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

To: FaultLine who wrote (115419)	9/21/2003 7:33:05 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi FaultLine; Re convincing the winners and losers. No, the reason that Palestine / Israel is still "troubled" is that the two sides do not agree who *shall* be the winners and who the losers. The squabble continues *because* no one has yet won or lost. The good thing about WW2 is that it was sufficiently sanguinary that there was no doubt who was the winner and who was the loser. Nor is it obvious now, who will be the winner and who the loser in Iraq, any more than it was obvious, years ago, who would prevail in Vietnam, Afghanistan or Algeria. World history, over and over, indicates that conquering foreign soil is easier than holding it. This is despite the commonplace observation that holding the territory should be expected to increase the power of the holder over the holdee. That it doesn't work that way is quite amply illustrated in Genesis, where God created men after his own image and "let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." bartleby.com Hey, if the Iraqis were fish, or fowl, or cattle, or any other creeping thing, we wouldn't be having so much trouble with them. McDonalds solved the "dominion" problem with cows a long time ago. Nor have I heard about any chickens setting off "improvised explosive devices" against KFC. And pretending that the Iraqis are the type of creature that we can assert dominion over, or should desire to, is not only immoral, it's expensive, hopeless and contrary to our nation's interests. If, on the other hand, our desire is to "help" the Iraqis avoid being dominated by, well, other Iraqis, then sure, we can give guns and money to the Iraqis we would prefer to be the ones dominating. But that policy, while it would save the lives of hundreds of our soldiers, would also be of doubtful utility, due to the fact that nations typically reject ideologies, even useful and moral ideologies, that are injected into them by foreigners with money. Instead, Iraq's path, stoney though it may be, needs to be charted, decided, and trod, by the Iraqis themselves, just as our own path has always been taken. We are a powerful nation, but we are not powerful enough to set aside the laws of God and man, and the fiasco in Iraq is about as good evidence of this as you will get. -- Carl P.S. What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.

To: FaultLine who wrote (115419)	9/22/2003 8:56:32 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

A senior editor from The Atlantic Monthly has an interesting new article on General Clark... theatlantic.com <<...As Clark argued in Waging Modern War, his 2001 memoir of the Kosovo campaign, NATO's action against Milosevic provided a blueprint for how future wars should be fought. At the time of the action many nations, the United States prominent among them, had doubts about a military campaign. By waging war through NATO, Clark gained the assurance that the governments of all nineteen member nations had a political stake in the campaign and thus a commitment to victory. Working with NATO required extraordinary diplomatic efforts; every nation theoretically had to approve a strike on any target. Nevertheless, Clark concluded that having allied support for America's use of force sent a powerful message to the enemy and imparted crucial political backing for the military campaign—benefits that far outweighed any tactical restrictions. Clark believes that working with allies is more than a diplomatic necessity —it makes a military power stronger; he calls an alliance a "force multiplier." Even though other candidates take similar positions, Clark can explain his in commonsense terms that elude them, and with the authority of someone who won a war. He is likely to find an increasingly receptive audience if the news from Iraq gets worse. "I would have first aligned the United Nations and NATO against al-Qaeda," he told me in December. "Then, when it comes time to work against Iraq or Iran or North Korea, you've got a strong, committed group of allies." The order of threat, he believed, was al-Qaeda, North Korea, and Iran—and then Iraq. Clark did not oppose intervening in Iraq; he simply thought the Bush Administration's military decision was premature, and reckless in its unilateralism...>>