In past wars, the home front has come alive when attacked by an enemy who could have as easily chosen a militarily important target...The inaccurate bombing techniques available in WWII necessarily led to civilian casualties during en masse raids, notably those in Berlin which enraged Adolf Hitler who ordered the indiscriminate bombing attacks on London in retaliation...
The effects on the civilian populations which made up the home front on each side turned out to be mostly the opposite of each other...Both opponents were led by charismatic leaders, both wielding considerable influence on the multitudes, although each from a different standpoint...Yet popular support for Hitler's escalation of aggression began to wane almost immediately as German civilians found themselves deprived of luxuries and even the necessities taken for granted...
On the opposite side of the English Channel, Prime Minister Winston Churchill drew newfound support from Britons, and indeed from the free world, as he announced his clear intent to lead his nation, alone if necessary, against the tyranny of the Nazi dictatorship...The British people gritted their teeth with him as they vowed to stand as one in the face of come-what-may from the Teutonic hordes...
The difference between the two home fronts was clear as Britain, civilian and military alike, girded itself for battle, while Germans, believing their Fuehrer would lead them to a better day regardless of the suffering of other people, waited for his promised miracles...Churchill told his people the truth, that they could expect only hardship and bloodshed as they fought for the freedom that was already theirs, while Hitler had prepared his masses with tales of the enemy fleeing before his might as they surrendered their lands and sacrificed their unworthy lives...
The British in turn got what they were told to expect and battled on in the knowledge of a just cause, while the Germans slowly came to realize they had been dealt a false hand to play by leaders with an unholy agenda...Advancing in time, the world powers then in dominance, not wishing a nuclear conflagration, allowed straw men in a corner of SouthEast Asia to fight their ideological battle for supremacy...
In this instance, the leadership in the north consistently sent its own people into the teeth of the storm, accepting the material help of its philosophical benefactors...At the same time the southern government half-heartedly committed to the battle while being more concerned with fighting among themselves to see who gets to wear the big hat...
Both leaderships wanted national identity for their common peoples under one flag, and were prepared to accept the compromise demanded by the larger powers in return for arms and technological assistance...As in all civil wars, the home front knew they were battling themselves, and only longed for the unity of their people...
In the end they only proved that in a surrogate war, there are no clear-cut winners, and always more than one loser...When the smoke of battle dissipated, and silence settled over a decimated land, the people had their unity and were no better off than when they started, only richer for the experience which they would forever try to drive from memory...
The home fronts of the superpowers languished under an ever increasing debt load, decreased domestic security and growing doubt on the abilities of their own leaders to make decisions in the national interest...With the passage of time, even the gulfs separating the ideologies faded leaving only the unpaid debts...
But tactics change as do strategies...In the latest example of worldwide discord, home fronts became much less distinct as religious factions all claiming the same antecedent root, yet hopelessly splintered into warring factions, each declare battle to the death against all non-believers in their own narrowly defined doctrines...
To further blur the lines, they recognize no national boundaries, yet take concealment among the noncombatant people found in muslim populations around the world...Through fear and intimidation of the inhabitants of these ethnic districts, they cower in the dark corners until another opportunity for wholesale death and destruction arises...
Their neighbors are surely aware of their identity, and though not necessarily believers of the jihadist precept, they allow its existence among their own home fronts in a war with no clearly defined adversaries or goals other than the obliteration of all non-linear thinkers...The only way it can end without the annihilation of the human species is for all those who value their homes to present a unified front and drive out the invaders like cockroaches into the light...
Only then will the true source of strength be known...
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