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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (39003)	8/16/2005 2:02:24 PM
From: Constant Reader	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 90947

Yes, I know where Djibouti is and yes, I have an inkling why the government thinks it is important to have troops there. At this time, I think we have learned little from the 20th century and that we are destined to repeat the mistakes over and over again. Like you, I once believed that there were lessons learned and that we would not repeat the same mistakes yet one more time. I will be quite happy to be proved wrong in my pessimistic assumptions. I seriously doubt that opinions such as mine are remotely likely to become the official policy of the United States government. Islamo-fascism is a serious problem, I agree. Where do you think the political will exists to solve that problem? It doesn't look like we as a nation have the political will to make Iraq safe for democracy, much less the rest of the world. It looks like the Palestinians are on the march to democracy and Hamas will be the big beneficiary. They almost won the elections in Lebanon. These are good things? Take a hard look at Iraq and all the good things our troops have done while there (and make no mistake there are a lot of those) and then ask yourself, why, almost 30 months after occupation, seemingly endless quantities of material, vehicles and foreign terrorists continue to arrive daily in a nation where people have probably been neighbors for centuries and know every person and hiding place in their village, yet our forces remain almost as deeply in the dark about such things as they were the day they set foot on the ground. The political situation in Iraq has not budged an inch in two years. That's sure not for our lack of trying just about everything under the sun. We'll see what the constitution turns out to be but it smells a lot like the beginnings of yet another "Islamic Republic" in fact if not name. How exactly do you propose we bring the average Muslim into the 21st century when their thinkng process is stuck in the 7th or maybe the 9th? Have you read the Muslim reaction within Britain to the bombings in Britain? Do you find this encouraging? What I am saying, is that I wish we learned something, that I think most of what gemstone is writing is admirable but I do not believe that there is sufficient political will here or abroad to confront those issues now and that maybe it might be a good idea to work a little more on our own defense and let the rest of our largely fair-weather allies develop some spines. I see no indication that they will do so any time soon as long as we act as general guarantor of their security and international trade at little cost, military or economic, to them. I don't promise to feel the same way tomorrow.