Well, that essay deserves a long rebuttal, but I am not going to give it right now. I'll confine myself to one point. CK says,
But there is a second difference between now and then: the uniqueness of our power, unrivaled, not just today but ever. That evens the odds. The rationality of the enemy is something beyond our control. But the use of our power is within our control. And if that power is used wisely, constrained not by illusions and fictions but only by the limits of our mission--which is to bring a modicum of freedom as an antidote to nihilism--we can, and will, prevail.
While the disparity between our military power and that of others is "unique" in important ways, it confuses CK and other neocons. Because we are not--quite sensibly--willing to actually use all that power that makes us unique. We don't want to destroy whole countries and make them unliveable for long periods of time. We did a little of that in Vietnam, and that was enough. We have far more military power now than then, and could do far worse if we had a lunatic military following a lunatic leader. Once you adjust for what we are actually willing to do, and our limited resources in terms of boots on the ground, then we can't simply "impose our will" on other countries.
I don't have much time post today, maybe more tonight or later in the week. |
