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 : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (535921)	2/5/2004 1:16:01 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Neocon, I cannot accept the premise that Saddam could likely have bullied the Saudis or others into paying tribute. The Russians couldn't do it with all of their military power, why should a third rate military power with or without some lightweight wmds be able to do so? It's like the 5th grade bully thinking he can take the 3rd grader's lunch money when the third graders all have big brothers that can, and will, rip the bully up if he tries. Saddam knew that the Saudis and others had the power of the U.S. military behind them. Why would it become aggressive when after the first Gulf War its very survival depended on not escaping its box? I must also disagree with the statement that; "[t]errorists are not bred primarily by evidence of our strength, but by evidence of our weakness, which they seek to exploit." Terrorism, by it's very nature, is a response to STRENGTH, not weakness. The "death of a thousand cuts" is the little and weak man's response to a power that he cannot confront with equal or greater power. The greatest resolve is eventually worn down by the process of loss and time UNLESS the cause justifies the loss. Their end is to cause enough loss to make the strong do a cost/benefit analysis that factors in the fear, deaths and disfunction that results from constant threat of attack and from attacks. If you believe that the current crop of anti-American terrorist are in it only because they're mad men who hate passionately, then how do you stop them with a show of strength? If you believe that they are in it for reasons having to do with forcing us to reassess our actions in specific areas of the world, then how do you stop that with a show of force? As long as men are willing to die to make us suffer, what does it matter that we have the greatest military in the world? It's a show of intelligence and an undermining of their influence among their likely recruitment and support areas that's required. Iraq was a diversion from that pursuit. I believe that our actions in Iraq have cost us the wholehearted cooperation of nations and populations in the world that are essential for the long term containment of terrorism. I think that's a big deal.