We have both deposed and supported many people over time. We saved Western Europe from Communist revolution after saving it from Nazism. We helped to liberate the Eastern Europeans, by supporting Solidarity and other dissident groups, and undermining the Soviet Union. We helped support the trend towards greater moderation in China, after the death of Mao. We did not, on the other hand, per se "support Saddam", we tilted towards him briefly as a buffer to revolutionary Iran. We did not support the Taliban, we supported the mujaheddin who fought the Sovietization of Afghanistan. Unfortunately, in the aftermath, the Taliban came to power. It is not that we have never made mistakes, but that your portrait is too one- sided.
I do not know by what criterion you determine what is waste and what is legitimate use. What I do know is that suppressing economic growth surely lead to death through disease and malnutrition, and the instability caused by misery, and that you exaggerate the importance of oil use, and the danger of shortages, and ignore what I said about alternatives becoming more prevalent when they are more economical.
The Israeli- Palestinian conflict is a singular situation, from which one can infer little. Terrorists have been suppressed in Europe (both at the turn of the century, and aftter a rash of incidents in the '70s); they have been suppressed in the Phillippines; they have been suppressed to some degree in India (the Tamils); and I am sure there are other instances.
I am not talking about suppressing the huge population of global Islam, I am talking about suppressing the small minority of fanatics who dedicate themselves to terrorism.
As far as I am concerned, we are right now, in Iraq, working for justice and the eventual democratization of the Middle East. |
