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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (221299)	3/1/2005 2:03:43 PM
From: RetiredNow	Respond to of 1573850

yes, agreed. Things are tenuous. But never in the four plus decades of my life have the stars been so aligned as they are right now. For one thing, Arafat is dead. That alone is an incredible opportunity to exploit for peace. Abbas was elected in a fairly transparent election. Amazing for Palestine. For another, our military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, to push for Democracy was a stroke of genius. The region may be ready now more than ever before for the dominos to fall. Osama's action on 9/11 proved that the Arab people have reached the point where they have nothing left to lose. They don't even value their own lives anymore. That means they are a force that can't be stopped. Their leaders know that they have met their match now. So ultimately, it is up to the Arabs in the region, but so far they are living up to the promise. In Afghanistan, they now have a functioning Democracy and one by one the rebel warlords are being won over. In Iraq, the people braved terrorist death threats to claim their right to vote. In Lebanon, they braved a Syrian backlash and took to the streets to demand that Syria get out, and the pro-Syrian gov't resigned. Times are a-changing. The turning point has been reached. None of this comes without a price. The U.S. has made the down payment to the tune of hundreds of billions and 1,500 hundred lives, but the Arabs will have to pay the bigger price down the road if they really want freedom and democracy. But I'll tell you this. Had I been President and someone told me I could have saved the lives of the 3,000 Americans who died on 9/11 and saved our economy the trillion dollars plus that 9/11 cost us, I would have looked at my options. Had they told me that I would have had to invade two countries, lose 1,500 soldiers, and pay a few hundred billion to stop 9/11, I would have done it gladly. If that's the price to pay to solve one of the biggest and most intractable problems in the world right now, then I think it is a small price to pay compared to the costs of doing nothing. How many more 9/11's will it take before American liberals wake up to the idea that we will never know peace until all people of the world have peace, freedom, and economic opportunities like we do? About that, Osama was right. We will not know peace and freedom, until Arabs know peace and freedom.