" figure out why you can't see that you can't militarily support INDIVIDUALS --- "
Not supporting individuals. Supporting the gov't and an entire society. Killing individuals. The ones that kill those they disagree with. Whether you realize it or not, the military is good at fighting killers.
"OF COURSE most everyone would say we should be pals with all the 'good people' in the world --- me too! LOL!"
Don't make it so complicated then. And don't let your pessimistic belief (prejudice?) that religious groups in Iraq don't have the ability to co-exist as religios groups in other countries do. I think you realize that they could, but it would be too hard, so let's not help them. I think it too dangerous that progress that has been made with their gov't would be lost. Possibly reverting to something worse than we had with saddam.
"this (the operation is short sighted) is MY OPINION"
I think your view of it is short sighted. Bush's is not. It is a far reaching and long term solution (if it works). I think to charactarize establishing democracy and changing the entire nature of the middle east is anything but short sighted. Legit to say it won't work, but it is the opposite of short sighted imo.
"I BELIEVE his method is naive and over-expensive and a waste of precious resources we don't even have"
This should be the crux of your argument. Maybe you are interchanging naive and short sighted.
"There are MANY THINGS that need doing in this world (cure cancer, travel to Mars, commercialize fusion power, bring about peace in the world, shrink the size of the government and pay down national debt, grow the economy, educate the next generation, solve environmental problems, reform the corrupt tax system, establish justice,"
All of these take a back seat to eliminating (or vastly reducing) terrorism.
"defend ourselves adequately against future threats - military or economic - from emerging competitors/threats such as China, North Korea, Iran"
This is what we are doing, and what the repubs are good at. I think the NUMBER ONE job of the gov't is to protect this system that allows all of us to succeed.
"and there are LIMITED RESOURCES to do them all."
Think how limited they would be if we had a number of 9-11's.
"simply asking for your rational OPINION... "
We do have the resources and to say we should limit our efforts based on a financial number is silly. If we save $500 billion and lose the war on terror all your other programs are moot. One nuke in NY will show that. We need to set up a world where that WILL NOT HAPPEN.
"so GENERATIONS UPON GENERATIONS will be required to pay for these expenditures...."
A) Your a pessimist;-)
B) At least there will be these generations.
"Right now, it looks like letting the Civil War play out "
Right now sounds short sighted to me. |
