Infinite Monkeys[MonkeyFight begins with these posts: 1 2 3]
Do I believe that we are at war? Yes and no. We are not "at war" in the way even remotely analogous to the way we were in WW2, or even the cold war. If you asked 50 different legislators who we are at war with, I believe you would get very different answers. This is not good, since Congress is the body constitutionally responsible for declaring and ultimately supervising war. Congress is not doing this - they have closed their eyes and told the Executive Branch to just "make us safer" without telling them who the "official" enemy is.
The Administration, because it has not been forced to clarify its specific goals, is waging war on anything that looks like it may threaten the power of the US, and they are doing it without taking a true "posture of war". Additionally, they are not being truthful about WHY we are being attacked and what our other options are for dealing with this problem.
We are NOT being attacked because we are free. We are being attacked because we support Israel and meddle in middle eastern affairs. This is important, and people don't seem to understand this.
Our handling of both the Iraq war and domestic terror risks indicates that we don't really have a clue who we're fighting or how to fight them. If, as Gingrich stated, we will not likely see a return to something resembling liberty within our borders during my KIDS lifetime, much less my own, then we are not doing this right.
If we REALLY are "at war", then we need to behave like we are. We must protect our borders above all else, and we must aggressively cut spending on all non-essential programs until the war is over. To continue to expand social services, foreign aid, the military, and the police state is utter foolishness. The government is saying, "trust us, we'll protect you." This is foolishness as well.
So, in a very real sense, we are NOT at war yet. Instead, we're involved in a very ambiguous global police action. When the only way a "democracy" can get the consent of the governed is to profoundly deceive the governed, we have sacrificed what we intended to protect.
Side note: There is no way to know what the result ultimately would have been, but there is a strong argument to be made that the "protect our allies" policy that led from a low-grade Balkan political assassination to the wholesale sacrifice of a whole generation of Europe's youth in WW1 directly led to the rise of Hitler. Similarly, we don't really know how things would have turned out if Stalin and Hitler had spent another 10-15 years killing each other. Eventually you run out of money and soldiers. But I suppose that's a discussion for another day.
Posted by RobbL at August 20, 2004 10:32 AM | TrackBack