Quote from AAAintheBeltway:
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"Give peace a chance" makes a nice bumper sticker but it's hardly a response to the possibility of a nuclear 9/11.
We face a world where malevolent regimes either have or will soon have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them from long range. The situation is totally different than the mutually assured destruction scenario we faced with the old Soviet Union. ***
There are three foreseeable future scenarios. One, we have to live in a world with numerous dangerous small countries like N. Korea that will use nuclear weapons for blackmail and aggression and which will arm terrorists that are likely to strike us anonymously with these same weapons.
Two, we face an even bleaker world with major regional nuclear wars, think India/Pakistan, N. Korea/Japan, China/Taiwan, Israel/Iraq/Syria/Iran, etc.
Three, somehow we are able to forestall or prevent the above two scenarios through aggressive, preemptive action to defang potential aggressors and proliferators.
If you object to scenario 3, it is incumbent on you to demonstrate how we avoid scenarios 1 or 2.
Thanks for the thoughtful post - which reflects at least the beginning of the kind of strategic discussion that name-calling and readymade ideological diatribes tend to make difficult or impossible. I do disagree, however, with your seeming approval of Representative Paul's "questions." I found them both individually and on the whole to be misleading, presumptuous, manipulative, and shallow, where not so confused and incoherent as to be unintelligible.
I suspect that, rightly or wrongly, the concerns you describe are very much what is driving Bush Administration policy. 9/11 and all that it symbolized and threatened may have made forestalling a public decision on long-term strategic issues much more difficult. On another thread, I commended an article that recently appeared in the NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE to those who desire a more "grown-up" view of the geopolitical situation. The author more or less takes the present status of the US as an "imperial" power as a given, with an understanding that, though the history of world empires can be illuminating for us now, a 21st Century democratic capitalist empire is also unlikely to function exactly like other empires in history.
Here's the link (NYT registration required):
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/05/magazine/05EMPIRE.html?pagewanted=1&tntemail1
More to the point, those who would favor a US retreat from its current positions and policies in the world might do well to recall just how wrenching a process of imperial break-up or withdrawal can be, even more for the populations of the former "vassal" states than for those at or near the imperial center. For any number of reasons, those states might still choose withdrawal or rebellion, but anyone who thinks that such a course would be an easy one is deluded. If you don't at least imagine the break-up of Yugoslavia carried out on a worldwide scale, then you're ignoring the real dangers. Without the despised, supposedly unwanted US presence in places like the Middle East or the Far East, it might not be very long at all before the outbreak of regional and civil wars, and the resultant human casualties and economic and environmental destruction, made even the most inflated estimates regarding a prospective Iraqi conflict look trivial. Even seen strictly from the perspective of narrow US self-interest, and setting aside global economic issues, there is no reason to expect that any scenario of withdrawal or appeasement would make further losses, both at home and abroad, less likely.
In the minds of US policymakers, and even in the minds of the much-insulted American populace, the choice may actually seem fairly simple: Successful extension and reinforcement of US influence, as peacefully as possible but as forcefully as necessary, perhaps until some future time when devolution of power is safer, more practicable, and more advantageous - or the spread of chaos in a world where increasingly ready access to weapons of mass destruction is combined with staggering economic inequality, immense population and ecological pressure, and fiercely anti-democratic, anti-capitalist ideologies. Pursuing the former scenario may indeed place unfamiliar burdens on America and the world, and may entail numerous losses and setbacks, both military and otherwise, but those who think they possess a better solution cannot be taken seriously, in my opinion, until they fully acknowledge the stakes that are involved.
rs7