Ten,
re: In the context of waging war, it's hard to judge what is rational or not, especially when your enemy is anything but rational.
It's not rational to ruin the country by saving it from a threat that doesn't exist, or at best is minor. Terrorists depend on their psychological effect, not body bags, for victory. We are providing their victory. When we give up our freedoms, our economy, our international relationships, our soldiers, our national unity... we are playing right into their hands. OBL won on 9/11, not because of what he did, but because of how we reacted.
re: We could pay for the cleanup ourselves, or we could get the world (i.e. the U.N.) to help pay for it and be a little more vigilant in promoting human rights and security. Now that would be a truly rational way out of an irrational situation.
Yes, I agree 100%. But we jumped into this "dung pile", and it doesn't look like anyone wants to jump in with us. Even the people who run the corporations that stand to make huge profit are starting to talk about getting the hell out. These are the folks that weigh risk and reward every day, that's what they do to make their millions. And they are getting ready to cut and run.
It's starting to look like a Vietnam sequel. The hardest polical decision is to quit, after investing 100's of American lives, probably 10,000 Iraqi lives, $Billions of dollars, and international political capitol. Does this thing go on and on and on, getting incrementally worse? When do you pull the plug, and say "we fu--ed up"? It's the hardest decision to make, as Vietnam demonstrated really well.
NOBODY can predict what's going to happen in Iraq (unless you are DR, he can predict the future of the region and the world). But from the looks of things, as they say here in the south, it's "breaking bad".
9/11 was a nightmare; it's irrational repercussions could be much, much worse.
John
PS I don't know if you remember, but I was making some of the same arguments on the Intel thread in the weeks after 9/11. It's terrorist doctrine, make the reaction much more significant than the event. It's the only way to take limited resounces and effect major political change. |
