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

To: frankw1900 who wrote (114588)	9/12/2003 5:17:32 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

<Modernity doesn't require abandonment of ethics.> contradicts <Bluntly, the West held its nose against the tyranical stink of these regimes and supported them because it had to.> You see no contradiction, in using the methods of Machiavelli and Kissinger, to reach the goals of Jefferson and Kant. Those methods consistently lead to very different results. Which is why I question the sincerity, of those who keep preaching Freedom, and keep delivering military dictatorships. You are provably wrong, when you say the U.S. did not overthrow democratically elected governments during the Cold War. Iran, Chile. The "book" I would use, is to wage this war: 1. using 90% cultural, economic, political, propaganda; and only 10% military. 2. The 150B$ we are going to waste in Iraq, to conquer it and then in the first 12 months of our futile effort to hold it, would have been much better spent on Energy Independence. 3. not doing Regime Change, unless we have workable, serious plans for Nation Building afterward. So far, we are 0-for-2, in Nation-Building during this war. 4. Forget about any further Regime Changing (except at home!), as we simply don't have the means to do it anywhere else. Adopt a Realistic plan for Containment. 5. The only way we are ever going to get our opponents to give up nuclear weapons (or stop development programs), is if we give them up ourselves. We need to have intrusive inspections, an end to testing and developing new nuclear weapons, controls on the transfer of technologies and materials, and a gradual dismantling of existing weapons. But it has to be global. That is, we have to do what we are demanding everyone else do. It won't work, otherwise. There are only two possible futures: either everyone will have nukes, or no one will. And if everyone has nukes, they will be used, and used repeatedly, sooner or later.