Lines, like fashions, change. Last year, a triumphalist Bush administration declared that Lebanon's rebuff of their Syrian overlords proved that "democracy and freedom are on the march." "Across the Middle East--from the Palestinian territories, to Lebanon, to Iraq, to Iran--I believe that the advance of freedom within nations will build the peace among nations," the president proclaimed. "We support the spread of democracy in the Middle East--because freedom leads to peace."

A year later, a state of war exists between Israel and Lebanon. "I want to make clear that the event this morning is not a terror act, but an act of a sovereign state that attacked Israel without reason," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said of the kidnappings and killings of his nation's soldiers. "The government of Lebanon, of which Hezbollah is a part, is trying to shake the stability of the region."

If the Bush administration didn't speak too soon, what's Israel doing inside Lebanon? Democracies don't invade one another, do they? How did Hezbollah become part of an elected government? Democracy is to terrorists what water is to the Wicked Witch, right?

Trying to promote democracy among terrorist supporting states was and is truly a misguided idea. Hopefully we will learn from our mistakes but I'm not optimistic the Bush administration is able to learn from its mistakes. I hope I'm wrong.

I get it now. Bush IS the real terrorist, that's why he keeps pushing this line of BS. He's a Syrian mole!

Democracy is the freedom of the people to make their own choices, it's not a guarentee that the right decisions will be made.

All I have to say about all this mid-east violence is: Its time to start drilling for oil in Alaska.

Strictly speaking, democracy is the freedom of 51% of the people to make choices for the whole. And frankly, this terrified America's Founders. Witness:

John Adams, An Essay on Man's Lust for Power, August 29, 1763:

[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.

James Madison, Federalist No. 10, November 23, 1787:

[D]emocracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.

Fisher Ames, speech in the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, January 15, 1788:

The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty.

John Adams, letter to John Taylor, April 15, 1814:

Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.

In addition to drilling for oil in Alaska, we should pull back from the Middle East and let them murder eachother. Then, go in and take their oil. That's what it seems to be coming to.

Anyone who thought that the spread of democracy in the Middle East would usher in an era of peace and prosperity is clearly not a conservative, but belongs to the ideology of dangerous utopianism. We must remember that the Bush Administration is looking for excuses to justify the war. When the prospect for democracy grows dim, new excuses will be invented. Conservatives must consistently oppose the war and expose the hollow rhetoric of the Bush Administration that has only succeeded in getting Americans killed in a permanent quagmire.

Wilds, your rhetoric has become painfully empty since the release of the Iraqi Perspectives Report. Saddam Hussein's government harbored international terrorists and had undergone the first steps in a plan to re-develop WMD arsenals. Those are the definitive findings of Joint Forces Command and the Volcker Report, not rhetoric.

Secondary note: As Liberals love to remind us, the true FIRST argument for invading Iraq was a link between Saddam Hussein's government and Al Qaeda.

In retrospect, it was also the one that was most true.

Ben-T, would your support for our intimate involvement in the Middle East have anything to with, most importantly, protecting Israel?

I suspect that your interest in us having troops there has less to do with terrorism or displacing Saddam than that. Am I wrong?

Yes, we Roman Catholics are famous for our fierce devotion to Israel.

No, you're flatly wrong.

P.S: But I do believe that the United States should surrender its sovereignty to Israel and declare Judaism as its state religion.

The Bush Administration's case for the war in Iraq was that Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons to use against our allies. The case was not that Iraq might start to develop weapons sometime in the future -- this is possible for any state in the world. Iraq's links with al-Qaeda are equally without merit. Remember Stephen Hayes, lapdog of the Neocon's at the Department of Defense and promoter of egregious pro-war progaganda? Well, Mr Hayes informed the world that al-Zarqawi lost a leg in a bombing raid and was given posh treatment in a Baghdad hospital under the personal direction of Saddam Hussein. Now that we've had time to look at Zarqawi's dead body, it turns out that he didn't have a prosthetic limb at all. He had two normal legs. So what does all this imply: 1) Zarqawi was born with three legs 2) Zarqawi grew another leg or 3) Stepehen Hayes and the people he shills for are full of crap. Now I think it's #3, but if you want to make a case for #1 or #2, I'm willing to listen.

But it's nice that you now concede that the Bush Administration's pre-war rhetoric was about as far from the truth as one can get.

"The Bush Administration's case for the war in Iraq was that Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons to use against our allies. The case was not that Iraq might start to develop weapons sometime in the future -- this is possible for any state in the world. Iraq's links with al-Qaeda are equally without merit. Remember Stephen Hayes, lapdog of the Neocon's at the Department of Defense and promoter of egregious pro-war progaganda? Well, Mr Hayes informed the world that al-Zarqawi lost a leg in a bombing raid and was given posh treatment in a Baghdad hospital under the personal direction of Saddam Hussein. Now that we've had time to look at Zarqawi's dead body, it turns out that he didn't have a prosthetic limb at all. He had two normal legs. So what does all this imply: 1) Zarqawi was born with three legs 2) Zarqawi grew another leg or 3) Stepehen Hayes and the people he shills for are full of crap. Now I think it's #3, but if you want to make a case for #1 or #2, I'm willing to listen."

Remember Joint Forces Command, a military body who Stephen Hayes is not associated with, releasing the Iraqi Perspectives Project which confirms Saddam Hussein harbored and funded international terrorists?

The Bush administration's main cause for war was links with international terrorism, which is now definitivey on the records as true. Unless you are now saying that Joint Forces Command are in on the George Bush-Stephen Hayes-Ahmad Chalabi conspiracy.

Ok, them I am wrong on that front. It's just that you are always so adament about our continued involvement in that part of the World and to me it smacks of some other agenda as I don't completely understand what good will come of it.

Its the most strategically important region in the world. They have the black gold.

I'd rather not see Russia or China running the show there.

Ben

We certainly don't want to run the show there. We did not even bring a large enough force structure to subdue Iraq, much less the entire middle east, however, you are on to something regarding Russia and China. Russia and China are closely allied with Iran and Syria. Russia and China use Iran, Syria, and the various terrorist organizations they support as proxies against the US and the West.

"We certainly don't want to run the show there. We did not even bring a large enough force structure to subdue Iraq, much less the entire middle east, however, you are on to something regarding Russia and China. Russia and China are closely allied with Iran and Syria. Russia and China use Iran, Syria, and the various terrorist organizations they support as proxies against the US and the West." -B.Poster

The US exerted regional dominance from right after World War II, when FDR forged the alliance with Saudi Arabia that would forever destroy British regional dominance, up until 1979, when the Iranian Islamic Revolution broke out.

Since then, we have pursued a strategy in the Middle East more or less identical to our strategies in Europe and East Asia. Play multiple powers off of each other in order to assure that no one power becomes regional hegemon. In this case, playing Iran and Iraq off of one another while sitting pretty on Saudi Arabia.

However, things have changed since 9/11. Saudi Arabia lacks the political will to get rid of the Islamist terrorists that infest it top to bottom. From the conclusion of Operation Enduring Freedom up through 2002, there was a silent struggle in world politics between the governments of the USA and Saudi Arabia on the issue of a terrorist crackdown. It culminated with the Saudis informing us we could kindly get out of their country. They'd still sell the oil, but they don't want any American bases on their holy sands.

After that we are stuck with no presence whatsoever except a few coastal sheikhdoms, which are almost universally afraid of incurring the wrath of any of the Middle East's big three players-Saudi Arabia, Iraq, or Iran.

The result of this, almost directly, was the invasion of Iraq. Saddam Hussein had been getting a bit too much of an annoyance for quite some time, harboring high profile international terrorists groups, and keeping powerful Al Qaeda-buddy organizations such as Ansar al-Islam on the payroll, to use as mercenary-soldiers against the Peshmerga in the north. And of course, the escapades immortalized in the Volcker Report.

So here you have the US, just got its a*s booted out of Saudi Arabia, clinging to some coastal sheikhdoms, has been looking for some time to send a message to regional players, and needs a new regional base of operations to keep Russi and China from getting any funny ideas.

Saddam picked the worst possible time to start getting cocky again. It was the perfect storm. In invading Iraq, we blew a terrorist nest wide open, created a state-based battlefield where we can use our advantage-overwhelming military power, and avoid, to a degree,their advantage-the ability to disperse all over the world and make finding them like finding a needle in a haystack. Not only that, but we send a message to other regional power players about just what happens when you p*ss off Uncle Sam, and we get a shiny new place to build our bases.

The problem, of course, is that in doing so, we removed Iran's counter-part in the region, and paved the way for them to make a grab at regional power status. If they succeed in that, the whole reason we started this show-reasserting American dominance in the region, goes out the window.

So right now, its a showdown between the USA and Iran, and, proxied through Iran, Russia and China.

From here on out its relly pretty simple. Bide our time, let the Europeans jump through every last diplomatic hoop they can find until its abundantly clear that Iran has no plans to accept any offer, and then bomb them back to the stone age.

Or, alternatively, there even the miniscule possibility that Iran will actually accept the diplomatic option. Which would be even better. We get to reassert regional dominance-and put Iran back in its place-without ever firing a shot.

Ben

Thanks for the reply to my post. We formed an alliance with Saudi Arabia because we need the oil and they needed the protection. Times have changed and they no longer need us. We thought Iran was a greater threat than Iraq so we provided support for them during the Iran/Iraq war. This was clearly a mistake. I think everyone knows this now. I think a former Reagan offical said it best when he said to rouphly paraphrase, "it's a pity they both can't lose." The axiom "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" can draw some strange bed fellows together!! I have no doubt that some of our actions here have been reprehensible. On that note some of the things they did to us were reprehensible to. It goes both ways.

I suggest we develop our own resources. This way such chicanery should be unneccsary and it would give us more leverage should the chance to negotiate a settlement present itself.

The bottome line is, if we want hegemony in the middle east, the current military structure is inadequate. The manpower component of the military will need to be increased substantially and the military will need more and better equipment. In other words, we are going to need a WWII style mobilization. Intellegence operations against Russia and China will need to beefed up, as well.

A case could be made for a WWII type mobilization. Even predating 911 I had come to the conclusion that Islamic Extremist culture is predatory and Western culture cannot peacefully coexist along side it. Now that the Islamic Extremists have allied themsleves with the Marxists of Russia and China they are even more dangerous. We will have to deal with this sooner or later. The issue is WWII type mobilization will require an enormous sacrifice on the part of the American people and, at this time, they are not going to support that.

Given that the American people will not support this type of mobilization, I think the best we can do for now is some form of containment. This would involve nuclear arming Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and substantially strengthening Israel. This would provide a stronger buffer against Russia, China, and their Islamic Extremist allies. Also it would give us the added benefit of being able to remove our troops from Japan and South Korea, Many of their citizens do not want us there anyway.

We should tap into our own oil resources in ANWR and off the coasts of Florida and California that are currenntly off line. This should lessen our dependence on foreign oil. Right now we need to buy foreign oil more than they need to sell it to us. This is not a good situation to be in when one is trying to negotiate fair trade arrangements. In other words, if we develop more of our own resources, this will give us more leverage when dealing foreign powers.

Best Wishes,
B.Poster

P.S. - As I'm typing this Israel is locked in mortal combat with Islamic Extremists. If the American government is smart enough to support them, they may eliminate this problem for us much the same way they took out Iraq's nuclear reactor. Go Israel!!

"Thanks for the reply to my post. We formed an alliance with Saudi Arabia because we need the oil and they needed the protection. Times have changed and they no longer need us. We thought Iran was a greater threat than Iraq so we provided support for them during the Iran/Iraq war. This was clearly a mistake. I think everyone knows this now. I think a former Reagan offical said it best when he said to rouphly paraphrase, "it's a pity they both can't lose." The axiom "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" can draw some strange bed fellows together!! I have no doubt that some of our actions here have been reprehensible. On that note some of the things they did to us were reprehensible to. It goes both ways."

I don't think it was wrong to throw our weight behind Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. If we had not, Iraq would have been decisively defeated and Iran would have come hot off the heels of the Islamic Revolution as the region's dominant power. That could create some big problems.

"I suggest we develop our own resources. This way such chicanery should be unneccsary and it would give us more leverage should the chance to negotiate a settlement present itself.

The bottome line is, if we want hegemony in the middle east, the current military structure is inadequate. The manpower component of the military will need to be increased substantially and the military will need more and better equipment. In other words, we are going to need a WWII style mobilization. Intellegence operations against Russia and China will need to beefed up, as well." -B.Poster

We don't want to be hegemon. We just don't want there to BE a hegemon. And we want to be the biggest power player in the region. Which we have fine force for. WWI level mobilization would, if anything, directly harm us in achieving that objective. The name of the game these days is a small, fast, strike force.

As for our own resources, I agree. But the only energy resource with a chance of replacing oil is nuclear, and its going to be a long time before anybody agrees to let us make it.

"Given that the American people will not support this type of mobilization, I think the best we can do for now is some form of containment. This would involve nuclear arming Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and substantially strengthening Israel. This would provide a stronger buffer against Russia, China, and their Islamic Extremist allies. Also it would give us the added benefit of being able to remove our troops from Japan and South Korea, Many of their citizens do not want us there anyway."

I agree, partially. Throw our support behind Japan in East Asia (you can see this happening now with Japan leading the charge against North Korea at the security council) and also behind India and others to contain China. Do whatever we can to frustrate Russia's attempts to re-assert itself as the major power of note in Eastern Europe.

In the Middle East, abandon Saudi Arabia as our Islamic ally of note and replace it with Iraq. Use Iraq as a springboard for a military presence capable of actively protecting America's regional interests.

"P.S. - As I'm typing this Israel is locked in mortal combat with Islamic Extremists. If the American government is smart enough to support them, they may eliminate this problem for us much the same way they took out Iraq's nuclear reactor. Go Israel!!"

I like what the administration is doing now. Basically say "Israel should use restraint" to make nice with the Europeans, but not actually do anything to stop them. We have spent a long time rebuilding Europe's trust after Iraq, and we aren't finished yet. By the time we bomb Iran near the end of Bush's presidency, I want Europe to have no choice but to support us.

I've said it before and I'll repeat it: if we're going to control the region for "black gold", then let's control it and not pretend we give a flying fig about showing the Iraqis the beauty of democracy. Yes, I understand that bringing these primitive savages around to our way of thinking would be a plus, but how long does that take? Are we going to wait fifty years until they figure it out? I say we make our intentions clear and if we're going to invest blood and money, let's start developing their natural resources.