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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (130393)	4/29/2004 2:54:21 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "And what about the war against Islamo-Fascism? Is that a war of survival, given that they continue to seek to deliver another attack comparable to 9/11?" No amount of destruction of aircraft or buildings, comparable to 911, in the US can possibly cause the state to fall. Germany destroyed thousands of British aircraft and tens of thousands of buildings, but the British government didn't fall. The usual way of making a foreign state fall is with boots on the ground. But you already knew this. On the other hand, if terrorists used hydrogen bombs, and killed about 20 million American civilians, (and looked like they were going to get the rest in their own good time) the survivors might consider suing for peace on the basis of a surrender. That would be a war for survival. If WW2 had gone so badly that the US state fell, you can imagine that it could only have been due to massive destruction along our coasts. This didn't happen because our protagonists weren't powerful enough to make it so. -- Carl

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (130393)	4/29/2004 4:59:23 AM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<And what about the war against Islamo-Fascism? Is that a war of survival, given that they continue to seek to deliver another attack comparable to 9/11?> Only one power on earth can defeat the United States, and that power is the United States. Terrorism succeeds to the extent that we destroy ourselves -- and we gave the terrorists the break of a lifetime by invading Iraq because Iraq is part of a process of the US destroying itself. In that single decision we did far more to destroy ourselves than the terrorists who crashed planes into buildings on 9/11 could ever have dreamed of accomplishing. We began a process of self-destruction. We destroyed the credibility of our government, as embodied in the White House. We destroyed our civil liberties when we created our own concentration camp. We destroyed our alliances when we arrogantly adopted unilateral war as our foreign policy. We destroyed our reputation as honest broker by siding with Israel and adopting their militaristic tactics. We destroyed our status as decent people by engaging in collective punishment and failing to mobilize legitimate political processes so that we could "call all the shots" and do some favors for low-lifers like Chalabi. The US has done more damage to itself in the past year than the terrorists could ever have accomplished with their box-cutters and cassette tapes.