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

To: slacker711 who wrote (93341)	4/14/2003 12:18:35 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

I think we will see a dramatic change in the behaviour of the regimes in that part of the world. That's right. And it is because Syria and Iran can look up and see the 4th ID setting on their border and waving, "Hi, there." Does tend to cut down the ME rhetoric. :>)

To: slacker711 who wrote (93341)	4/14/2003 10:53:52 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Thanks, slacker. I think you've let one variable out of your calculus, the variable Jacob and I focused on, and that's the domestic political one. Your scenarios don't include that; Jacob and I focused on it alone. No doubt we are both wrong. My own view is that the domestic political stuff plays a role in any administration's views of foreign policy, particularly on the role of "war" as a political advantage. I also think this one is particularly susceptible to that little song because it thinks in binary forms--good guys, bad guys--rather than the more customary political conflict terms of the other party as reasonable political foes. And, second, because they see themselves in absolutist terms as the good guys. Thus, one gets close to the "end justifies the means" kind of logics. I don't think these domestic political arguments will lead the Bush folk to go to war with Syria all by themselves but I don't think they are absent from their reflections.