'm not suggesting we arbitrarily bomb huge land masses and I think it is good there is consideration of the innocent lives at risk, however, perhaps a little more condemnation is neccesary. Ultimately, we have to protect our own innocent first and lets face it, we're dealing with irrational groups of people who will not compromise. To insist that they will, that they must, is asserting our own beleifs for diplomacy. Why is that not considered culturally insensitive? Lets call a spade a spade. These people are hateful and as you suggested, maybe we could take on a bit of that hate for our own deciciveness.

Ann coulter would be the worst person to be president, rather have george bush !!!

I've always thought that the most effective way to fight a war would be to try to kill and demoralize as many on the other side as possible. In that sense, killing lots of noncombatants is a decent way to win. But is that what we really want from civilization? I think we're moving away from the times when wars were fought and won through the destruction of other societies. We can see that it doesn't work in the West. Even jingoistic countries like the USA must face the horrors brought to us by our media and other free media in Europe. Countries in which a repressive elite controls the media, as we find in some of the mid-East, have populations that seem to be effectively whipped into hate. Call me an optimist, but I see the tide of history sweeping those societies away. It may be frustrating for the generals, but it is a good thing that a total war is harder to fight nowadays.

P.S. I do hate fundies, I just think killing them is not a nice way to live.

Just, wow. Your ignorance and utter retardation truly is humbling. I'm not even going to bother deconstructing the absurdities of this post. I'm going to save myself the headache and simply remove PT's RSS feed from my subscriptions and never bother with this site/magazine again. Such is the wonderful power of the interwebs.

Let it be known that not everyone associated with PT shares the same views on all topics. Homogeneity is not our aim, and we have not yet established a policy of censoring our bloggers.

So this is "science"?
The "science" of the soul no less?
Give me the other fanatics any day.
Well since we're being so rational & reasonable, "psych-" this dimwits.
If this juvenile delinquent yuppie eunuch would've stuck to science he might've been able to "enlighten" us about the evolutionary biology of the yellow breasted chickenhawk.
What are you waiting for tough guy, haven't you heard Uncle Sam is looking for a few good men? What's the matter, are you afraid they might smell the semen on your breath? Don't worry, if you don't ask they won't tell. Or something like that.
Once upon a time, when men were men, they lied about their age & medical conditions to get into the army, not to get out of it.
You've had seven years to get your affairs in order, you & your chickenhawk flock don't have any excuses any more. For you turkeys to still be shooting off your mouths like war is a video game or spectator sport without half the world dying of laughter just goes to show that we live in an insane society.
And as Socrates (or Mr. Spock) said, "In an insane society the sane man will appear to be insane."
I could say a lot more but it'll just get censored anyway.
And "So it goes."
Sincerely,
Joe Coletta

Oh,
For the rest of the yuppie eunuchs at Psyhopeepee Today who "have not yet established a policy of censoring our bloggers" don't worry about it. I just did your job for you. Happy to help, call back any time.

Let it further be known that in my comment above I was shooting from the hip, not verbalizing any institutional consensus. "We have not yet established a policy of censoring our bloggers" could, sans sarcasm, be restated as "To the best of my knowledge, we do not, and will not, censor our bloggers."

Because, it's all online, and it's pretty straightforward. For example, "Convention IV relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War", article 3, part 1:

"In addition to the provisions which shall be implemented in peace-time, the present Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them.

The Convention shall also apply to all cases of partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party, even if the said occupation meets with no armed resistance."

...

"Art. 3. In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following
provisions: "

...

"Art. 4. Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals."

So you see, since both Iraq and the United States are parties to the Geneva Conventions, the provisions for the protection of civilians applies in any armed conflict. Unilateral slaughter of millions of innocents is most certainly prohibited.

Source: http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/380?OpenDocument

At last, a provocative post that pulls the silent readers out of their insular lives into the pool of righteous indignation. Can't read it without pointing out why it's all wrong, and the more folks respond, the more similar responses will be evoked. I'll say that I like your bravery in positing we nuke them all. However, I'll say that the long drawn-outness (if I can use a made up word here) of this war isn't related to lack of hate but to lack of concise military planning and execution. By that I mean that we waited too late to send in more troops, and that fault lies with a president who is better at stumbling through a speech than following the advice of his experience military officials. So I think this post starts off on the wrong foot by simply assuming that more hate is what is sustaining the other factions. Not at all. Any good fighter knows that the less the emotion, the more the intellect driving the fact. That said it's poor planning and poor execution. By the way, the next provocative post should at least stem from facts and not conjecture. A back-up experiment maybe. Or something

What an -... There is no shortage of dumb out there!

I'm a neuroscience student - it's not hard to see that this article's plainly full of shit.

Yes, hate may be an innate emotion, but when you project that onto your ideas about why the United States is losing, you fail to note that humans have created changes on large scales in all realms of life where they've had conflicts on much more peaceful term s .

Please let this be some sort of trick played to elicit reactions from suckers.