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 : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (23394)	1/8/2004 1:12:37 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793640

Seriously, I'm making a distinction between violating the sovereignty of a country by popping in and unloading on a pack of terrorists that threaten us in a quasi-police action vs. "declaring" war on a country, taking the country on rather than the terrorist renegades, taking over the country This approach gets to the heart of the conceptual difference between how you, and much of America, looks at the WOT, and how Richard Perle and the Bush Administration and those in their camp, look at the WOT. (BTW, Richard Perle and David Frum just appeared on Charlie Rose promoting their new book. Catch it if you can.) The first way is to look at the terrorists as bandits, clumps of criminals. Organized maybe, but still just criminals, to be dealt with in police actions wherever they are found. The second way sees the terrorists as the militant arm of a large, radical anti-American movement that is trying to take over much of the Middle East. This movement inherits its political philosophy from totalitarianism, but wraps itself in the green flag of Islam, and sells the romantic notion that the ummah will recover its rightful position in the world by a return to Islamic purity. If this reminds you of various Nazi 'blood and soil' romantic stories, it should. In the second notion, the terrorists are not acting by themselves. Not at all! They are being funded by governments (Iran and Syria come first to mind, Iraq ran third under Saddam) or quasi-governmental agencies (Saudi Arabia). They work hand in hand with a network of mosques and madrassas preaching their ideas, and giving charity to bring the people in. They are aided by the fact that the only space for civil disagreement in the Arab world is in the mosque. Some Arab governments have actively supported them; others have made the Faustian bargain that they would be let alone as long as their preaching and "martyrdom operations" were against the US and Israel only. Saudi Arabia is now living to regret this bargain. If you look at the problem in the second way, you can see that killing the terrorists and then stopping is merely killing a few alligators without draining the swamp. And draining the swamp is a big job. It will take decades, and must be fought as a war of ideas - for democracy, for rule of law, for property rights, for free markets, against romantic Islamic totalitarianism - as well as a war of arms. That is why Iraq was a necessity. Saddam's support of Palestinian terrorism, his attempts to claim the Islamist mantle for himself, were almost besides the point. Iraq was one Arab state which was so bad that we could surely improve it, with a population without too much use for Arab League business as usual. Moreover, we we already at war with Iraq, and the current situation was unstable and deteriorating. We could not afford another backdown in the Arab world, particularly after 9/11. Only a convincing display of American might would reverse the "pitiful, helpless giant" reputation we had gathered after 20 years of weak reaction or no reaction at all to terrorist attacks. And one thing is sure - the brittle, illegitimate Arab regimes are always frightened and paranoid. They don't want progress because an improvement for their people is not an improvement for them. There is no chance at all of changing their behavior unless they fear us more than they fear the Islamists whom their own misrule has bred.