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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated

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To: unclewest who wrote (56675)7/28/2004 11:13:44 AM
From: Lane3  Read Replies (3) of 793954
 
I do believe that the Muslim extremists have the entire US Government tied in knots right now.

You'll get no argument from me on that one.

Unfortunately most of the effort is defensive and will never win a battle.

I take your point about defense vs. offense. I would suggest though that we're allocating too much to both of them. The only way to get knot-free is to overcome the fear and get some rational perspective.

John Kerry, a man with a history of fleeing from battle, proposes to place our security in the hands of the UN and the uncooperative allies of Germany and France.

That's just hype and dogma.

I don't know about you, but Kerry's proposal scares me and I'm not afraid of anything.

What proposal is that? What you suggest above? He proposed that? I don't think so.

There's hardly any daylight between what Bush would do and what Kerry would do. Sure, Bush would be more inclined to take the offensive, but he won't be able to do so in a massive way over the next four years because we're already overextended so his inclination hardly matters. That's rather like the Dems and universal health care. They can propose until they're blue in the face but if they don't have the wherewithal to follow through, which they don't, it's moot. We have to be able to be able to distinguish between the rhetoric and what can be feasibly done. Whoever is president will have limited choices. The terrorists have limited choices, too. They may have motive in spades but their opportunity is limited and their means is close to nil. We need to focus on keeping their means in check and on obviating their motive. We can do that without tying ourselves up in knots.

I believe we are involved in what could easily become a massive and bloody war of survival. The proliferation of WMDs makes that an overnight possibility.

I suppose it could. Any conflict in the age of nuclear proliferation could. If we get zapped, it could just as easily be from some enemy we haven't identified yet. That old "failure of imagination" at work.

The 15 million Muslim militant extremists do not share your time frame. They willingly welcome and embrace death if their own demise will make even a tiny contribution to the greater goal of killing all of us.

UW, this reminds me global warming. We have true believers who would compromise our life style and prosperity now and into the future to counter something that is generations away if ever. I'd prefer to put some effort into R&D, into taking reasonable steps over the long haul to obviate a bad outcome, and plugging the obvious holes as we find them rather than betting the farm that the scariest Muslim scenario will play out. I don't see much daylight between the ecowarriors and the hawks. They're just under the spell of different religions.
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