At 05:08 AM 3/8/03 -0800, ptrouble wrote: 

>...
>
>...
>

Indeed.

>No matter how well
>written, I can't appreciate it. I've seen the people mangled by Al
>Qaeda's attack on the USS Cole. I've met the Sailors that can no longer
>function normally because a massive explosion ripped apart their ship
>while they were just trying to have lunch. I've seen a friend lurk next
>to the TV for an entire week, hoping, praying that someone would be
>found alive in the rubble of the World Trade Center or that some

And my mother and father went through Pearl Harbor and never forgot it.
But Pearl Harbor was a military attack on a military target by a sovereign
government -- it was an act of war and merited a declaration of war against
Japan.  Al-Queda is not a sovereign government.  It is an amorphous group
with cells all over the place.  This is a different kind of conflict.

No creditable evidence has been shown to link Al-Queda directly with Iraq.
Saddam Hussein probably thought these attacks were the neatest thing since
sliced bread, but nobody's shown that he had any direct hand in them.  That
is the problem.  Yes, we are going after Al-Queda -- the guy who planned
the whole thing was caught last week.  That's what we should be doing.  But
this isn't what is being adduced as the reason for going after Iraq.

The issue is whether Saddam will or won't disarm.  When we wanted the
Soviet Union disarmed during the Cold War, did we threaten to pre-emptively
attack?  No.  A pre-emptive strike was not an option.  Surely, because the
USSR had many, many missiles and the means to deliver them.  But also
because it was seen as just plain morally wrong.

It still is.

If you don't think I feel the way you do about the Cole and all the rest,
you are incorrect.  I wore the uniform of this country for 13 years.  I
know.  But I also feel that it is wrong for us to make any pre-emptive
strike.  We don't know that Iraq is responsible for the Cole.  Perhaps they
have given aid and comfort to Al-Queda.  So has Saudi Arabia, for that
matter.  Do we go in and pre-emptively strike at them?  Where does it end?

And if we put forth that doctrine of pre-emptive strike, what is then to
stop North Korea from deciding they need to pre-emptively strike at us?
Don't forget that, as far as nuclear weapons are concerned, they're ahead
of Iraq in that they already have viable warheads and the missiles to
deliver them to our west coast.  And yet, we're not talking about striking
at them.  Why not?

And as Mr. Kiesling points out, what is going to be the aftermath?  How
long will it take to "rehabilitate" Iraq?

>I've ZERO, and I do mean ZERO, tolerance for anyone that
>thinks they can shrug off what the UN mandates and the equal amount of
>tolerance for those who thinks an entire nation should be allowed to do
>such a thing because they happen to have oil beneath the sand (or, in
>the case of some they're owed money by that country).

I don't like Saddam Hussein any more than you do.  He's a brutal, selfish,
unstable dictator.  I'd be very happy to see him blown away. But not by a
pre-emptive strike such as is contemplated.  It will be setting a very
dangerous precedent.  Who will be next to say, "I don't like [insert name
of head of state here].  I think I'll just waltz into his country and
conduct a 'regime change.'"

>We live in uncertain times, ladies and gentlemen. The American public
>may forget quickly how outraged they were after September 11th, but
>America's military has not forgotten because we're not allowed to have
>selective memory. We remember.

So do we who are not currently serving.  But there's a longer view to be
taken, a 'big picture' to be considered, questions to be answered which so
far haven't been.  It wasn't just semantics that changed the name of the
War Department to the Department of Defense.  It was a policy, a moral
stance that we don't strike first; we don't go around 'changing regimes.'
That sort of thing went out with colonialism.  Let's not head down that
road again.

Veloci--yes, these are uncertain and dangerous times--raptor



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