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

To: Bilow who wrote (47871)	9/29/2002 4:40:10 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

How many US cities would have to be destroyed before you would agree to negotiations OK, Carl. Lets start. First off, you are dealing with a "False Premise." You are assuming that we will let them get bombs and set them off. Is this impossible? No. Is it probable? That is the question. We have been engaged in stopping bad guys from getting Nuclear Weapons for about 20 years. So far, so good. One good thing about them is that they are complicated. You don't put one together in your garage. Plus the core material and the stuff needed to set it off deteriorates. It is going to take a state to put one together. They could then pass it to someone else to detonate, but we would know where it came from. The next point is that as bad as we were at doing something about Bin Ladin, we are pretty good at tracking down nuclear stuff. We have spent Billions since the Soviets collapsed keeping track of the the stuff. But, in spite of all of the above, lets suppose that Al Q, or someone else got one and set it off in NYC. Killed millions. What to do? Do we roll over and beg? Of course not! Your attitude appears to be, Oh,Oh, Oh, we are doomed! Lets pull back to our borders and hope no one tries to hurt us! Is this going to save us? Of course not! They would be even more eager to come after us. All we can do is stand and fight, and hope we get them before they get us. 911 may end up being a blessing, if it acts as a wake-up call to this country that we must defend ourselves against these things. Our best bet is to play "Offense," not "Defense."

To: Bilow who wrote (47871)	9/29/2002 12:02:26 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

How many US cities would have to be destroyed before you would agree to negotiations with the terrorists who were doing it? In the real world, the answer to that question depends on whether the terrorist even have negotiable demands. So far, their 'demands' are the destruction of the US and its replacement with a Muslim country. That's very non-negotiable. The US would suffer very many destroyed cities before negotiating that one, and would make sure that the bases of the terrorists got worse than we were getting. We have this tradition of ruthlessness in war that you remember, when it suits you. And you know, if it ever approached that point, all our allies who now sit and carp from a position of safety, would consider that having the US as top dog might not be such a bad thing, after all. There are definitely worse arrangements. As Mark Steyn says, "The more inventively you try to ''explain'' the Islamist psychosis as a rational phenomenon to be accommodated, the more you risk sounding just as nutty as them." Like I noted before, up to now the terrorists have been very poorly armed. When Reagan gave the Afghans weapons, it was Stinger missiles, but all the terrorists seem to be able to get ahold of are knives. Boy, are you behind the times. Have you checked out Hizbullah's arsenal lately? It ain't knives. The Japanese answer was "two". 1. That was at the end of losing a 9-year war. 2. The Japanese didn't know there only were two, now did they?