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The advent of nuclear weapons. Nothing else in history so fundamentally altered calculations of risk and reward between nations or alliances like The Bomb. The chance of eradicating millions of people in the time it takes to push a button is truly frightening and such a power and threat can serve as the greatest restraint imaginable.
I am interested whether you think that a national goal is more important than a goal for the leaders of that nation. Is it more important for the people of a country to have a goal and support it (and the people fighting for that goal) than it is for the leaders/rulers of a country to have a specific goal and work to complete it?
In a representative democracy, both are important, but at base I'm gonna have to choose the people. What is happening now is the "leaders" (i.e. Congress) are becoming skittish about our Iraq goals because they stilll have the Vietnam syndrome; they're worried about what the people will think about Iraq and are trying to beat the curve so to speak. This feeds the voters concerns and fears and pretty soon it becomes a circle of doubt and anxiety that bleeds over into loss of morale and eventual abandonment of the mission. However, the public (defying my expectations) has remained remarkably steadfast in its support for the Iraq venture and is bucking the political trend of worry and fretting. So it just goes to show the power of the people is paramount because even if a majority of the political class is opposed to something, they dare not defy the wishes of the people if the people consider it to be important enough. Or if they do, they risk losing their jobs, the worst fear of every politician.
The Domino Theory has always gotten a bad rap. It was a plausible scenario at the time and we saw it come to fruition in a limited way after the South fell with the installation of a commie govt. in Cambodia. I’m sympathetic to the theory because for all we knew, it was a certainty. That’s the problem with monday morning quarterbacking like the press and Left loves to engage in. We live in a real world with real problems and an unknowable future.
As a corollary, think about the Civil War: the North won, first and foremost, because they were fighting for a singular goal: the reunification of the nation. The South, much like South Vietnam after our withdrawl, was literally fighting not to lose. They weren’t fighting to conquer the North but the North (in both cases) was fighting to conquer them and impose their system on the South. This is what I mean by strategic iniative: what you are fighting for.
The public rightly wants us to be moving forward and imposing our will on the conquered (a crude way to put it, I admit.) Right now, the side with the strategic iniative (as defined above, i.e. the side fighting to establish itself as THE power in a nation or region) is the insurgency. I know as well as anyone the insurgents and terrorists are losing more and more everyday and will ultimately be defeated, but they are the only side (or so it seems) with an agenda. We're fighting so that the Iraqis won't lose, which is a posture the American public despises; they can't help it. We like action and stasis is anti-thetical to our way of life. Most people are naturally opposed to such a situation. However, this has been made all the worse by the fact that the media is so anti-war and the administration hasn't done the best job (to put it mildly) of selling this war to the public.Toss up between Alexander, Napolean and Hannibal, but I went with Alexander because he was truly a magnetic and charismatic individual who was not defeated like Hannibal or Napolean. That counts for a lot in my book.
I don’t know when it “started” but I know when it came into its own: with the Clinton administration. He courted Hollywood like there was no tomorrow and they loved the attention from a sitting President. Here was somebody the Hollywood elite could relate to: vapid, empty, a consumate liar, a blank slate ready to assume and co-opt any position if he thought it would help him, a practised actor, someone who was all style and no substance, someone just like Hollywood.
People will always be fascinated by celebrities and celebrities will always try and use that fame to their own benefit. Hollywood has always been well to the left of most of America. The fact that we’re seeing this with a judicial nomination is just confirmation that the Supreme Court is our true master and overseer. Let them babble on about meaningless drivel. This is just a phase. Once Bush is out of office, they’ll go back to leading their normal, empty, vapid lives.
Being subsumed, demographically by non-western cultures. Europe’s native population is in absolute decline and in severe relative decline vis a vi African, Arab and Muslim immigration and birthrates. The balance shifts more in favor of the minorties every year as more and more of their population is unassimilated and alien to the cultures and traditions of their host countries. As the numbers and influence (legitimate and otherwise) grows, the comparitive will to reassert traditional Western values and institutions declines and complacency and a self-defeating and self-fulfilling mindset takes over and allows it to happen. Pretty soon they’ll be like a zebra after a long hunt by lions: in such a state of shock they allow themselves to be eaten alive without even really feeling it.
SOme are blaming the coming Ice Age on global warming. Still trying to figure that one out.
I think a new mini Ice Age would have much less dramatic effect on mankind for much the same reasons you do: we are much less dependent on the climate in general and temperature in particular for our livelihood and the way we live. However, it could still have serious effects on less developed parts of the world that aren't as independent of the weather like we are: namely parts of the Mid East, much of Africa, and regions of Asia.Turkey may be a democracy, but other Mulsim nations don’t really consider it to be part of the core of the Mid East like Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran to an extent, and possibly Jordan and Syria. Turkey has long been the most European (geographically and otherwise) of Muslim nations and doesn’t get much cultural attention. But no one can ignore Iraq. Historically, politically and geographically it’s in the very heart of Islamastan and for that very reason it strikes me as a new type of West Berlin. The farther a nation is from the heart of a system, the less attention gets paid to it. Yugoslavia, while still communist, went its own way in the 60s and this did nothing to foment a revolution in the rest of the Eastern Bloc or draw a violent reaction from Moscow. Likewise Afghanistan and Lebanon: Muslim nations that have gone democratic but aren’t part of the intense focus of our enemies like Iraq is because they exist on the peripheries of the Jihadis sphere of influence. the Hungarian or Czech uprisings in the 50s and 60s were not something Moscow could ignore because they were deemed to be too vital to the geopolitical situation. So it is with Iraq: our enemies can’t ignore it because it is so vital to their own worldview that to abandon it to us would be unthinkable. I realize I’m mixing metaphors somewhat, but I believe Iraq is a mutli-faceted issue with a lot of long term ramifications and potetentials for everyone involved.
There were a number of reasons it failed. The self governing aspect is one (the colonies set up representative bodies almost immediately after colonists landed and reached a low number of people) but there are others. Paul Johnson points out that the American Revolution was an intensely religious matter. The French Revolution was an intensely anti-religious eruption; man was supposed to throw off the shackles of the ancien regime and all of its trappings (King, Church, aristocracy) through the new deity of Rationalism. The American Revolution understood human nature and constructed itself around it. The French tried to remake man and his impulses into something they weren’t.
I admit it’s not a perfect analogy, but I was thinking more along the lines of an example: I doubt the subjects of Communism would have held out as much hope as they did (esp. at the beginning and end of the Cold War) for a better life if there hadn’t been a shining example of freedom and capitalism right in the middle of the Workers’ Paradise. Iraq can be much the same. Syria Iran and even Saudi Arabia can’t ignore the success story that Iraq will (hopefully) be. They can’t keep telling their subjects “democracy is anti-thetical to Islam” when there’s a functioning Muslim democracy right next door.
I wouldn’t worry about copyright infringement. This is a non-commerical site and full and accurate credit is given including author and original site. Plus, what are the odds anyone associated with either will notice or care? Possible but unlikely to say the least. If push comes to shove, just remove it.
That being said, sorry if I stepped on any toes.
I think the author hits the nail on the head: Iraq isn't about just Iraq, it's about the entire region and the conditions that breed terrorists. We had to do something about Saudi Arabia, but couldn't very well invade them: no plausible causus belli like we had with Iraq. This is about focusing terror over there as opposed to over here: containing the Soviet Union outside the Western Hemisphere is an apt analogy I think.From http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5034
Iraq and Ping-Pong Diplomacy
November 30th, 2005
To get out of Iraq, first we must first know why we are in Iraq.
We did not invade Iraq to find Saddam?s Weapons of Mass Destruction.
We did not invade Iraq to establish democracy in the Middle East. We invaded Iraq to deter Saudi Arabia and its client, Islamic Fascism, from staging more 9/11 attacks on the United States.
Of course, nobody in a position of power will say so, but we invaded Iraq mainly to deter the predominant source of money and manpower used to attack us on 9/11: Saudi Arabia and its client, Islamic Fascism....
