Posted on 05/24/2002 11:20:22 AM PDT by ThePythonicCow
BTW, "nonstatist" it would also dramatically increase the power of the state. Have you forgotten that "war is the health of the state?"
It looks like we've been screwed. There's not going to be an invasion of Iraq...and there will be new terrorist attacks. We look weak, ambivelent, confused and stupid...like ripe terror targets, in other words. The administration doesn't know what it's doing. I was hoping their mishandling of the Arab/Israeli conflict was just a fluke...guess not. Hope like hell I'm wrong.
I didn't think so.
Wars require that you prepare your people for the sacrifices ahead. If my government says its going to attack another country, I don't expect to get a detailed list of what going to happen and on what date. When Rumsfeld tells me that there is going to be NO invasion, and Bush is telling the Germans that he has NO war plans, there is going to be NO war!! If we are going to attack Iraq anyway, any benifits of this super stealth is outweighed by the lack of mental preparedness of the people for the sacrifices they must make, and the morale loss from the nagging feeling that our leaders have betrayed us.
I think you have nailed it.
We cannot at the same time:
(1) retaliate massively against terrorist regimes,
(2) provide a reasonable degree of protection against terrorism within the US, and
(3) continue our current P.C. policy of no profiling and open borders.
So we seem to be choosing for now to discard (1) and keep the other two.
I am not interested in "nation building" I am interested in effecting a change in regime, in the interest of securing our protection from unalloyed use of weapons of mass destruction. I have no stake in perpetual governorship of Afghanistan, Bosnia, or elsewhere.
I just don't believe the bilge that says Hussein is not threat to us, does not collude with terrorists, does not trade in terrorist weaponry, does not live outside the reining rules of civilized behavior. If theres one reason to have a state at all, it is to protect and secure the liberty of its citizenry.
A balance is needed, and quite frankly, with CNN and other 24-hour news networks, and the fact that a lot of the reporters are not as patriotic as they used to be. Back then, we could delay confirming that we had lost ships - not today. Times change. No military uses pikes and crossbows any more, and any that did ought to think of committing whoever made the decision to procure them to a mental institution.
We didn't invade Afghanistan either. We sent in a few thousand guys, and collapsed the regime, and sent the survivors into hiding, and erected a new government, and began training a new army and police force, but we didn't invade.
Maybe we aren't going to invade Iraq either.
I trust Bush, deeply. But the President is not all powerful. Thank God for that. The depth of liberal (socialist, communist, ...) insanity in our world today is astounding.
We're trying to tame a pair of enebriated bull elephants: liberalism and terrorism. Bush is a good elephant driver and an honest man. He's right to tell us that this effort will take us many years, perhaps longer than his two terms. At times we see the elephants rampaging through the same places as before, still causing damage, with George Bush sitting right on top. I pray and trust that he will continue to hold on, and use what powers he has to tame these elephants.
But I don't trust that he has it within his powers to succeed at an invasion of Iraq before many more innocents have died. Nor will we make much more progress reining in the liberal expansion of the federal government until we get a Republican majority in the House and Senate.
You may not believe the "bilge" about the Hussein not being a threat but there are many such potential threats in the world (Castro, Chavez in Venzuella, Arafat, Assad, China, terrorist groups operating in Saudi Arabia, the Sudan). If you are suggesting "taking out" all of these "threats," you will not like the end results of the chaos which will be unleashed.
The U.S. government doesn't do much well. I suggest we make its job simple: defending the borders of the U.S. and not try to police the world.
Actually, the current state of affairs in Kuwait is preferable compared to its state in '91 as a vassal of Hussein's. It, and the money it generates , is far less threatening to us now. And we didnt have to police it, either. In and out.
You may not believe the "bilge" about the Hussein not being a threat but there are many such potential threats in the world (Castro, Chavez in Venzuella, Arafat, Assad, China, terrorist groups operating in Saudi Arabia, the Sudan)
None nearly as threatening; this contention is hardly arguable in the intelligence agencies; given this guy's previous actions (invasion, invasion, gassing,genocide,arbitrary terror,etc) Like I said, we shouldnt police the world, but this guy is a serious threat. We should go in and take care of him, and however the chips fall will be better than current situation. I understand your concerns about nation building, but it would be an egregious mistake to just sit here and wring hands. IMO
A wise man also doesn't tell his enemy WHEN he's going to attack!
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