no one has offered a sensible plan for what follows
Rule #1.. No plan survives first contact with the enemy.
Do you really think we knew what we were going to do once Germany and Japan were defeated?? That wasn't decided until Yalta in February, 1945, 3 months before V-E day, and 6 months before V-J day...
Yet we mobilized 12 million men and put them under arms over a FAR LESS devastating attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese empire.
(2) attacking another country without provocation or serious multilateral agreement--the UN--is devastating foreign policy;
We've been attacked John, or have you forgotten??..
How much more provocation do we need?
We know that Saddam Hussein is involved in funding terrorist networks... That's provocation enough, even without their disobeying the cease-fire agreements from their invasion of Kuwait and continuous attempts to shoot at US aircraft.
And besides, we're not declaring war against Iraq, but rather against Saddam Hussein's government.
(3)the neocons who now run the defense establishment have war as a kind of blood lust right now, just to be blunt;
What about FDR after Pearl Harbor??
(4) it was Al Qaeda that attacked the US on 9-11 (well, thinking as I type, even if you take Nadine's formualation that it's really Islamism that attacked us,
And Al-Qaeda is merely an umbrella organization emcompassing many diverse terrorist groups. It's a supra-national entity that can only exist in states that grant it, and its leadership, safe harbor.
And it's not an Islamist society that stands to replace Saddam. In fact, he's destroyed much of that sort of infrastructure for fear that Saudi Arabia was subverting his authority.
But he hates the US more than he hates the Saudis. And I have no doubt that he will use the fundamentalists in much the way that the Saudis use them to intimidate opposing regimes. And when he's done with them, he will have them arrested and shot.
But in the meantime, he finds them especially useful in distracting the US and Israel from focusing upon him until he has that nuclear shield to hide behind.
This is not about testosterone John... It's about reading the handwriting on the wall, erasing it, and replacing it with your own vision of the future.
Hawk |
