Secondly, the problem of terrorists is not unlike trying to rid the world of cockroaches. You can spray and spray but the better approach and the less expensive one is to eliminate the conditions that allow them to thrive.
I don't disagree with this; but I suspect we would differ about what those conditions are. I believe that if you kill the people who are organizing and funding terrorist operations, you make headway. If you reduce their options for training and organizing, you make headway.
We are seeing that effect in Afghanistan.
I'm not sure what you're talking about. By all accounts, our activities in Afghanistan have been remarkably successful. There are those who thought the war on terrorism would be a nice, well-defined war like the Gulf War or the ousting of Milosevic. These people were naive, and the administration knew it, and that's why they made such a big deal out of making it clear to the public that the war against terrorism would not be as nice, neat and concise as other recent wars. Yet, some people still don't get it.
containment and reducing the conditions that cause terrorism to breed is a much more effective way to go at it. And the important thing to remember is that as long as their is an earth, there will be cockroaches, and as long as there are people, there will be terrorists.
Containment only works if we have unfettered weapons inspections, which we have ascertained are an impossibility with Saddam. Without inspections, containment is nothing more than giving Saddam the additional time he needs to build up an arsenal with which to kill our people.
The signals we are getting from the Middle East with the sole exception of Israel indicate that the US will be viewed in a negative light should it attack
It is cultural; Arabs are not loyal. They will support a winner. When we go in and defeat Saddam, they will all be totally supportive. But they fear Saddam now, and they're not about to take a position against him so long as he is a threat to them. Saddam had just as soon send scuds to Saudi Arabia as to Israel. He proved it.
And making things worse, what was believed to be the great neutralizer, Russia and its oil, has turned out to be a major setback for US foreign diplomacy........or did you not recognize the major diplomatic defeat Russia handed us a few days back?
The jury is out on this. I think the administration's statement (through Rumsfeld) was fine -- if Russia wants to play ball with Iraq, that's fine. I'll have a problem if we determine that Russia is support terrorist activities. |
