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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (7916)	11/27/2001 1:28:04 PM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

You are very interested in pointing out the futility of an aggressive response, in the long run. Hence the use of the term defeatism. I think that's a little mis-interpretation and subsequent extrapolation. I'll try to re-phrase. Terrorism has been around a long time, well before the US even existed for that matter. The primary difference today, is that weapoons technology has evolved to the point that the use of weapons of mass destruction are available to persons with disposable cash. There are a few things about humanity that we know through experience as predictable. Long periods of economic and political chaos lead inevitably to persons who are not very nice acquiring power. Even on the Northern Alliance side, those in power are not very nice people. As a doctor in Afghanistan said, when the Taliban came in we went from bad to bad and now that the Northern Alliance has won, we went from bad to bad. One other aspect of human behavior is the propensity to externalize problems. We have to blame someone else for our problems. The larger the problems, the stronger the response to blaming someone else and the likelihood that terrorism will rise out of the chaos. I could confidently say that when there is no poverty, no civil wars, no bigotry and justice is fairly applied throughout the world there will be no terrorism. After you and I get off the floor from laughing over that one, we can move on to the more realistic proposition that terrorisim will exist long after I'm worm bait. Futility would be an appropriate term, if I claimed that based on that observation we should do nothing. This is not something that I have claimed. But it is realistic to expect that terrorism will continue on for many generations yet to come. And as technology continues to evolve, as it must, weapons of mass destruction will be easier to come by. I find that to be a bummer, but I think it's also realistic. Just think about all the potential genetic manipulations of cholera that we can come up with...we can even imagine manipulating a virus to be a specific pathogen for an ethnic group. There are a lot of thrusts one can take in an agressive response, but let's limit it to military action for this discussion. I have not had any problem with taking a strong military action in Afghanistan. I've had some tactical differences of opinion, but have not objected to taking a strong military action. For example, I think it was a tactical error to bomb the Red Cross storage facilities. On to other countries. Perhaps you know a lot more than about the immediate terrorism threat to national security than I do. But let's go with what's published. I'm quite aware of Sadam's history, but in terms of what's out there right now in immediate threat...what is the basis for saying that Iraq is a more immediate terrorist threat than Sudan? I don't think you can find anything that says one of several countries is a more immediate threat. Any long term strategy towards countering terrorism will require world cooperation...and you can quote George Bush Sr. on that one along with a few others. Given what appears to be equal choices, Sudan, Iraq, and a few others, which choice[s] increases the probability that you will maintain world cooperation. If you pick a Muslim country, then you feed the theory that this is a war against the Muslim people. You run the risk that the current level of cooperation will diminish. I don't think that's a good outcome. If the Administration wishes to ignore that possible outcome and just wants to go after Iraq, they can do so. I think it would be a political mistake that risks the long term strategy of dealing with terrorism on a global basis. jttmab