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

To: paul_philp who wrote (56711)	11/14/2002 8:10:15 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

I think there is a very real risk of a sustained terrorism campaign on American soil. I think there is a very real risk of a fundamentalist state becoming armed enough to attack or provoke Isreal. I agree, but neither of these represents a threat to our existence, as WW2 or the Cold War did. We need to keep these threats in perspective and design our responses to meet the threat at hand. Hysteria doesn’t help. I do see that the stability of the world being at risk. I really don’t. The stability of the Middle East, maybe, but not the world. If the Cold War were still active, with the Soviet Union and the US trying to exploit the situation to gain advantage in a worldwide confrontation, I would say that the stability of the world (a relative term at best) was threatened, but that is not the case. I think that the can get the job done without causing a large scale conflict. If he does the world will look very different. The question here: what exactly is “the job”. Protecting the US from terrorist attack or recreating the Middle East in an incarnation acceptable to us. Is it necessary to achieve the second goal to assure the first? One danger I see here is that there is a core of individuals in the current foreign policy establishment that really, honestly, believes that American military and economic dominance creates the ability and even the obligation to impose a Pax Americana on the world, reshaping the globe in our image. This I think is a very dangerous and impractical belief. Under normal circumstances it would also be a belief that simmers away in a remote corner of discussion, not one that ever gets transmitted into policy. 9/11 provided a reason to bring that idea out of the closet, and I think there are some folks around with agendas well beyond protecting the US from terrorism. This is something we need to watch very closely, IMO. To the others who have contributed to the inbox; be patient. I'll get there. sr@occasionalvisitorandtryingtostaythatway.com