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

To: Elsewhere who wrote (126744)	3/21/2004 4:42:39 AM
From: Elsewhere	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

P.S. Carl on nuclear weapons, their purpose and usefulness #reply-18227022 #reply-19426321

To: Elsewhere who wrote (126744)	3/21/2004 5:33:04 AM
From: NightOwl	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

*Please chirp the right interpretation of your statement. Are you saying that the Spanish soldiers are the best part of the US army...?* Shoot no Jochen. Spain is completely out of this picture. Change Bush's name to Alcibiades and you should get my drift. You know... Congress (the Assembly) listens to his story, gives him everything he wants and more, off he goes for Iraq (Syracuse). True... "the Assembly" hasn't recalled him yet, but give them time. Look, Iraq didn't attack any democratic nation, the decision to wage the Iraq war wasn't democratic as far as the international community is concerned, so the whole affair, whether success or failure, has nothing to do with democracy :) Tell it to the Syracusans JJ. I personally could care less who attacked who, why they did it, or if they were wearing pink undies when they did it. I simply cannot accept losing this fight. You can win all the peaceful contests you want, but if you can't win a war without (a) picking on a runt, (b) divine/communist intervention, or (c) nuclearizing your enemy, then you are at best a part-time winner. ...But going to war and "losing" simply because you changed your mind about the importance of the effort... well, that is a capital offense as far as I'm concerned. From my view of history it appears quite obvious that, if given the chance, this war-time flip flopping is what a democracy does 9 times out of 10; and far, far, far, far more than anything it's leaders ever say - *NOTHING is more damaging to it's credibility than going to war and then changing your mind*. You can't go around saying you are going to kill something or someone and not do it, if you want to be believed. Think about it JJ... Forget the Terrorists. Time and anti-terrorists will take care of them. But how do you get rid of the non-terrorists creators? Those who train and educate the pre-terrorists to hate you and your interests? I submit that the latter is something that a democracy simply cannot eliminate. It's inherently incapable of achieving it. If it weren't for its poker faced ability to run a nuclear bluff, democracy would have been stamped out long ago. Unfortunately, the nuclear bluff proved useless on 9/11. So we are now in the process of creating a replacement bluff. If we back down from any serious attempt to force reform on Iraq, or worse still never had such intent, the people who teach the hate against us will have successfully proven to have found our Achilles heel. And if you want to see some blood in the streets... you just let somebody put a hole in our Achilles heel. 0\|0