When will we leave? Now? 6 months? No, better plan on the US having bases there at least 20 years.
How long were we in Europe and Japan...
If there is one thing Americans have learned since the second world war, it's when WE DON'T remain as a stabilizing force that our national security becomes threatened..
It's going to take years to undo the political, cultural, and economic damage suffered over the past 100 years (if not longer)...
The middle east has remained outside of the global economy, participating solely as a mercantilist society involved in selling one primary, and depleting, natural resource.
One has to ask what will happen when the oil runs out? And what will be the repercussions to neighboring states who will be expected to provide jobs and accomodations for their burgeoning, poverty stricken, masses??
People like GST simply have no answer to those questions. They believe Arabs are incapable of being self-sustaining and peaceful societies.. Everything we're doing is in vain because all Arabs want to do, if I understand him correctly, is wage Jihad.
But I'm not buying that racist perspective. I, and many others, understand that the muslims are engaged in a religious and cultural civil war. A war which the progressives will eventually win, but only at the cost of millions of lives and decades of fundamentalist rule, fueled by oil wealth (which they know will subsidize their regimes)..
But once the oil is gone, we'll still be left with the same problem and it will cost FAR MORE, both in lives and money, to fix it...
Anyone who spends even a minimal amount of time analyzing the situation should be able to see that..
But no... GST and people of his ilk, are too busy playing partisan politics and engaging in "bush bashing", rather than trying to understand the demographic and economic mega-trends which have driven the events of the past couple of years.
He doesn't have to make hard decisions, or be responsible for long-term contingency planning.. All he has to do is maintain his short-sighted and politically vacuous criticisms.
Hawk |
