I’m having trouble following you, but I think I got the jist of most of your post.

By “tend their crops”, the picture I had in mind was taken directly from what I see here in the U.S. when I travel cross country. People I see have their homestead, their livelyhood, their family, and all is well in the world. We had our interrnal civil war years ago, one side capitulated, and there has never been a recurrence ever again based on that old divide. We forgave our differences and forged on as a unified country. You’ll never hear about people from the Southern US killing people from the Northern US because of old Civil War differences. 🙂

By using this image in contrast to all the symptomatic tribal in-fighting I see all across the Middle East, I was trying to make a point that an ideology that does not recognize forgiveness as a righteous virtue seems obviously doomed (in my opinion) to perpetual violence. With all the heated blood flowing around the Middle East among the radical fringe and the growing throngs they influence, it’s hard to envision everyone over there ever saying “Hooray, we won” and going back to the normalcy of common family living if Israel was ever actually destroyed. Not when the very fabric of everyday living is seen as “destroying all who defy Allah’s will”. There will still be the “infidelity” of Europe and the West which history shows is already incentive enough to keep the Jihadist movement thriving.

When you can’t forgive the past, everything about your existence becomes a time capsule of hindsight, hatred and bad blood. Unless forgiveness is seen as a righteous commodity, a society is doomed to become nothing more than a boiling pot of hatred, violence and lust for neverending revenge.

As far as virgins go, I don’t view heaven or paradise as a place of the flesh. If you’re speaking symbolically that’s one thing, but IMO too many suicide bombers have met their deaths thinking it was a sure fire way to score with the ladies. 😉

So again we are (or least I am, don’t really remember whom I was agaisnt the last time) getting to the only solution for this whole issue…stop violence…someone has to make the first step and apparently Israels are just too arrogant and stubborn to do it…Because they are the ones doing the ultimate reason for all this violence, the occupation. To end it, the one doing it needs to step down (and this means real stepping down, not some charity pieces) in this case Israel. Of course you can go and say “but that wont stop the terrorism..” but it’s the only way. Of course there will be some sort of terrorism for awhile (mostly frustration for the fact that there is nothiong more to fight on as your whole life was build around that fight), but it will dry out as there is no reason for majority of palestinians to support the extremist any longer.

As you alluded to ,the entirety of Islam in the Middle East seems to essentially define itself around the necessary destruction of Israel. Add up the area of all the countries who forge their very identity on the destruction of this perceived “occupation” verus the size of the land in question. I’d say the contested land is roughly 1% (or less) of the overall Middle Eastern land mass, yet the entire region lives in continuous upheaval over this miniscule compromise in real estate.

I personally think it’s a joke to believe that Iran, Syria, et al would simply go about tending their crops after the theoretical fall of Israel. Their provocation of the “infidels” would continue for the very reasons you mentioned – needing to continue the fight to maintain their sense of identity. Add to that the fact that Islam does not exactly uphold forgivness as one of its righteous virtues, and you’re left with a formula for unending mayhem until all the world bows to Allah, or is otherwise slaughtered as infidels. Plenty of radical Islamic leaders have professed just as much, and plenty of Islamic political leaders have remained virtually silent rather than denounce such proclamations. There is so much hate of the West and so little philosophical capacity for forgiveness among Islam; there’s no doubt in my mind that the festering grudge is set to simmer and boil until the end of time. How do you reach a truce with a philosophic base that does not forgive? Obviously you can’t, and because of this, the conflict in the Middle East will forever remain the festering pit of hell that it is – all in the name of God, ironically.

The way I see it, folks in Europe and the USA are able to sit at ease and define their day to day perspectives from a distance. Even though the same wordly information and underastandings are available to Israel, the reality of their everyday lives and the precariousness of their day-to-day existence surely has a major influence on the way they respond to being prodded. I agree that their response has been way over the top in regard to the nature of the provocation, but existing amid that cauldron of dissent and under the cloud of endless Islamic persectution has certainly frayed the permanent nerve of the country.

Anyone who’s been physically harrassed by another party nonstop over an extended period of time knows exactly how that situation creates a psycological condition that degrades the finer aspects of rationality and reaction. I think the color of Israel’s response is a perfect exhibition of that very syndrome. It doesn’t excuse their use of overwhelming force against all of Lebanon, but IMO it does partially define the rationality behind their reaction.

I’m not “for” anyone in this fight because the chaos and death of war absolutely sucks, but I was somewhat suprised that no one in this thread had a peep to say about Hezbolah itself – the instigators of the curent debacle. Without their terroristic actions, all of the children (only the Lebanese ones, oddly) mentioned above would be going about their daily lives.

The ex-Butch Schroeder Corsair previously on site was the plane now with the Tri-State Warbird Museum mentioned above. There is another partial fuselage elsewhere on the airport, but it’s not a permanent fixture there and not currently scheduled for restoration.

But Papua New Guinea still falls under the control of the Indonesian government, does it not? That’s been my impression as per the politics surrounding the recovery of the Swamp Ghost. If only because of the recent export debacle, I’ll stand by the opinion expressed in my earlier post.

Every time I reflect on the situation surrounding Morotai it makes me ill. There was a controversial American broker named Tom Voll who had actually sent pictures back to the United States (specifically to the Yankee Air Force Museum) showing much of these surviving airframes. At the time, the YAF Museum had been looking for a Ford-built B-24 to add to their museum and Voll had found a good example. The YAF Museum responded that they were not interested.

I guess my point is that the exsitence of these planes was not unknown amongst a portion of the warbird crowd during that time, prior to their scrapping. I’ve heard that the island did not have an adequate dock for loading the material onto ships. I also understand that most of the island had been included as part of the grounds of a high-security prison, thus the resulting inaccessibility of these aircraft to the average traveler. Not sure how Mr. Voll acquired his photographs or the right to salvage the planes, but he had actual dollar amounts attached to each type. His photos & description mentioned “B-25’s, B-24’s, A-20’s P-40’s, P-38’s, Dauntlesses, and Corsairs” specifically. Just think back to the current goings-on among the warbird crowd in 1988, and transpose onto that the fact that these 100% original war-seasoned aircraft were still lined up among the weeds!

Hopefully there’s at least one or two more nooks among the South Pacific jungle that might still offer up a sizable lot of historic material before time and the local metal merchants rape the last bit of it for eternity.

If there ever was a testament to the Indonesian Government’s true colors concerning their regard for “historic artifacts”, the State sponsored pludering at Morotai should be all the facts one needs to size up their true intensions, regardless of the contrived statements they recently released regarding the recovery of “Swamp Ghost”. Justin Taylan can preach all he wants, but the aircraft remaining in Indonesian held territories are doomed in their current state.

Interestingly I believe there is film footage of the recovery in PNG. Now if it was the recovery of the gas station B-17 which has languished for years in the U.S I guess it would hardly merit a mention.

Much the same goes for the veterans themselves. An old combat pilot dying in some convalesent home is much less newsworthy than the discovery/recovery of a pilot’s remains where they fell in combat. IMO, the inherent travesty would be society’s decision to regard the first pilot in less honorable fashion than the second.

That said, it must be remembered that Swamp Ghost is not only a combat aircraft (unlike the vast majority of B-17 survivors I believe) but an ultra rare “E” model with one of a kind items on board. Other than the slim-tailed B-17D model stored with the National Air & Space Museum, this is the oldest B-17 on the face of the planet. It’s also a phenomenal time capsule (barring some plundering in recent years) unlike the other survivors, most of which have been converted to transports, sprayers, water bombers, etc during their post-war years. No one should make the mistake of equating this plane with any of the other B-17’s around the globe. It is truly unique, and more than any other, it definitely deserves the respect of recovery and preservation.

Regardless of opinion, experiencing the physical presence of these aircraft imbibes the story far better than any book or field report. Every person who visits this forum can most likely recall a moment in their youth when they visited an airshow or museum, at which point their perspective on historical aircraft was changed forever. That’s the kind of message Swamp Ghost deserves to deliver. There is no honor in being reduced to scrap metal in some faraway, uninhabitable swamp when the means exist to properly preserve the icon AND the story for posteristy and valuable historical record. How rich in historical knowledge would society be today if the Pharoes, their artifacts, and all of their historical secrets were never exhumed and preserved for study? What if the fragile Red Sea scolls were left to rot peace rather than be properly preserved and studied because of some political disagreement?

Swamp Ghost may not enjoy the same level of intrinsic historical significance as these things, but the general underlying logic of its historic preservation remains the same. We’d be a far poorer society without the artifact, and we’d certainly be judged fools by future generations – having sat idly by to watch such a thing languish and disintegrate, squandering the opportunity to preserve the touchstone, knowing full well that actions could have been taken to the contary.

http://www.warbirdaeropress.com/articles/bail_out.html