Hi CB,
In the interests of clarifying the position you refer to, I'm assuming seriously, your post brings up these questions, if you care to respond:
How many millions?
How do you know, exactly, when the "war on terror" is won, and the killing stops?
How do you know if the massive killing is having the effect of reducing numbers killed here in America, or actually increasing the threat to millions of Americans?
What about the calculated threat of radiologic and bio plagues that can kill millions of Americans at any time, if foreign enemies are sufficiently able to recruit suicide soldiers against us?
The problem is this: Mutually Assured Destruction threats work with a nation-state sponsoring otherwise-unuseable nuclear missiles.
As Rumsfeld said last month, the suicide bombers being identified for attack are "undeterrable" -- you cannot deter them, by any military means. In fact, the reverse: as OBL fervently wishes, if the US were to unlease WMDs of our own preemptively or without world-agreed moral authority, it will serve to rush millions more suicide volunteers into training, expressly to damage the US, which specifically means US citizenry. Listen to the sentiment in those Islamist countries -- they are ready for the US to further prove itself the Great Satan, rather than just Israel and their other enemies, real and imagined. If we leave them alone to their own self-destruction or self-realization, they have less ability to recruit.
Doesn't that change the military calculus a bit?
It would certainly seem so.
The only deterrance is to change the nature of the debate with those who find it profitable to attack us, gain the moral high ground, without which all our weaponry is useless.
We should increase domestic security and withdraw US military support and oil revenues from all belligerent nations, and participate only in multilateral peace-keeping, only engage in direct US military action when attacked (as we did in Afghanistan, even as failed as that attempt has been letting OBL and 1/2 of the top leadership escape).
Otherwise we're straight on the path of many megadeaths on both sides, profitable only to warlords and profiteers, and the destruction of the American way of life. |
