To: steve harris who wrote (195495 ) 7/22/2004 11:38:00 PM From: combjelly Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1591983 "keep in mind you are sharing your views with posters who were not around for the airplane hijackings of the 70s or Iran hostages or the 1972 Olympics..." I was. I am not sure what the point you are trying to make here. Was the hijacking problem solved by invading Cuba or Palestine? Could the Black September been stopped by putting troops in the Gaza Strip? What about the hostages? Would troops in Tehran have solved it? No, no and no. The taking of the hostages might have been averted if we had insisted that the Shah treat his people more humanely. But that might not have done it, he was trying to bring Iran into the 20th century and there was a significant fraction of his people that weren't even thinking the same millenia. So he was going to drag them kicking and screaming and, well, it could have turned out better. Ditto with Palestine. It would have been better if Israel had treated them better, but it also would have been better if the Arabs hadn't tried to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, either. So when Jordan attacked and Israel decided to fill in a weak point. And Palestine wound up losing, again. The point is that stationing troops in those places ain't going to solve the problem. At least, it isn't going to work with only half measures. To get it to work would mean that we would have to takeover most of those countries, station troops there for generations and engage in massive restructuring of their social and economic systems. Now the fact of the matter is we probably could do it. It would mean regimenting our society to a degree which we never have. It also would mean dedicating our economy to the task, supporting the needed military and occupation troops would require a centralized, command economy that we fought WWII to destroy. But it could be done...