Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: GST who wrote (122827)	1/5/2004 3:19:47 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Nothing diminishes the power of a country faster than the unwise use of its power. One thing does - the fear to use its power at all. 'Use it or lose it' is the rule of all political capital. Taking blows without response is read as weakness and cowardice, particularly in the Middle East. Remember the very liberal and progress Egyptian plawright Tom Friedman spoke to a while back (his name escapes me), who said America's collosal mistake in the Mideast was in 1983, when we did not respond to Hizbullah's killing our Marines, just turned tail and ran? He said we should have leveled Beirut with artillery. Horrible as that sounds, 3,000 New Yorkers would be alive now if we had. What we have seen in Iraq is a diminished US I couldn't disagree more. That's what you wish to see, not what we see at all. Is that why Saudi Arabia is moving towards reforms and is now battling AQ, because US influence is "weakened" by our three week conquest of Iraq, our hunting down Saddam, our army on their borders? Absurd on its face.