Roger, gosh, unfortunately I just saw your post after I sent mine in, ah well, but, anyway, I like your post and fully agree with your points.
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Ooops ahh, they did it again.
Hey Jem, sorry, can't deliver da defense attorney, just a humble ole institutional prop trader here, even if it's not for the residual remains of my namesakes former employer sold for one sorry buck, and as far as politics go, well, hey, I'm neither dove nor hawk, just a realist without illusions, interested not in making a lot of waves as a means in itself, but with a real vested interest in results, meaning the US not becoming the next big terror zone in the world, or us starting something that could escalate beyond some pretty bad nightmares, I'm just interested in the most effective means to achieving that end, as it were.
But, ok, you delivered the message of what a good old hawk should be up to these day's.
Ok, let's see.
So you think we've got da power and da money. Ok. We had that in Korea, right? Vietnam, also, agree? Haiti? Somalia? Ruanda? Bush I got ole Saddam's head in the Gulf War, right? Iraq is a free and democratic country these days, thanks to us, and no threat to civilisation any more, ok? We presented Saddams head to some War Crimes Tribunal, right? Heck, we just used our power and really kicked all those criminals out of office and into jail, agree, making the world a lot of a safer place than it was before we intervened?
Ok, here's where it gets a bit tricky, those were CLEAR CUT COUNTRIES and CLEAR CUT ENEMIES we were fighting against, agreed? And, even so, we failed pretty badly, didn't we, even though every single of those conflicts had it's Joes on the street yelling, HEY PREZ, go nuke 'em, right?
But, and this is where it's gonna get a bit more complicated in the future; we're not just dealing with some clearly definable and localizable enemy any more, we're dealing with anonymous and highly defragmented terrorists more than willing to die for their cause, and the two primary grudges they bear against us are that they see us as the main funder and defender of Israel with which they're having some problems of achieving a model that would allow for mutual and peaceful coexistence, and that we, the defender of their perceived enemy Israel, have got troops stationed in the custodian country of their holiest sites, Saudi Arabia, I wrote about that a bit earlier on this thread, maybe one or two pages back, where I also wrote, just to keep a bit of perspective, that there's plenty of Americans already getting fits - and more than that, unfortunately - just because the UN are based in NY, and they therefore subjectively feel threatened by little black helicopters, right?
Anyway, ok, so let's go rain some couple hundred cruise missiles on Kabul or wherever, right? You think they're gonna go and reflect on the errors of their ways after that? Sort of of go and say, heck, they're right, we're wrong? Disavow Bin Laden or his successors and become big fans of us?
Or do you think that they'll just become so scared of us that they'll refrain from all aggression against us in the future because we're so lean and mean? Sort of like they stopped attacking Israel just because they discovered that Israel was just so much more powerful and had such superior weapons? Or like the Afghanis realised that they'd better disarm and let the Soviet occupiers have their way because they were a Super Power? Or like Milosevic wasn't kicked out of office and brought to justice in The Hague's International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yougoslavia by his own people more than a year after we stopped bombing him and more than 13 years after he started on his path of genocide and other war crimes against his own citizens, or at least former citizens, but instead pretty rapidly and as a direct consequence of us bombing the living daylights out of him?
Or do you think that strong retaliatory action by us might indicate a remote possibility that that might instead just serve to swell the ranks of those radicals willing to go after revenge coupled with their strong readiness to die for their cause, particularly when that automatically means a one way ticket to paradise for them, never mind what or whom they leave behind and in what shape?
Anyway, think that instead of becoming subdued they might clamor for revenge instead, sort of like what some people are clamoring for on these boards and in real time American life?
Ok, so what do we want? Revenge and assured retaliation, and let's not forget here, because this is not a war against a country, it wouldn't take much for them to come here and do some biological or whatever warfare, they don't need spectacular wealth or weapons to achieve that.
Or should we go about attempting to keeping the by far largest majority of the 2 billion Muslims on our side and trying to bring peace to Israel and the Palestinians, with us as a TRUE honest broker, and thereby eliminating much of the source of hatred between us and "them"?
Heck, no Muslim country has a problem with us going after the criminals who attacked us and making sure that they get the punishment that they deserve, same situation as with the rest of the world currently standing behind us, but the Muslim and other parts of the intl community would understandably have a problem with us going on an extended spree of retaliation where many innocents would die and where we'd just be perpetuating the problem.
