Hi SirRealist; Re: "Carl. I've heard far more calls to engage than disengage. ... I just think you've misjudged which way the American public has moved. Nearterm, it's hardly isolationist." I'm not looking nearterm. In fact, on 9/11 I myself reversed myself from my ususal call for a tilt towards isolationism, and instead called for a military response. For example, here I am immediately before and immediately after 9/11:
Bilow, September 10, 2001
...
The proper comparison for our current military expenditures is not with the cold war, certainly not with any hot war, but with typical peace time expenditures. The problem is that the world has either been in war, or about to be in war between 1914 and 1989. Since then, our military expenditures have dropped, but nearly as much as the military threats have.
In 1985 our armor was facing Russian armor across the plains of northern Germany. It's not realistic to compare the current situation to the time when the two superpowers faced off across the Fulda gap.
We won. This is peacetime. We fought the 75-year long war to "make the world safe for Democracy", and now the world is safe for democracy. We should have had a party when the Berlin wall fell.
We have not yet got used to it being peacetime. When we have, I expect the Republican party to return to its traditional isolationism. Frankly, I look forward to that. During peacetime, military expenditures should be concentrated on R&D, making sure that productive capability is available, (as opposed to actually producing weapons that quickly become obsolete), and reserves instead of standing army.
... #reply-16328470
Bilow, September 11, 2001, 9:47PM
Well I just woke up from my displaced time schedule and I am pissed almost beyond belief. Yesterday I was shocked, now I want revenge. I bet that when you wake up tomorrow you're going to feel the same way. The United States will be united more than ever by this.
I think it's time that we clean out the cesspools where this action originated. We need to topple some religious whacko governments in the near east. I suggest we start with Afghanistan, then move on to Iraq and the others.
Sending in the Air Force is a waste of time. We need to replace these governments with more moderate ones, and the only way we can do that is with ground troops and occupation armies. I think we should call up the reserves and do it. Talking about it is a waste of time. We are not safe any longer. Peace is no longer an option, if it ever was.
The talk by people that we should kill the friends and relatives of terrorists is sick. Our problem is with the governments that harbor these fanatics, the people are not our problem. Heck, some of their relatives who already immigrated to the U.S. are serving as proud members of our armed forces. This is time to talk of changing the world, not pointless genocide. #reply-16335295
Eventually the rest of you will come around to seeing things my way, but like I said before, it's going to take a couple years. I don't think most people realize how effective the US campaign was. Nadine, for instance, keeps talking about the threat that Osama bin Laden still poses to us.
But over the long run, what we will do is obvious. We're not going to subject our cities to terror attacks because of a 3000 year-old pissing match. War is hell. Democracies have to be forced into it, and we're not being forced, any more than we were forced by the North Vietnamese to keep troops in South Vietnam for them to set up ambushes for. While we do have security concerns in the Middle East, our troops are not helping those security concerns.
If we were worried about another attack by a conventional enemy like Saddam, then sure, keeping US Army deployed is helpful. But that's not what our real foe is revealed to be.
Re: "Arafat has gone from being a puppet to a shadow puppet, in the eyes of most Arabs & Americans alike. I can only presume more Palestinians consider him a joke than did before, too." This is true, but it doesn't matter. The Arab / Jew fight far transcends Arafat. Even Egypt and Jordan, who signed peace agreements with Israel, care about the Palestinians. If Arafat were assassinated tommorrow the situation would change only slightly.
It's a fact of human nature that human emotions tend to follow a bell shaped curve. (LOL!) If the average person in a nation resents the US by a certain amount, then a certain percentage will hate the US, and a certain percentage will so loathe the US that they're willing to die for the cause. Changing the leadership doesn't change the human emotional equations. The only truly effective thing we can do to reduce the chance of terror against us is reduce the level of resentment against the US. The alternative, of course, is to be feared far more than we are hated, but that isn't an option with us. Israel might be able to pull it off, but I doubt that too. We're nations under God, and we simply won't run the campaigns of terror (necessary to become more feared than hated) against our enemies. Certainly the US isn't going to do that, what with the fact that we aren't even involved in the 3000 year-old pissing match to begin with, nor do we have anything at stake, possibly other than national prestige.
If Israel decides to go the more feared than hated route, we (and the rest of the world) will drop support for her like a hot potato. Which is why Israel is stuck with their ineffective campaign against the Palestinians.
The whole system is caught in a trap that will only be exited when the US disengages, but that is inevitable. If there's only one hole in your bathtub, that's where most of the water is eventually going to go.
-- Carl |
