Hi Carolyn; I wish Gingrich was still speaker. He makes so much sense, from the long range point of view.
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DR. GINGRICH: Which means the key word is replace, not punish. You do not punish regimes that are dictatorships because they don't care if you kill their civilians. They don't care if you kill their infantry. I mean, if we kill 100,000 Iraqis, and it hasn't changed the regime, there's a hint here. Saddam couldn't care if every Iraqi died, as long as he was the heroic of the myth. And so we have to talk about replacement, not about punishment.
Sixth principle, the campaign has to be comprehensive; that is, we should reach out economically, diplomatically, and militarily to all Muslims who oppose fanatic terrorists. We should offer the future of a better way of life for every Palestinian who would like to live in peace and prosperity. We should offer to every Muslim country that we are not anti-Muslim. We are anti-fanatic, and that we would like to have good relations and that it is as important to be prepared to be economically supportive.
Remember, one of the keys to winning the Cold War was the Marshall Plan, which was at least as important as creating NATO or the CIA or the Strategic Air Command. We should have a comprehensive understanding that in this war, we will be the proactive allies of creating prosperity, and safety and freedom for all of the Muslim world which wishes to live in civilization, and we will only be coercive and focused on those fanatics who give us no choice, including regimes which give us no choice. But it cannot be only a military or an intelligence campaign. It has to be an economic, military, diplomatic and political campaign.
Principle seven, the coalition must be the largest willing to support our plan. It's a very important distinction. We cannot write a plan designed to have a big coalition. We have to write a plan to win and then recruit to the plan. And countries which are willing to say, gee, I can't do that, but I won't harbor any terrorists, that's fine. That's a kind of passive support we'll tolerate. We won't tolerate opposition. I want to draw that distinction. Countries can say, this is not my fight. Uruguay may decide they're not in this fight. That's fine, as long as they don't harbor terrorists. But no country can harbor terrorists and claim to be neutral, and I want to draw that distinction.
And the United States has to say, and Secretary Powell did exactly correctly yesterday, we reserve the right to take any unilateral action necessary for the achievement of victory in this war.
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aei.org
-- Carl |
