Yes, I should have been more precise and said "battle" not "war." My son asked
me if the war would last 30 days. I told him 30 years. That's like a fact-of-
life. To see the attack on Iraq as a stand-alone-war is shortsighted. The mass
murders of the terrorist enormity of September 11, 2001 started a very long war
and we are but at the beginning of it.
I'm not really interested in debating this point again but I'll just point out that your statement assumes a relationship between Iraq and Al Queda.
(Maybe it started with the invasion of Kuwait. Maybe it started with the 1948
Arab/Israeli war. But we're in it now. It's not like Islamists will stop
murdering Westerners if we make nice).
I respectfully disagree.
I think the following would make us far safer than any coercive action would:
- drop the $3 billion/year support of Israel (or equally fund all Middle Eastern states)
- stop shipments of US arms to Israel (or sell arms to all Arab states equally)
- remove US troops from the region (specifically Saudi Arabia)
- stop funding and providing arms to US friendly dictators in the Middle East(and elsewhere)
- stop inciting hostility with saber rattling and name calling
- condemn both Israeli and Palestinian war crimes equally or not at all
If the administration cared about the Palestinian situation, why haven't they used the threat of pulling the plug on our massive Israeli funding and arms support program? This question and it's unavoidable answer are as clear to the Arab world as they are to you or I.
Governments make war like the sky makes rain. Wars make governments stronger
(unless they lose). That pendulum has swung. The way to reduce government's
power is to cut off the money. If we spend away on war our national borrowing
power we'll have to stop spending money on the DEA, EEOC, FDA, and the whole
regulatory, criminalizing apparatus. That stikes me as a good outcome from a
bad situation.
So if you want to go on a diet, would you suggest spending all your money so you can't afford food? If you want you marketing department to stop wasting money on crummy ad campaigns to you run your company into bankruptcy?
Given that we've been through this before with Reagan, how do you explain the continued existence of these organizations?
The only result I see is poorly invested massive foreign debts that we'll all be paying for sooner or later.
Cheers,
Steve
Io, a small language: http://www.iolanguage.com/