Diphath

[rowyn]

This scares me.

From the Wall Street Journal:

But Sept. 11, and all the U.S. has learned since about the terrorists' appetite for devastating weapons and their utter lack of concern for their own survival, has persuaded Mr. Bush that sometimes the U.S. will have to strike first against its enemies.

"If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long," Mr. Bush told graduating cadets at West Point two weeks ago.

Comments

[malver.livejournal.com]

That's us, the ever-patient...
(hrm- thought I'd sworn off the sarcasm... in fact I could have sworn I'd ... bother.)

[prester-scott.livejournal.com]

It reminds me of the feudal Japanese definition of "self-defense": when you think someone is plotting against you, sneak into his home in the middle of the night and kill him in his sleep. Hey, you were just protecting yourself, right?

Really, I see it as a no-win situation.

Let's pretend the CIA were to capture substantial, verifiable intel that another country -- I dunno, maybe Iraq? -- was planning to sneak a nuclear warhead into the US to turn Manhattan into a barbecue pit. That would seem to justify some sort of aggressive action against Iraq, to stop them carrying out their evil plan. However, there would be no way that the rest of the country (y'know, the People...remember us?) would ever be able to verify this intel. The Feds would certainly never release it. They'd say, "We have evidence that they're going to try something. Trust us." And a lot of us would reply, "Trust you? In a pig's eye." But we won't have any choice, because they've got all our money already, they'll send the troops whether we like it or not, and they'll get the major media outlets to churn out war propaganda justifying their actions.

Exactly the same things would happen if there were no intel, but the Guv decided to strike Iraq because Saddam took George off his Christmas card list. There would be no way to know the difference, because American government is now, as most governments have always been, behind closed doors and completely unaccountable to anyone on earth.

Worst of all, this state of affairs is our fault. Maybe not every individual's fault, but the fault of the fat, dumb happy public that lets them get away with it.

First Blood

[awolf.livejournal.com]

Well, gee.

There's certainly no chance we'll be merely reinforcing the rest of the modern world's view against us as "bullies" if we unilaterally strike first against other nations. Seeing that milder versions of this same tactic have engendered all the terrorism against us to begin with...

Trickster