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

To: aladin who wrote (116309)	10/7/2003 2:05:54 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi John Cavanaugh; Re: "So abandoning Somolia was ok? Letting the butchery happen in Rwanda and now in the Congo is an internal affair?" Sometimes there are no pretty solutions. This is isn't the movies and the cavalry isn't going to come around the corner and save the settlers from the heathens. In fact, most of the time it's pretty difficult to tell the moral differences between the settlers and the heathen. The US is a major power, but our powers are not infinite. There are actions that are theoretically within our power, but in practical terms would require such bloodshed (American blood), that we cannot realistically do them. When I was young, the US went through another era of hubris. The result was that we got sucked into the Vietnam war. The repeated refrain was "we can put a man on the moon, why can't we XXXX?" I haven't heard that bromide for a long time. The answer is that putting a man on the moon is a hell of a lot easier than using force to make the settlers and the heathen like each other. You only put men on the moon two or three at a time. Iraq, for instance, has 25,000,000 people. If we had enough power to put them all on the moon we would truly be a superpower. But no, our powers are very limited, especially in our ability to influence the thinking of foreigners. -- Carl

To: aladin who wrote (116309)	10/7/2003 8:24:18 AM
From: Sun Tzu	Respond to of 281500

Some day the world will prove the immense wisdom of Gene Roddenberry's Prime Directive. There are no pretty answers for every case. But there is a self correcting feedback mechanism built into everything we see in the world. Just isolate the system and in time it will balance itself for the best. I find it more than a little odd that so many of War supporters argue for peace when we are still the biggest arms merchant in the world. Taking away the means of destruction would be one of the best ways to reduce the damage from conflicts around the world.