Hi BCherry168; Re: "If they [Iraq] are [a threat], then we must use our power to destroy the threat."
(1) Iraq (or Saddam Hussein or the Iraqi Baathist party) is not a threat to the US. The biggest threat that the US faces is Islamic fundamentalism which is in complete opposal to Saddam Hussein and all he stands for. (Though even that threat is not a significant one. The USSR, with thousands of megaton nuclear weapons, was a significant threat and we didn't start a war with them.)
(2) Since the Iraqi regime apparently had little to do with the WTC attack, removing the Iraqi regime would not have halted the WTC attack. You're not even talking about closing the correct barn door after the horse has already fled.
(3) The cause of the WTC attack was not Iraq, but instead the hatred of the United States among large numbers of Arabs. None of the attackers were even Iraqis.
(4) One reason for the hatred of the US among Arabs is the tough dealing that the United States has dealt Iraq in the past. There is no indication that further tough dealing with Iraq will reduce that emotion or replace it with fear. Most of the attackers were from Saudi Arabia, and to make Saudi Arabians feel fear, as opposed to anger, we should attack Saudi Arabia instead. But that is not what is proposed here.
But my real problem is the morality you imply. Let me turn this around. Since the US is definitely a proven threat to China, they "must use their power to destroy the threat". The fact of history (fortunately) is that countries that were threats to each other got along without conflict far more often than they actually were in conflict. This is why you are still alive. If the US and the USSR had followed your logic we'd all be radioactive waste.
Re: "Do you wish to wait until we are directly threatened with nuclear weapons before we take action?"
Neither. I suggest that we not take action now (where "action" means invading Iraq), and later, when the Arabs inevitably come into possession of nuclear weapons (which I have repeatedly predicted on this thread), I suggest that at that time we also not invade Iraq.
It is only a matter of time before the Arab states are equipped with nuclear weapons. The Pakistanis, though not Arab, already have them, and there are already rumors that Egypt is pursuing them. Every weapons system that man invents eventually proliferates across the planet, and nuclear weapons are not any different.
The Arab states having nukes won't be a very big deal. The fact is that the largest purchaser of US weapons is already Saudi Arabia, an Arab state. The real problem comes when terrorists get a hold of nuclear weapons. So tell me what your foreign policy will be when Arab terrorists demand that the US cease assisting Israel with the quite realistic threat to set off nukes in US cities. Do you think that we should all live in sandbag bunkers so that we don't have to get our fingers out of the Middle East? If terrorists get a hold of nukes you will be amazed at how quickly the US will get isolationist. As long as all we're talking about is a couple thousand deaths here and there the US will continue to interfere in the affairs of the Middle East. When it reaches 'Nam size deaths, say 100,000 at a time, the US will become isolationist essentially instantly. The alternative will be death, and facing death, man becomes very rational. The people here don't give an f about the Middle East, they just want to live their lives.
Re: "I lost friends of mine in 'Nam." So sorry. I was too young to go, but the people a few years older were not.
Re: "The problem there was with who was running the war, and the lack of firm objectives." At least we agree that there were problems.
Re: "And the lack of firm backbone by our leadership. We do not have that problem now."
The problem in Vietnam was not that the soldiers, generals, or politicians were stupid or evil, but instead that the country, on average, was not willing to spend the blood and treasure required to win the war. The US did not fight Vietnam until it was totally exhausted as, for example, Germany was in early 1945. Our losses in WW2 were close to 10x larger over a shorter time period. But our successes in WW2 were many, many, many times larger than our success in Vietnam would have been even if we had kept the South from falling.
Basically, the US pulled out because the cost of continuing the war became more than the value of keeping the South from losing. The fact is that Vietnam was a shitty little country, not something that was worth the trouble we went to. WW2, by contrast, was about vast stretches of land from one end of Europe to the other as well as huge expanses in the Pacific (including all of Vietnam as a tiny side show).
But even assuming the truth of your statement, that current leadership has firm backbone, you have no idea of knowing who will be elected in 2004, so you do not have proof that the politicians who continue the war in the Iraq (and the rest of the Middle East) will have the backbone of the one who started it. For this reason alone, you should consider what will happen to those who have to serve under the successors of Bush. What happened to your friends in 'Nam could very well be the fate of the grunts of 2006. American foreign policy is not something that can be analyzed a single administration at a time.
Your post illustrates well the fact that the people attempting to drag us into a war with Iraq are frequently the same people who possess an unrealistic appraisal of the situation in Vietnam. Next thing you're probably going to say that Patton should have kept going east into the USSR in 1945.
-- Carl
P.S. The world is not fair.
The world is not a game where every player (or more precisely, the US player) has the chance to win, with correct play. Sometimes there are no solutions, easy or hard. |
