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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chas. who wrote (11123)	4/1/2004 11:50:54 AM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

Chuck you've actually made some good points. There are, of course, some benefits to talking loudly and using a big stick. In addition, many of the actual steps the Bush administration has taken that are directly aimed at the terrorist networks are useful and effective. Those scope of those steps, however, pale in comparison to the amount of energy and capital and lives we have put into Iraq and those we will continue to put into Iraq. The point I was making is that terrorism is only marginally a "State sponsored" issue. The Clinton administration had, of course, communicated to the Taliban government that they would hold that Afghanistan government responsible for any Al Queda attack. In the interim time between the Cole attack and the CIA/FBI comfirmation of the attack as coming from Al Queda we changed administrations and nothing got done. That doesn't change the fact that we should have acted against the Taliban earlier and that when we did it was justified. We had successfully dissuaded Syria and Libya from engaging in sponsoring terrorist attacks against the U.S. without invading and occupying those countries. Our invasion of Iraq, on the other hand, cannot be cost/benefit justified in terms of bang for the buck. In fact, a very strong argument can be made for the proposition that the war in Iraq has actually set us back in the war on terror. It's not the "dreams..and...intellectualizing" that I think will "solve all the problems of life." I've been in a war and I know that anytime you're fighting a skilled and determined foe there are a lot of Queensberry rules that go out the window. I'm all for doing all of the dirty work that NEEDS doing. I'm not all for doing a lot of dirty work that doesn't need doing and that doesn't result in advancing our objectives. When it comes to the war on terror, the terrorists are the fighters but you have to undermine their support systems or you will be left with more and more waves of them to deal with. It's that problem that does not lend itself to talking loudly and using a big military stick. You have to intellectualize, dream and show by example that you're not the bully on the block. If you don't believe that's true, then explain what the military reaction of Israel in the West Bank has done to help the problem with terrorists there?