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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (128529)	4/6/2004 1:22:37 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "Only if a credible rule of law and property rights exist in that society. Few US corporations, let alone other foreign corporations, are willing to invest heavily in developing an economy that does not protect their investments." You probably aren't aware of the fact that US corporations went into China 20 years before China changed their laws to protect personal property rights, LOL. Re: "And while I would agree that business and cultural influences are the preferable means of defeating militant movements, we're already at least 10 years behind the "8 ball".. The Islamists have already declared war upon the US." What's your point? These countries (i.e. Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.) aren't "the Islamists". As the neocons continuously repeat, it is only small minorities in these countries that hunt us down and kill us. What you're doing by preventing US business from dealing with the other 95% is making them more sympathetic to the 5% that cause the trouble. Re: "We've already seen how Qaddafi has responded to the toppling of Saddam ..." This is revisionist historical bullshit. Qaddafi has been moving towards the west for most of the past decade. You're puffing Bush up by giving him credit for stuff that he didn't do. Re: "And as we saw after 9/11, with cheering crowds in Arabs streets and Bin Laden T-shirts, all it will take is an even more impressive attack upon the US for the "Arab street" to be stirred up to more militant levels." I agree with you, to a certain amount, with this. What it is is the natural human instinct to reinforce success. That's why I was so pissed off that Bush sent us into Iraq. When we get pushed back out it will be seen as a major victory against us. This is also a fact that we both agree on. Where we differ is on whether or not it is inevitable that we will be pushed out. I say that we never stood a chance in Iraq and that we need to cut our losses and prepare for the next 9/11. You want to stay in Iraq. Unfortunately, the news from Iraq is not good. The trend is slow, but you can already imagine the refugees hanging on to the US helicopters flying off from the roof of Saddam's palace in Baghdad. I say we start getting prepared for the next campaign in this war, which must be fought on the US mainland. You, on the other hand, can't countenance that loss and want us to keep pissing away soldiers in Iraq. You say that a terror attack against the US will inflame the Arab street to even higher levels of violence against us. What the hell do you think that our losing control over Fallujah and Najaf does? Do you think that the Arab street is depressed because now they can't look forward to the liberation of those towns? The Arab street is not composed of brilliant logicians. Like streets everywhere, they see things through the prism of what they want to see. They want to see the US weak, so they will see us weak pretty much no matter what happens in reality. And the fighting in Iraq makes us look, to them, to be very weak. Instead of playing off the Sunnis against the Shiites, we're fighting a two-front war against both the Sunnis and the Shiites, and we're unable to control either of the small cities where their rebellions are headquartered. I mean Jesus weeps! How out of control can Iraq get before you admit that it's a fiasco? It was obvious to any competent military authority that the occupation was going to require at least 250,000 ground troops, and maybe up to 4x that, but the only general who spoke up about it got fired by Bush. Now they're talking about increasing the US troop levels. It is only a matter of time before we "fish or cut bait" in Iraq. To fish will require us to double our troop strength there, and get used to taking a dozen KIA per day. That will require a draft, which, in the absence of another massive terror attack, just isn't going to happen. You talk about how Bush has been so successful at stopping terrorist attacks in the US. I guess that if you had been Japanese back during WW2 you'd have thought that after the Doolittle raid, the Japanese government was protecting you from US air raids, LOL. It wasn't US inability that prevented us from bombing Japan, but instead the fact that there were better ways of spending our money and lives. The Islamists want to defeat us, and they know that stirring up the American public would strengthen our resolve to stay in Iraq. So instead they are, by and large, leaving the American public alone (instead concentrating on weaker western targets like the Spanish public), and are concentrating on our troops in Iraq. They know that in the absence of terror attacks in the US, the American public will eventually force the American government (especially after the WMD fiasco) to eventually give up on Iraq. Now there's not a damned thing you can do to stop them from being successful in this part of the campaign, so you'd better start thinking about the next stage, and I agree with you that the terrorism gets fought here. Where I disagree is in the concept that we cannot fight back except with our military. As the examples of Russia and China prove, our business is our strongest weapon. -- Carl