My own sense, if only momentary, is that not attacking is wiser than attacking. The list of reasons is rather long and, surprisingly, at least to me, gets longer the more I read.
Well, I wish you would expound on some of those "reasons"...
I can see the list being long since it consists of nothing but excuses for NOT doing what we all sense will be inevitable.
We're playing brinksmanship here John... Saddam recognizes that he can only push the American people so far, AT THIS TIME, without risking our running out of excuses for NOT doing what we should have done 12 years ago.
Democracies are VERY reluctant to go to war, or take casualities. It requires a "life and death" struggle such as WWII to motivate us to pay such human costs. But if had been willing to pay a small portion of those costs early on, we'd have avoided having to pay the larger cost later on. Taking out Saddam is the ounce of prevention that prevents a pound of cure being expended later on.
We are in a struggle to determine the future course of the Muslim world.. towards radicalism, or moderation.. towards political pluralism, and economic prosperity, or totalitarianism and dispair.. And out of dispair arise despots who are willing to mobilize this dispair through false promises and hopes.
For this reason alone, IMO, this is an important paradigm in world history we're living through right now. Containment of Saddam will not be sufficient as the plight of these Arab youth place increasing pressures on local regimes for jobs and economic security. He will make promises and place the blame for their problems upon the west.
So if we're going to take the blame eventually for what occurs in the Arab world, we might get involved before it gets completely out of hand. And do it while the US can accomplish the mission without having to raise a 12 million person military as occurred in WWII.
We're at war.. the perpetrators are from the Middle East, financed by Middle Eastern regimes who are building schools that brain-wash their children with anti-western rhetoric.
We're at war and Afghanistan was only the first stop, and the Philipines a side-show. Iraq is next and Iran will likely fall on its own and form a moderate government. Syria will succumb after that and Hizbollah will fold as the money dries up. And eventually Saudi Arabia will either reform and moderate, or the House of Saud will fall and be replaced.
So let's face some facts and not beat around the bush here... Doing so will cost us FAR MORE in the long-term should these folks develop biological and nuclear weapons.
That's effectively the bottom line here.
Hawk |
