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

To: JohnM who wrote (107308)	7/22/2003 11:41:12 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

John...You may have missed this from the LA Times a couple of days ago, via the ST.... In fact, I was surprised Scott hadn't posted it...so I did. Looks like we have bureaucracies to spare!! ~~ The old right hand and left hand again...Wonder how long some of these folks have been in their current chairs...? Message 19134251 War planning successful, but officials failed in follow-up plan By Mark Fineman, Robin Wright and Doyle McManus Los Angeles Times seattletimes.nwsource.com.

To: JohnM who wrote (107308)	7/23/2003 5:41:37 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

You made a post today in which you reiterated your belief that we should keep a narrow focus on "Al Qaeda only" in going after terrorism. Sullivan had a good reply to that concept today. THE PRE-9/11 MIND: The more I read emails or talk to anti-war types, I get a sense that 9/11 never really happened. Or if it happened, it meant nothing more than a discrete crime with discrete criminals who alone deserved justice. The notion that it meant that we were and are actually at war with a series of terrorist entities and the tyrannies that support them never truly took hold on the far left (or right). As the months have passed, their complacency and denial have undoubtedly metastasized among others as 9/11 recedes from our collective consciousness and its emotional wound begins to heal. These people, it's worth remembering, believe that the exercise of American military power is almost always more morally problematic than any foreign tyranny or even a serious security threat to the homeland. They can only justify American military power if it is wielded under imminent, grave danger that can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. That's why they are so exercised about tiny pieces of evidence today. They still believe we were wrong to remove Saddam from power without incontrovertible proof of WMDs of a type unobtainable in police states; they still believe America had no moral sanction for such an action; and they are even more determined to prove the superiority of their case now that the war was such a military success. So they have to turn the fallible evidence before the war into "lies"; and they have to turn the difficult but worthy post-war reconstruction into a "quagmire." They know the only chance they have is to turn American public opinion against the war so as to prevent any such exercise of military power again. In that sense, they really cannot simply be mocked. They must be challenged at every turn. For they are engaged in a process that will not only stymie efforts at reforming the Middle East but will make Americans and others more vulnerable to the designs of the Islamofascists and their terrorist allies. The war abroad cannot therefore be extricated from the debate at home. We will not win the former without winning the latter. andrewsullivan.com