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

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (23521)	1/8/2004 5:02:41 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 793611

"The Prez spent his energy trying to jury rig a weapons connection between 9/11 and Iraq"... Geeze, I completely missed that point. Apparently I also completely missed it when the President allegedly spent his energy doing it as well. Perhaps kholt can provide credible specifics for us. I'd be all for criminal prosecution & Impeachment if this were true.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (23521)	1/8/2004 5:57:52 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793611

The trouble is, the tools that the Realists have to bring to bear - diplomacy, sanctions, containment - are quite unlikely to be effective. If the enemy is terrorism rather than Islamicism, though, those tools are legitimate options. And, Nadine, as much as I may respect your assessment of the situation, it ain't a war on Islamicism until and unless the Powers That Be declare it so. So you have to cut some slack to those who are unwittingly or legitimately focusing on terrorism, instead. Let's say it is, indeed, a war on terrorism. If so, then the options discussed by others are not as ridiculous as they have been portrayed. In that scenario, a case can be made for focusing on defense at home. Remember that what triggered this was that we took a hit on our home turf, something previously never considered. People were shook up by that. That's what changed everything, not the notion that there's an Islamicist movement. So, to deal with the fear that caused, it is not altogether unreasonable to focus on putting a lid on the US. Keep them out of the US and that solves the salient problem. If we were to put the energy into doing that that we're putting into Iraq, we could probably do that pretty well. Which comes to the question of whether "pretty well" is good enough. Fear is a strange thing. As a practical matter, each of us has a greater chance of dying from a lightning strike than at terrorist hands even if we do nothing at all to stop them. Yes, maybe we'll take another hit at some point, but then we lose ten or twenty times the number killed that day each year in auto accidents. Same goes for the flu. Do we have a war on flu? Are we invading China where so much flu starts? Whatever happened to "nothing to fear but fear itself"? Are we stronger if we send troops to the ME or if we learn to take a punch? Israel has shown us how to take a punch. Can we not compete with them? Osama must be laughing his ass of at how scared we are. Does that not suggest another possible approach, if the problem is terrorism, that is, which is to dismiss the murderous little twits and go about our lives. I'm not proposing those approaches. What I'm saying is that there have been other ideas and thoser\ ideas are worth a fair hearing if for no reason than to reaffirm for all to see the wisdom of the chosen approach. What has happened instead is that other ideas are ridiculed. That's no way to increase the size of the tent. If people who favor homeland security because they think that the problem is terrorism, then listening respectfully to them gains their trust, enables all of us to learn something, and provides an opportunity to discuss whether the problem is, indeed, terrorism after all. Even if the problem is Islamicism, are there not other approaches? What kind of hearing have they had? The problem is that bringing swamp-draining into the open would have had negative repurcussions on our attempts to get aid from various fence-sitting regimes, like Saudi Arabia. There are tradeoffs. I wonder how much Saudi Arabia has helped compared to what this feint has cost. Personally, my first target would have been Saudi Arabia. It could be that would have gotten Libya and others off the dime faster. It could be that that would have spurred internal movement, resistances in those countries. You know, Islamicism might look like the devil right now but whatever flows can ebb. Iran has shifted back and forth during our lifetimes. It seems to be coming around again on its own. Ten years from now there may be so much internet service in the ME that the place will come around with or without our intervention.