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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SirRealist who wrote (38106)	8/16/2002 10:15:12 AM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I've often wondered why it is that some folks who advocate aggressive military action promote the view that the US is considered to be weak. And after the world learns all over again that the US is strong, and perfectly capable, the same folks indicate that we must be aggressive again, because the world thinks we are weak. Notwithstanding any political bias, the objective fact is that the US is immensely strong in the military sphere. The strength we enjoy is difficult to appreciate. It overshadows any other nation's by orders of magnitude. Not only are we miitarily strong almost to the point of absurdity, we are getting stronger. Anyone who cares to do so can read Brooks' and Wohlforth's article in the latest issue of FA on the subject. We are so strong even our military leaders have difficulty understanding what they can do with the arsenal available to them. A great example is Powell's delay in starting the Gulf War in '91 after being rattled by Saddam's "mother of all battles" BS. He got more troops in which were in retrospect unnecessary. The now-forgotten hew and cry about the losses in Afghanistan, the fact that no one had ever beat the Afghans in their own turf, yada, yada, yada, was more of the same inability to comprehend our own power. What is left behind is a group of yes-folk, eager to demonstrate the US is not weak, forever. It is not enough to demonstrate that the US can outkill any challenger; we must repeat it often. Wrong. When it comes to Saddam, the issues are not complicated. Do we or do we not allow a madman and our sworn enemy to develop nukes in a region which is critical to our national interests and those of the entire West? The answer to this admittedly rhetorical question, in my view, is "no". The US's military strength is in this context irrelevant. If we had 25% of the strength we actually have, we'd be compelled to take the same action as will take place.