When I was younger, I was a big fan of Science Fiction. I still am, really, it's just that what time I have for reading books - the time left after surfing for news and info online - I have generally spent reading some form of non-Fiction. History and politics have substituted for space-ships and ray-guns. Tales of Terrestrial War have subbed-in for the extra-Terrestrial variety. It's the times and my age showing.

One of my favorites was the Joe Haldeman classic, The Forever War. (A word on what follows: First, this next part contains **spoilers**, and second, it's been a long time since I read the book, so my memory may be a bit fuzzy on the ending, which I only have only been left with an impression of.) The book is really an anti-War Vietnam allegory by an author who did a tour of duty on the ground there, but it's also a great story.

As I recall (it's been a long time since I've read it), in the story, the forces of Earth are engaged in epic battle against the forces of an alien civilization. The stakes are high. With technology capable of moving space ships at near the speed of light (C), a civilization becomes capable of wiping another out very quickly. The impact of even a relatively small object, even the space-ship itself, can transfer so much energy into a planet that the forces released can rip the atmosphere right off of it. So one of the best-kept secrets of the war is where each civilization's home-planet is. In fact, the humans aren't even sure of what the enemy looks like until their first battle.

Moving out to engage the enemy at speeds approaching C has another problem attached. Due to Relativity, a trip of what is perceived to those on board as a few weeks may actually be a thousand years to those of us left behind. In the War of 1812, Andrew Jackson won his great victory against the British in New Orleans after the peace had already been signed - unbeknownst to those involved in the battle thanks to the limitations of 19th Century communications technology. The vastness of space and the dictates of Einstein make 19th Century concerns over the distances involved through the span of an ocean and half a continent into child's play. The times involved in travel coupled with the stakes faced in losing make war problematic. The possibilities make for very entertaining fiction.

So how does the war finally end? When societies need to plan for battle over centuries and can't possibly have even a remotely possible chance of meaningful negotiation, or even communication at all? By destruction of the other side? Here comes a spoiler (although it may not actually even be a spoiler if I've completely misremembered the story): Peace comes when a new technology becomes available that allows direct and immediate communication unencumbered by the limits of light-speed. Yes, once the two civilizations can communicate effectively, they discover that it was all one big misunderstanding. Peace reigns.

What a nice thought. If only it always worked out that way.

Sadly, war is not an inevitable result of a failure to communicate, and only a failure to communicate. It is not always a product of one side's inability to understand or read the other's "narrative." It is not always a result of a failure to respect the "Other's" values and traditions. No.

Sometimes War happens because we finally understand each other all too well.

War happens because conflict happens, and sometimes conflict remains even after all the talking's done. Sometimes differences are irreconcilable.

Conflict happens because people are different. We always will be. Our cultures are different, not just our languages. Our governments are different. Our leaders are different and our ability to influence and challenge those leaders and change those cultures and societies are different.

Even given perfect communication and no language barriers, all of the above differences and more remain. Now in some cases, maybe talking and accommodating can help, but that depends on what everyone is saying. What are they about? What are their interests, how compatible are our cultures and goals? Communication and understanding - walking a mile in the other guy's shoes - are no guarantee of peace.

Was the Second World War just one big misunderstanding? Was it a joint failure of both sides not to understand each other better? Of course not. Hitler's megalomaniacal, genocidal goals were to lead to only one end - war and bloodshed. No amount of talking could have stopped that. The problem was in the nature of our foe.

In fact, if anything, our continued failures to communicate - honestly, truly - even to ourselves, kept war at bay. Had we really been honest about Hitler rather than deluding ourselves in a wishful morass, had we believed what Hitler himself wrote in Mein Kampf, had we really heard and believed the speeches, watched the signs and taken the true and full measure of the Nazi State, why, war would have actually come upon us much sooner. There would have been no room for the Chamberlain's of the world to wear the badge of "Appeaser" with honor. We would have seen the inevitable and gone to war years earlier, when Germany was far less ready. The horror of war would have been upon us, but perhaps the horrible costs would have been lower.

So more perfect communication can, in fact, bring war closer.

So who is there to talk to today, what are they saying, and are we listening?

Thanks to the internet and world-wide media coverage, we now have an unprecedented ability to hear what the enemy is saying. Are we listening?

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) regularly brings us translations from the Arab World media. It's a resource we never had before. Satellite TV broadcasts Arabic - including the news - into North American homes. Our own outlets have reporters on the ground everywhere capable of bringing us instantaneous coverage from literally anywhere.

Yet we can't rely on our own press. They still believe we're at "war," not at war and they set their priorities accordingly. Eleanor Clift says, "[Abu Ghraib is] "the biggest story of the war" and chastises Kerry for not using it forcefully enough as a political football (as if abusing it as a fund-raising gimmick isn't already enough). In a bald-faced return of that old-fashioned demonic Judenhass where a Jew lurks behind every evil, the heir apparent to the Saudi throne tells the world that "Zionists" are behind all the terrorism in the Kingdom and have no doubt, his words are not those of some lone-wacko. They are widespread. But are average folks being given the information they need to understand this fact? Don't bet your life on it.

The same press that lied and covered for Saddam Hussein, who wouldn't tell us the truth about the horror that was Iraq under Saddam so that they could maintain their access (To what end, one might ask, if they weren't going to tell us the truth, anyway?) continues to filter the information they have to distribute.

Why? One reason is that they are every bit the war-profiteers, these parachute journalists, that they try to project on the hard working men and women of Halliburton are. And second, they know the power of the truth they withhold. Scott Ritter admitted that he knew about the children's prison our soldiers liberated but he said nothing for fear that that truth would be (properly) used by the Administration as a justification for invasion.

The facts, should we face them, hold an ugly truth. A pregnant Israeli mother and her four young daughters are slaughtered one-by-one at close range by Hamas terrorists, part of a group who later literally appear on video holding the minced bits of Israeli corpses hostage. (And have no doubt, those people are our enemy, too.) An American altruist is savagely slaughtered on camera by men shouting "Allahu Akhbar." And who, reading the narrative put forward in the Western Media emerges as the villain in these weeks? Why, Don Rumsfeld and George Bush of course.

The truth being screamed out at us on video by these people is ugly. It is difficult to face, and some people don't want us to face the whole truth because it doesn't fit their desired conclusions - because perhaps they couldn't control our reactions to the truth were we to really face it. But the terrorists are circumventing the press in their own way. They, also, are harnessing the power of the modern edge to communicate their message to us.

And this communication isn't bringing peace any closer. No, in fact it's showing us, if we have the guts to see what's before our eyes, that this may just be an enemy with whom there is no accommodation to be made.

Ah, I hear you ask, but surely the monsters in these videos don't represent the people we should be communicating with - they're just an extreme fringe. Are they? Just how far out of the mainstream are they, and who should be the ones trying to talk to and negotiate with them? Us? I already explained what the Saudi Prince said, and how it raises barely an eyebrow in some quarters. Even the so-called mainstream Muslim groups in the United States like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) spends more of their time apologizing and excusing this behavior than they do getting their own house in order. What are we to take from that? So far, while the methods may differ...the goals of all these groups and governments are in sync.

Nick Berg's murderers were so confident that their message would be understood by their home audience, that they didn't even bother, all other similarities aside, to belabor the Jewishness of their captive before they cut his throat as others had done in the case of Daniel Pearl. It would have been redundant. By this time the message is clear - it's a truism, as Herr Chomsky likes to say, a triviality and therefore not even necessary to repeat, that all Americans, all non-Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere are Zionists...are Jews. A message for my gentile friends: I hate to tell you this, but you've been drafted. We're all Jews now.

If there is anyone who is going to convince us that the fringe is really a fringe, then it is in the hands of Arabs and Muslims to both communicate to us effectively about themselves, and turn within and do the negotiating to marginalize the evil in their midst. It's not our job. There's only so much we can do.

At present, we have to face the truth as it is and how it appears it will be in the foreseeable future. So far, that truth, when we dare face it, is ugly. Sometimes a foe cannot be reasoned with, he must be destroyed. If there is another path, the key lies not so much in our hands, but in others' to turn. In the mean-time, we must do what we must.