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

To: TimF who wrote (94303)	4/19/2003 9:30:34 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

thanks for your point-by-point commentary on my list of ways for non-violent victory in World War 4. < there are times when not supporting one undemocratic force leaves a worse undemocratic force to control the situation.> This attitude, the Kissinger Machiavellian Foreign policy, means the U.S. doesn't stand for anything. "Realism" means we end up with allies that are a collection of the nastiest regimes on the planet: Marcos in Phillipines, Shah in Iran, Pinochet in Chile, etc. We become identified with them, and get blamed for their crimes. <Force indiscriminantly used will increase terrorism> Yes, that's the problem. Guerrilla armies (like Al Queda and Hezbollah) are very good at hiding in civilian populations. In practice, the only effective way to find them, is if the civilians they are hiding among, turn them in. Without that, the soldiers sent to find them, end up treating everyone as a potential guerrilla, using force indiscriminantly, and increasing support for the guerrillas. And the civilians are only going to aid the anti-guerrilla army, if a HeartsAndMinds campaign has been won. That is the crucial factor in winning this war. <We already have alternate ways to generate energy and technology to conserve energy, it just hasn't made economic sense to use it when oil is much cheaper.> The reasons oil looks cheap, is because much of the cost has been externalized. Garrisoning the oil fields is a cost of reliance on imported oil. If we relied 100% of domestic energy sources, we would not have had to fight the two wars against Iraq, or the war on Afghanistan, and 9/11 would not have happened. The total cost for all that, plus all the domestic security expenses, runs into the 100s of billions. <Use our leverage to Engage in the Israeli-Arab conflict> We have the leverage to do anything we want. Israel is totally isolated, has no friends anywhere, except for us. They rely on us, militarily, politically, economically. We give them all their weapons, all their technology, billions in aid every year. We choose not to use the power we have, to fix the endless bloodshed in the Palestine and Israel.