Was I too generous to the Dems about war?
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This is way overdue. Dowbrigade woke me from my lethargy. Right after Jon Edwards’ speach it looked like the Dems were going to be a little more anti-Iraq war. Very quickly it became apparent that the Dems are strongly in pursuit of the few voters in the undecided middle. They have been trying to fashion a platform that does not alienate the large number of anti-war voters, but at the same time does not give ground to the right wing claim that opposing the war is being soft on terrorism.
I saw Richard Clarke on TV – don’t remember where. He argued that the intelligence apparatus should be fixed so that we can have a preemptive war on North Korea if we need to. One of the great spokespeople that preemptive war on Iraq was not justified and did not help the “war on terror”, nonetheless views preemptive war as an essential tool for nuclear non-proliferation. Is that “sensitive imperialism?” Where are the Dems really?
DowBrigade has incisively shown that recent US MiddleEast Policy has been about oil. It has been about oil from the beginning of our large scale use of Arabian oil in the 50’s. We had not one but two wakeup calls in the 70’s. I say support the troops: use less oil and bring them home.
I suspect that Anonymous [who I think has now been revealed] is right that getting out of Iraq, while necessary, will still require several years of war. Even if President Kerry moves us in the direction of getting out, there is sure to be disappointment in him. I won’t be happy either, but I’m concerned about the possibility that history might regard the current epoch as the beginnings of World War III. [DowBrigade is a sunny optimist pangloss type compared to me :).] During the Cold War we all thought WWWIII would be a binary superpower conflict about an hour and a half long. WWW III may ramp up more like WWWII. The huge difference though is that the Arab world doesn’t have the same cohesive nation-states. They cannot be counted on to line up to fire their muskets. WWWIII will look like much much more of what we have now.
I am descended from a goyishe guilt-based religion with bad experience in Germany. I am Pennsylvania Dutch. That fact notwithstanding, Happy New Year DowBrigade and all the Children of Israel.
-r
