Tim Daneliuk wrote in
:

Nate Perkins wrote:
SNIP

Nonsense. You guys go off and engineer an ill-advised war with a

There's no "you guys" about it - I am not a Republican. I just
don't want to get vaporized by flaming JP-6 because *you guys*
want to wait until the flames are rising to declare that
perhaps, just maybe, we ought to do something. I favor
prevention, not after-the-fact responses. Even hardcore ideological
Libs like Christopher Hitchins agree with this - that's why
he very huffily departed the Left after the 9/11 murders.

Right, who wants to get vaporized by flaming JP-6? I'm all for
dispensing swift military justice to the people who committed and
sponsored the 9/11 attacks. But I am not in favor of trotting off and
attacking countries that had nothing to do with 9/11.

There's a knee-jerk reaction after 9/11 to kick some ass, any ass. But
recklessness leads to failure. Judgement, deliberation, and
intelligence lead to success.


country that had no WMDs and no links to 9/11, and then when somebody

We had NO way to know they did not have WMDs ... unless you are
joining the Leftie keening that Bush knew there were none, lied about
it, and invaded anyway. You cannot have it both ways: Either we did
not know and had to act like there were WMDs, or we did know and Bush
lied. In the former case, we did the right thing. The latter, I'd
just like to see proof - if you provide proof, I'll be first in line
to demand impeachment.

I'm not prepared to say that he out and out lied. I think he thought he
knew better than the rest of us, and that he felt like he had to
exaggerate the truth to make his case. Let's call it "elasticity of the
truth."

But to me it doesn't matter if he knew or not. The Presidency is a big
job and it should have high standards. I expect that the leader of the
Free World should have excellent judgement. He should make competent
policy and he shouldn't need to use a bagful of excuses to cover his
failures.


points out that maybe that was a stupid thing to do you all cry "Oh,
the Liberals don't want to let the US defend itself!"

What was stupid about it was believing there would ever be peace
in the region in some simple/short period of time. We never
actually needed boots on the ground there to neutralize the threat.
We could just have bombed, day in and day out, and kept the country
in a permanent state of rubble until Sadaam turned himself in. Our
boots on the ground are because of this incomprehnsible need we
Americans (of all stripes) have to try and do the right thing and
bring some measure if liberty to the people of the region while we're
at it. Stupid us.

Right. But a lot of us did not see the advantage of putting our troops
in to spread liberty to the region. The idea that the Middle East would
fall like dominoes in a wave of spreading democracy is a particularly
stupid neocon idea. Few people would have supported the invasion if the
stated reason was to "spread freedom." Most people supported it because
they were told things about WMD and 9/11 that we now know not to be
true.


I, for one, would prefer to see a policy of strategic bombing
(military and government targets) if we need to do more of this. A
couple of targets per day for a year or so would keep people out of
their government jobs in, say, Syria and Iran, and let them know we
tired of their nonsense without ever putting an American shoe in that
sand... But I'm pretty non-PC myself. Keep em scrambling for cover
and see how much time or energy they have for exporting terror. Plus,
its good practice for our pilots...

I'd like to see a good reason to go to war in Syria and Iran. Backed by
good evidence. Especially since we seem to have had a problem in this
area before.


I agree with respect to Afghanistan. I don't agree with respect to
Palestine; I think you want to take credit where none is due.

Really? Do you seriously think the post-Yassar regime' would be
negotiating were it not for US pressure. What the Arab world seems
not to get is that we have our hand on Israel's collar a good deal of
the time. If we had exited the arena years ago (which all the
Darlings of the Left keep advocating in subtle ways) they'd be
speaking Hebrew from Teheran to Tripoli. Come to think of it, that's
not such a bad plan. We get out and let the Israelis clean up the
mess their way ... which is rather effective.

Israeli-Palestinian prospects have little or nothing to do with Iraq.
They have a lot more to do with the death of Arafat and the remarkable
ability (however temporary) of Abbas to restrain the more radical
Palestinian terrorist elements.

In recent years it's been Sharon's government that has taken the hard
line toward negotiations with the Palestinians. Sharon has been quite
aggressive in his expansion of settlements and in military incursions
and occupations of the Gaza and West Bank. Sharon has no incentive to
look for a peaceful solution, and he has every incentive to continue his
existing stance with the Palestinians. The problem is that neither
Arafat nor Abbas really controls Hamas and the other terrorist groups,
and Israel will always use the terrorism of a few to keep all the
Palestinians under their thumb. It's a nasty cycle.

If Bush really wanted to do something for peace in Israel he'd withhold
foreign aid from Israel until the settlements stop, and maintain aid
only as long as Israel is actively negotiating for peace with the
Palestinians.


With respect to Iraq, I hope you are right that it ends up being a
free democracy. And I hope I am wrong when I fear that it ends up
either in civil war or under a Shiite fundamentalist government (a la
Iran).



The world's 5th largest standing army (iirc), lead by a murderous
dictator, was neutralized, and further (potential) deployment of WMDs
was halted.


There was no active WMD program. And you exaggerate the strength of
his army -- all of which had weapons that were 15 years out of date,
had no spares, and was 1/3 the size it had been during Gulf War I.

OK - so it was the 8th or 9th or Whatever-Makes-You-Happy largest
army in the world. Nitpicking at minor details doesn't change the
larger point - we neutralized one of the top N military threats in the
world.

Iraq's army was fairly weak and certainly no threat to us. Witness how
quickly it caved when we invaded.


Said brutal dictator is now in irons.

Other villians in the neighborhood are getting nervous. This was the
*real* reason to go to Iraq. Bush wants to bring the Middle East
peace and Jesus. But what is mostly needed there, is a deep-seated
fear of ****ing off the US. It worked in Libya - go research the
conversation between Kaddaffi and Burlusconi in the early days of
this war - it is instructive reading. Syria, Iran, North Korea, and
all the rest of the tin pot dictator states need to develop a healthy
fear of what happens when you threaten Uncle Sam. This is the one
and only thing Bush has managed to get right, despite himself...


Yeah, everyone is getting nervous. A bunch of us here in the US are
getting nervous, too. And when you claim that Bush wants to "bring
the

And most of you have never lived anywhere else and seen
real oppression. I have - well, I've seen the results of the
oppression after the fact. Americans - I am proudly one of you now -
especially those born and raised here, are immensely naive' about how
most of the rest of the world actually works. The political Right in
this country is silly, and sometimes stupid, but the Left is flatly
dangerous. It embraces the secular version of "Jesus and peace" and
hopes if you sing enough choruses of Kumbaya, everyone will just get
along. Peace comes (eventually) from winning armed conflict, not from
negotiation or listening to Babs Streisand (or Alec Baldwin, or ....)
englightening the world with the oh-so-learned observations on
geopolitics.

There is something between Left and Right. They are the moderates, and
usually they favor the policy that is the most pragmatic and effective.


Middle East peace and Jesus" it makes me even more nervous.

This is the disease of the neo-cons. They have some weird religious
version of Manifest Destiny running around in their heads. The good
thing is that their deep religiosity makes it natural for them to be
able to spot and name Evil - something the Libs largely don't even
believe exists. At the heart of the Leftie soul is this deeply held
belief that people are good and that circumstances make them bad. It
is the inverse of the religious doctrine of Original Sin. This
cripples the Left when it comes time to try and name something as Bad,
Evil, or Wrong. Look at the walking rectal passage at CU and his
utterances about 9/11 for a pungent example. Yes, he's an extreme
example, but his views differ (mostly) only in degree not kind from
the "mainstream" Left.

In a country of 300 million, you will always find one of those. That
one will be found and broadcast every night on Fox and Clear Channel --
good for ratings of course.

You'll even find one person in a hundred that agrees Churchill. But
you'll find five in a hundred who want to ship him off to Gitmo. Those
five scare me more than the one.


I used to despise the Left and Right equally - they both want to
screw people out of their lives, money, and freedom to apply
it to their pet causes. But the events of the past 4 years have
demonstrated that the Left is considerably worse and more dangerous.
In addition to wanting to "screw people out of ..." they also wish to
impose their secular version of Right and Wrong which is essentially
a denial that the latter innately exists.


Iran and North Korea are exhibiting their fear by making nukes as
quickly as possible.

And that, of course, was not happening under previous administrations
right? You need to go rent a clue on the difference between
correlation and causality. Korea, Iran, and the rest are doing what
they do *because they are totalitarian states* - they have always done
some version of this stuff and they can only be permitted to go so far
before they get swatted. As I said, my preference is continuous
bombing of key targets until they implode ... but, That's Not Very
Nice (tm) ...

Yes, Iran and North Korea have accelerated their pursuit of nuclear
programs under Bush compared to the previous administration.

Lots of countries have nuclear weapons that are not totalitarian states.