Hi, Kastel, a few comments and observations, all IMVHO of course.
Re: Bush Sr not going after Saddam: I saw a David Frost???!!! interview ( please forgive me if I err
on who the interviewer was). I was quite impressed. It was recorded on condition it would not be aired
while he was still in office. Up until that time I had been irritated as stated here that we did not go after him
in the Gulf War. Then reading one of Clancy's novels I got the perspective that Bush was afraid of taking out Iraq's
Saddam for fear of Iran assuming hegemony in both states. I lived with that rationalization until I saw the interview
with George Herbert Walker Bush. He regretted not being able to get Saddam ( which in an ironic twist he either
by intention or ignorance pronounced with the accent on the first syllable of the name and which by that pronunciation means "little camel boy!). In any case his excuse for not going after Saddam was that Bush was convinced that to get him definitively it would mean house to house fighting, our men and women on the ground fighting what was essentially going to be a guerilla war against the remaining Red Guard or whatever. We must remember he was in his person as elusive as binLaden. I follow the WSJ style here in not dignifying a felon or an enemy with the title Mister. Bush said he could not see himself doing what Johnson had to do, going on TV to announce to the mothers and fathers back home that we were sending their sons and daughters to be slaughtered, and for what ? For oil. Not freedom or democracy, but for oil. He wept and I, skeptic that I am, took his view. The USA was not then ready for such action. Roosevelt was in a somewhat similar dilemna with regard to US isolationism before Pearl Harbor. I even read a book in an honors course in history while an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Austin that took the outrageous but well argued position that FDR knew it was coming and let it happen. "Roosevelt's Road to War" was its title. All that is moot now and of dubious value for discussion, not pertinent to the point at hand.
I have a gnawing fear that we have by far not seen the worst of it. As a physician I am terrified of what could happen to our nation if anthrax bacillus is used, e.g., sprayed in oil aerosol by small plane over NY, Chicago, any major city. It is a bitch of a bug. Or it could be much worse, some deadly virus concocted in a terrorist lab. I truly believe we have entered a period of war for our very survival. We are an open society with all its frailties, faults, imperfections, and also the most free and freedom loving people in the world. So in my view it will take more horror God forbid, but I think it is coming. Islamic fundamentalists, like fascist maniacs of any pursuasion cannot be reasoned with. Ultimately I fear we will have to summon the will to exterminate them. Gandhi thought Satyagraha ( non-violence) would work, even though at great cost, but even against Hitler. Respect Mohandas Gandhi as I do I believe he was nuts in his opinion on dealing with Hitler. Our real problem as I view it is that we are not ready to confront just how many the number of our enemies or just how vicious our countermeasures are going to have to be. I have a friend who works for INS in Seattle and he is scared daily of a nuke aboard one of the thousands of containers in ships that daily come into port. I believe it is wake-up time. I believe we have to be ruthless. merciless, and relentless. I believe we have to believe, all of us, that this IS war. Our civilization, indeed world civilzation is at stake and our enemies think when they kill us, exterminate us, they go to their sick idea of some sort of Muslim heaven with such&such a number of virgins, their slain enemies as slaves. Incidentally, as I live in the sticks, I called the nearest mosque this morning after watching the service in the National Cathedral. The nearest one is in Redding. I called to express my regret at any hatred that may come his way as a peace-loving man of the Koran. I have never met a Shi'a Muslim in this country. He was Suni. Because he wept in thanks, saying it warmed his heart to hear my words after so many hate calls,so did I.
Jim Black |
