LowertheAcademy,
I've never seen that letter before. Thanks for posting it. I don't know if it's legitimate, but I don't see anything in it I didn't already know. In fact, I consider it as further evidence that there were broad range of reasons these guys wanted a regime change. It sort of compliments much of the evidence I've seen about Richard Pearle and the Defense Policy Board promoting regime change in Israel and the U.S. long before 9/11.
The part I assume we agree on is that after 9/11 they lied and spun the US and some of our international partners into war. That part is very hard to forgive. I have doubly difficult time with the Richard Pearles of the world because they are not even operating with just US interests at heart.
What we may disagree on is whether they are war mongering madmen or people with legitimate concerns that were heightened enormously by 9/11. Obviously, I think they are the latter. I also think some of their concerns were legitimate given the realities of the world. I think those concerns should have been heightened after 9/11 given that there are probably several hundred thousand Muslim extremists in the world and at least 10s of millions of Muslims that support them even if they wouldn't act on their own. I am being "politically correct" with those estimates. I do have some "left" in me). ;-)
You may find this hard to believe, but when the country was debating this I spent most of my time discussing it with people that are to the right of center and others that are very pro Israel Jewish friends of mine. Typically they were calling me names like "pink panty wearing woman", "liberal", "idealistic" because I was trying to convince them that there were huge potential downsides to war, the neocons were a bunch of lying shitheads, etc....
The reality to me both then and now is that most people are dug into their positions based on the party they belong to, their visions of the way world should be, their worst fears, and a lot of other things that are preventing them from seeing that neither the left or right is evil or clearly right or wrong. It was actually a very tough problem then and remains that way now.
If I was dictator for the last 50 years, the US would not be dependent on middle east oil and I would have done everything I could to make sure none of our major trading partners were either. I would have defended Israel if someone made an aggressive move, but I wouldn't have supported it almost unconditionally, gave it weapons and huge sums of money etc... We wouldn't have to worry about the US dollar's role in the world because we'd have sound money etc...
I'd more or less be Ron Paul and stay out of everyone's business unless they were aggressive.
The problem is that I wasn't dictator for the last 50 years. ;-)
If you made me dictator tomorrow, I would have a boatload of very tough and risky decisions to make.
IMO politicians and dirtbags have been screwing up this country so badly for decades starting with the creation of the Fed and then the expansion of government, I don't see an easy way to fix it. I also consider it politically impossible to fix it any time soon without a complete meltdown that leads to a libertarian style revolution. Either that or a benevolent dictator like me. (bg)
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