Re-reading '1984'

Yeah, the power outage gave me enough time (and lack of other options) to begin re-reading the long, disturbing George Orwell tale: "1984". Actually, the outage gave me enough time to just about re-finish the book. I only have a few pages left and since I'm re-reading it, I know that nothing really interesting is left to read anyway.

In re-reading this amazing work of art, (real art, I might add) I found some quotes that I'm going to post at various times in the very near future. One of those is right now:

(this is being said by the main character's interrogator near the end of the book)
"...In the Middle Ages, there was the Inquisition. It was a failure. It set out to eradicate heresy, and ended by perpetuating it. For every heretic it burned at the stake, thousands of others rose up. Why was that? Because the Inquisition killed its enemies in the open, and killed them while they were unrepentant. Men were dying because they would not abandon their true beliefs. Naturally, all the glory belonged to the victim and all the shame to the Inquisitor who burned him..."

Take that quote and substitute "Inquisition" with "War on Terrorism" and "heresy" with "terrorism" and "heretic" with "terrorist", and you have "my opinion". Orwell wrote this in 1949. Why has this logic not been passed down since then? Okay thats a silly question to which I already know the answer, but all the same, the quote puts the whole "war" in an amazingly realistic perspective, while giving an historical example of how our current foreign policy has already failed in the past. Gotta love Orwell.