I got this message in my email. I think it explains a lot.
Friends,
I (Devar) am basically a conservative hawk with
modest military service
years ago under my belt. But this question, "Why
attack Iraq now?", has
been bothering me recently. It seems to go
against the grain for us to be
in a "first strike" role against a tin-horn
dictator like Saddam Hussein.
For possible clarification, I posed this question
to a friend of mine from
church who is a retired USN Admiral and currently
a well-connected Defense
Industry executive. I've also known him for 15
years and know him to be a
smart, level-headed person, and church leader.
Here are his thoughts, but in my words.
Al Qaeda, Hamas and associated terrorists of the
world are out to get the
US in a big way. They proved with the Sept 11
attack that they are
capable of a major strike. This just whetted
their appetite for an
escalation to the next level.
There is a strong likelihood that the next level
will not be a similar
attack that takes out 2,800 people, but leaves no
long-lasting damage.
They will take their time, and likely go for a
strike that will try to
take out a major US city. It could be a dirty
bomb, with combination
radiation and/or biological agents, exploded near
a major city, such as
from a container ship in the Hudson River, or San
Francisco or Baltimore
harbors. It would not even have to be unloaded,
and we don't have the
technology to detect it in advance. And they are
likely to have several
such strikes in the works, in case one or two are
discovered.
We are talking about a "first strike" by them
that will, for all practical
purposes, seem like a last strike to us. It will
do so much damage to our
economy, and several hundred thousand people,
that the war is over as far
as the terrorists are concerned, and they won.
We will only be left to
wonder who did it and who to bomb in retaliation.
So the notion that we are not a "first strike"
country becomes a death
sentence for us, if we allow this to happen
first, before we take action.
The terrorists will have a very difficult time
pulling this off without
the help of a small industrial complex. The
current providers of such a
complex to the terrorists are Syria, Iran, North
Korea and Iraq.
From among these, Iraq and North Korea have the
least stable leadership,
and Iraq is the one with the most proven attempts
to develop weapons of
the type that terrorists would like to have.
It is reasonable to think that our national
leaders believe that we must
prove to all these countries that we are not
going to sit by waiting on
Armageddon. We need to stop the terrorist
supporters now, and we need to
show the other terrorist supporters what is in
store for them if we feel
we need to hit them to protect our national
interests.
Terrorists have no allegiance to a particular
country, so they don't fear
retaliation by the US. The old cold-war standoff
is no longer operative.
The terrorists probably consider a nuclear
retaliation against one or more
of these supporting countries just the cost of
war. They, and their
supporting countries, also know that the US will
not just heave a few
nukes onto a Baghdad in retaliation, killing a
couple of million innocent
civilians.
The terrorists are also not members of the UN.
Our discussions there are
just a comedy to the terrorists.
So the US must act now in every way possible to
stop the possibility of
such an attack against the US. Part of that
action is to deny the
terrorists the support of these rogue countries.
If a rogue country's
leadership is so unstable that they might
sell/give the terrorists the
weapons, then we must stop it now. Iraq is such a
country. A measured,
non-nuclear attack on Iraq may cause the others
to cease their support of
the terrorists in such a dangerous way. It also
may cause the least
civilian casualties of all the alternatives.
We must make it clear to the terror-supporting
countries that there will
be a price to pay, and that a nuclear
retaliation, which we are unlikely
to use, is not the only option open to us.
I think President Bush understands he cannot let
a first strike happen,
and that nuclear retaliation is no longer a
threat. We must go after the
terrorists, and their supporters and suppliers,
now.
Devar
P.S. I'm interested in your thoughts on this
"Iraq" subject.
P.P.S. A history lesson from me:
Do you know why the US was in such a rush to
develop the atomic bomb in
WWII?It's not because we simply wanted such a
weapon. It's because
concerned physicists, including German refugee,
Albert Einstein, warned
Roosevelt in writing that the Germans had the
most capable physicist in
the field of nuclear physics, Nobel Prize winner,
Werner Heisenberg, and
he was known to have a laboratory working on such
a device. We knew what
would happen if he was the first to have such a
weapon. Think about it.
I believe we are in a similar race today against
the terrorists. The war
has begun, so the "don't go to war" crowd
apparently has a
mis-understanding of what we are up against. We
are at war today. Our
country was similarly divided just before Pearl
Harbor and our entry into
WWII. A modern-day "Pearl Harbor" is likely a
surprise that us
unacceptable too us.
Devar Burbage, Potomac, Maryland 20854
devarbur@yahoo.com |
