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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (185058)	4/13/2006 10:34:35 AM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

IMO, the only way to defend this country is to "forward project" our forces to the enemies backyard, the places they feel safest in, and where they derive their support and leadership. That objective would have been accomplished by being in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia was providing more support to terrorism than was Iraq. Further, ignoring the legality issue and focusing for a moment on morality [If the US cares about morality.] What moral right does the US have to make Iraq the Central Front on the War on Terror? The Iraqi people didn't volunteer to have their country be the battleground of the GWOT. US military dying is one thing, they volunteered for this mission. But the Iraqis didn't volunteer to be the central front. They're just the poor bastards in the middle. It would be irrational to think that the entire forces of terrorism have travelled to Iraq to fight the coalition or ever will. We have no way of even accurately estimating how many terrorists there are or where they are throughout the world. The War on Terror is not winnable. They aren't "containable" all you can do is catch or kill a few here and there. You can't win because there is no single person or entity to surrender. One of the cultural aspects that I've learned about the mid-east is the "necessity" of revenge to restore one's honor. Every person that dies must be avenged by the surviving family. Every Iraqi or terrorist or insurgent you kill must exact revenge. If not in their generation then the next generation. You might recall that the bombings in Spain were in retribution for the Spanish Inquisition. That's holding a grudge. The War in Iraq does nothing other than create generations of people that will exact revenge. Either on the Sunnis or the Shia or the Americans or the British. An easier goal than winning the GWOT is to obtain world peace. As for those missing Chemical weapons. The point was not that they existed, but that they existed under the control of Saddam's regime The language you use presumes that they existed. For the moment, I'll accept that. Let's see the WMD was under the control of a ruthless paranoid dictator that would execute someone if there was even a hint they might do something against the regime. Now these WMD might be in Syria, with or without the knowledge of Syria and may be in the very hands of Al Quaeda or some other terrorist organization that we haven't heard of yet that thinks Zarqawi is a wimp-ass. I would have preferred the WMD to be under the control of Saddam. As far as Syria goes. It would be easier for them to pass off the WMD to a terrorist organization than it would have been for Saddam. With Saddam there would have been chemical signatures that could tie the WMD back to Iraq. With Syria, there's no chemical signature that ties it back to Syria. But I believe the fact that the US is doing nothing about accounting for those WMD is a very strong indication that the US doesn't believe they exist. If they did believe they might exist, then doing nothing would be an act of utter responsibility. Or we could do like the FAA did. They were briefed for years about the threat of a hijacked airplane being used as a weapon. Their response was always: It hasn't happened, therefore it's not a realistic threat. We've never had chemical weapons smuggled into the US, therefore it's not a realistic threat. Speaking of threat. I hear the US is using SINCGARS in single chanel mode. You folks figure the ragheads are too stupid to DF? jttmab