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To: kirby49 who wrote (76436)	9/14/2001 3:28:50 PM
From: E. Charters	Respond to of 116753

The only one shot that might end it for a while would be a neutron nuke over Tehran. Things would be some quiet for a while. But it_would_not_end_it. That is the problem. They would still resist. After the emotion has died down you have to look at it rationally. What can you do? What will what you can do, do over time? Can you afford to be only defensive? What defensive measures would protect us well enough? Will the gradual build up of up to nuclear weapons in this area prevent us from taking action in the future? What sort of war action is justified, possible and how far should it proceed to get the results that justify starting it? What will be its long term effects? What concessions overall, even very unpalatable for the US and Israel would stop this sort of thing? Would politics and other action short of war produce a solution as it did over the cold war? Is there a winning strategy.. i.e. win-win? All these questions and about face solutions must be actively think tanked and the solutions whole measured into place ASAP. Wide scale security measure of a scale not before thought of can be put in to place targeting these groups and hindering their ability to support and implement terrorism without taking away fundamental freedoms. We have to target the likely groups with prejudice. 90% of Muslims are not even remotely dangerous, but 100% of these kinds of terrorists are Muslims. Pre-emptive action against advanced operations not yet in place will be called for. Hindrance of financial means of support by associated political action groups from which these extremist groups operate can be done by the RICO act. The enemies here are not stupid people. Afghanis for instance may be goat herders but they did role back the Muhjha-ideen by ruse, alliance and war, where the Russians could not. Let us not accuse them of absolute idiocy or being easy to either figure out or overcome. One of the difficult problems here is that these extremists hide within and are produced by the whole Muslim world. This calls for wide scale action against the whole lot in different ways. It is unforutnate but until they refuse to harbour terrorists we must do this. Either they arrest them and hand them over or we must assume they protect them for political reasons that they support their actions. Since the last terrorist action this is an act of war. We must understand where the Yanqui go home comes from. It has lots of justification. We were there and being a bully for 100 years for first oil, then Israel. We must seek real allies in the region and we must seek to emplace a grass roots support, as we cannot subjugate 1 billion people. Well we could, but it would take some doing. It will be some difficult act of diplomacy to support Israel, eliminate our enemies and win friends in Muslim areas! We have to some kind of image polishing, fighting, and politicing. Of course there are enemies of every stripe in that area who despise each other. But they have to live there and it is not easy for them. More importantly there are democractic moderates throughout the are who don't like Tyranny. Unfortunately we don't back them, but their enemies! We had better get our policies straight to get a winning hand that will endure! It is a mess! American foreign policy is a mess! This is a bigger tougher problem than the Soviet Union was. For 30 years it was apparent it was. Even back in the 70's it was apparent that the Soviet occupation of the satellite states on its southern border would one day end. It was even precited that the empire might not last 30 years. But it was also seen that there was an intractible problem once it did. But it is a problem and solve it we must. We must look at the potential enemies, potential friends, and decide what long term policies to implement to keep the friends and make them stronger. Do we support non democratic countries with their inherent long term instability? Broad changes of policy might be in order. We may need to occupy a buffer between Palestine and Israel. We may need to soften support of tyrant nations in the area, even if they are presently frienldy to the US. Finally we must stop for once and for all, all buildup of arms in the area that may hurt us in the future. Is Pakistan our friend? They are convetionally armed to the teeth. While supporting the Taliban when we helped to expel the Russians, they also winked at the terrorist cells in Baluchistan. Their policies are severe and anti-american and fundamentally anti democratic for the most part. In the long run we must be very careful to only supply deep support to humanitarian, secular, or broadly democratic states, as they are the most stable. Cultivation of good relations with those, over states that merely want to sell us oil will be the winning hand. I don't think the Emirates, Kuwait, Alegeria, or the Saudis are long for this world. We should tell all the non democratic states in that area that the US will only protect them if they go to democracy. What should we want in their place? In short we should be exporting democracy not US power. Given 100 years it is the card we can trump with as we will have the most strong partners. The oil hand wins big now but it will fail to make its tricks in the end. EC<:-}