What are the costs of deterrence?
Steve, I think the chances of deterring this guy are just too risky to take. If we could take out him and his family, and let the dust settle, things might work out. A Saddam heart attack is a thing devoutly to be hoped for! He can just keep screwing up things for us in the ME.
But whither this is true or not, I am convinced that the Admin, under the Bush/Cheney/Rumsford guidance, is going to embark on a slum clearance project in the ME. I think they feel that 911 clears the way for them to do a lot of things over there that were not possible before. Taking Iraq gets rid of a major "Bad Guy" in a area that is full of "Bad Guys." We will then have a "Lily Pad" that allows us to pressure the rest of the "Tribal Chiefs" and "Witch Doctors", (Dictators and Mullahs) in the area.
If you wanted to give the Middle East an enema, the place to stick it in is the Wahabis in Saudi Araba. They are the ones indoctrinating the Muslims with the "Fundamentalist" poison. It is pretty obvious that the Al Queda base of operation is in Southwest mountains of Saudi Arabia and Yemen. If Bin Ladin is alive, he is there, or in Sudan. The Muslim Brotherhood types from Egypt have been pretty well suppressed by the Government there. They are still running around attacking us, but they no longer have as good a base of operation.
Once we are established in Iraq, we can keep the pressure up on the Terrorists in and area and continue to take them out. I think our CIA and Military are doing a pretty good job of learning how to track down and kill these people. The mistakes made in Afghanistan will not be repeated as much.
In the meantime, the shakeout from the Iraq operation will have enormous repercussions on the Palestine situation. It will undoubtedly help the Israelis. It is too soon to say how things will work out, but I think it is obvious that the longer we are in the area fighting Terrorists and doing slum clearance, the more we are going to side with Israel. We are both on the same side to a large degree, and this has to help the Israelis. Sharon is looking more and more like a very good "War Prime Minister" who can keep Israel unified, and get along with Bush.
Meanwhile, back at the Ranch, Bush has the country behind him now as never before. This last election shows that the left is now out of solutions on Foreign Policy, and will either follow Bush's lead, or engage in meaningless "Protest Marches," where they can try to recapture the glory days of the '60s.
I urge everyone to read the excerpts coming up this week from Woodward's new book. I think it is going to give us a very good "inside" look at how the Administration is operating. |
