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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (43985)	2/10/2002 11:42:13 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 82486

Time, thanks for your thoughtful response. How would you react if we went to war to topple Saddam? I'm all for toppling Saddam. Regarding war, my default is always to look for alternatives because war is a last resort. Are there alternatives to war as regards Saddam? The only apparent one is time. Is that a viable alternative in this case? In other words, is it safe to wait? We beat the Soviets by waiting them out rather than nuking them, after all. Is his risk great enough to warrant a pre-emptive war? Is any pre-emptive war moral? Seems to me that we can beat anyone in a war. It's nice to have that tool in the toolbox. It might even be a good idea to flash it every now and again to remind everyone that it's there. To actually use it, I think we need a compelling rationale. There is certainly a pretext in the case of Saddam. There may even be a compelling rationale. I'd like to hear it laid out definitively before the first shot is fired. War is not something to be cavalier about, IMO. I'm having a lot of trouble getting my head around the notion of preventative war. In this country we don't incarcerate people because we think they may commit a crime. The closest we get to that is with serial rapists and child molesters, and even there, we're uncomfortable with the concept and cautious in its application. Growing up, I never though about my country as one that would strike first. Maybe we're in a new paradigm and maybe I should get over it. I'm definitely not there yet but I'm pondering the question because it has been raised by the President. I've been talking with a friend who, since the State of the Union, has been arguing zapping anyone and everyone who even looks at us funny. Snuff them out before they strike at us. He's worried about me living so close to the city. He's convinced that there will be an attack and I won't survive. During that same time period, I watched NOW the other day and Moyers had Jim Carroll as his guest. Now, there's a guy that JLA would assign to his "laundry list" in a flash. He was talking specifically about the different schools of thought at the Pentagon during the Viet Nam years and about those who were, at that time, in favor of "preventative war" and the parallel to current events. The juxtaposition of those two points of view, my friend and Jim Carroll, is what provoked my post and my question to you. I continue to ponder. Karen