gunnut

So you would justify that Japanese were less evil than Mao? I don't understand what you are trying to say here.

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"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

gunnut

No, that's not what I meant.

Bin Laden was betting on people like you in the west who will just sit down and take attacks from a terror organization rather than retaliate.

There is no nation to retaliate against. Only those who harbor and cooperate with terror organizations. Bush started to bully those who we suspect of helping Al Qaeda, not even harboring them. His plan works. Nations are less likely to give aid to our enemies if they know we just might invade them.

Of course there are those who will help them regardless, but then there will always be murderers and rapists amongst us.

astralis

gunnut,

there's a caveat to this. it works if we have the capability to back it up, and if we actually carry out the threat once in a while.

coercive diplomacy fails if there is no capability or if the bluff is called once too often without action (one reason why the iraq war was a good idea in the first place).

this accounts for why both iran and syria were positively crapping their pants in may 2003...and why they're smiling like the cat who swiped the milk now.

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Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

gunnut

Agreed. But they will crap their pants again in a few years when our troops are freed up from running police actions in Iraq.

astralis

unfortunately, gunnut,

yes and no. our troops getting freed up will give us back the capability, but both of them know pretty well that after iraq, the american public won't be so eager to approve of military actions that will send those same troops back for another tour in the middle east.

they won't be smiling anymore, but they won't be scared crapless like they were then. back in the first flush of victory after OIF I, both parts were in place. they were taking quite seriously the threat of american divisions deciding to take a quick detour east or west.

but hell, having one of the above is better than having none at all. i think if anything, withdrawing our troops in iraq would probably make a US air campaign, instead of a land war, a good deal more credible threat. we in effect remove 150,000 potential "hostages" to syrian or iranian-financed/assisted suicide bombings et al.

Archer

You are correct about the dangers of stereotyping, but so is he about general attitudes, if we consider them vis a vis the Muslim world. If Muslim countries are anything to go by, the average Muslim in those countries (bar a few nations) indeed has no problem attacking non Muslims.

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Karmani Vyapurutham Dhanuhu

My bow is stretched for its task

gunnut

All we have to do is elect a democrat president, get attacked, and off we go.

We don't have to withdraw our troops from Iraq. Most of the attacks are muslim on muslim crimes. They are more interested in killing each other than killing us. All we have to do is stop policing big cities and start cleaning up smaller cities near Iran and Syria. Have a few bases there to train and work with the new Iraqi army. I bet Iran and Syria will be nervous when the bulk of the US army in Iraq moves to bases near their borders.

xrough

That would be another big issue in the Islamic countries.