Can't happen here... Famous last words.
Posted on 03/27/2004 6:05:50 AM PST by Ranger
I am in no way implying we need approval or a permission slip from the UN to fut-her our countries interests.
But the PR disaster of unilaterally going into Afghanistan and having the 9-11 attacks passed off by Al Qaeda and the world as retaliation for our attacking Afghanistan would mean we would never have gone into Iraq.
Bush would be blamed for the deaths of 3,000 Americans in NY and beaten over the head with that to the point I don't think he would have pressed for an invasion of Iraq,
And if he did invade Iraq in that environment, and no WMDs were found he probably would get impeached for reckless and dangerous behavior as commander chief.
So I'll say it again:Could you imagine what would have happened if we had invaded Afghanistan before 9-11...We were saved from a major PR blunder by our own incompetence. -Tom
Actually, only Russia can physically destroy much of this country. But even a "limited" nuclear attack by a state or sub-state actor can destroy or severely undermine our national ethos...and replace it with something else that we probably would not like. (My guess: we go on a war of extermination.)
Well, yeah, with nukes. But
a biology wiz kid
with a billion bucks
from some fanatic
can bio-engineer bugs
(or even prions,
I'd guess) and cause more
loss of life and chaos than
a big nuke attack.
(Biology is,
comparatively, so cheap,
I'm puzzled no one
has used this path yet.
Some of the eco nuts are
educated nuts . . .)
Faulty tin foil hat... -OR- Tin foil boots weren't grounded...
Can't happen here... Famous last words.
That was a very large problem.
Any Grand Jury testimony, ie. law enforcement route, was secret and could not be dispensed to the CIA and FBI.
He refers to her as "Ms. Rice."
That was enough for me.
I will concede that 9/11 galvanized this country to action as no other event could have. If Clinton had been more of a leader, we could have used the bombings of our embassies in East Africa to marshall world and domestic support.
I take objection to your use of "PR blunder" as a reason not to take action. When our vital national interests are at stake, I want a President who will take action regardless of how it may affect the polls or our international standing or the personal consequences. One of the functions of leadership is to lead and build a national consensus. Clinton saw foreign policy as an extension of domestic politics and acted accordingly. We are reaping the whirlwind due to Clinton's failures.
With the end of the cold war, however, things changed. While there was no longer a prime state sponsor for any "terror network," there was also no longer any need for one. It became easy to travel from one country to another. Money could be collected and transferred around the globe. Cell phones and the Internet made it possible to maintain tight control of an elusive group that could move its "headquarters" across continents.
No Oklahoma bombing, no World Trade Center bombing, no embassy bombings. It was easy to miss, you see, howe, the cell phones creeped up on us.
Consider in contrast the next paragraph:
But the Washington hawks failed to see what was happening. The world around them had changed, but their paradigm hadn't.
See? All of the concrete bombings during the Clinton years was easy to miss, but the abstrac changes in the wold should have been notices by the Bush administration -- and, more so, immediately upon its arrival in Washington, despite of the shortened transitional period due to recount.
Not only is this man anti-American --- he is increadibly dumb to be so overt. I would fire him for just that reason.
Apparently you haven't read what I wrote carefully.. I never said PR should have been a reason not to invade. I believe inadvertently we lucked out by not going into Afghanistan until afer 9-11.- Tom
By the end of the '80s, however, that was beginning to dry up...the Russians realized that the Islamics were maniacs and that the Euros were slowly dying out on their own as they became dissolusioned.
After the fall of the Eastern Bloc, notice that in both Europe and Latin America, homegrown Terrorist groups have been either rolled up, shut down, or are moribund. Also, so-called "insurgencies" in Central America also weakened and died off.
After the Soviets fell, the only terr groups able to find signifigant funding and support were the Islamics, and to a much lesser extent, the IRA (sadly, theirs comes from the US, mostly from Irish-Americans with an incorrect, romantic view of the "boyos", and who know little or nothing of their communist ambitions).
The position of those who made descisions then (that the Soviets were primarily responsible for such destabilizing things as terrorism) was FAR from "paranoia", it was in fact correct. Unfortunately, after the smoke from the fall of the Soviets cleared, we were left with a President who had no idea or interest in what to do about Islamic terrorism, which essentially is all that was left.
Right after my post,
by a weird coincidence,
a librarian
handed me a new
non-fiction book, and told me
I might think it's cool --
 |
Book Description -- Nestled near the Hamptons, the fashionable summer playground of America's rich and famous, and in the shadow of New York City, lies an unimposing 840-acre island unidentified on most maps. On the few on which it can be found, Plum Island is marked red or yellow, and stamped U.S. government—restricted or dangerous animal diseases. Though many people live the good life within a scant mile or two from its shores, few know the name of this pork chop–shaped island. Even fewer can say whether it is inhabited, or why it doesn't exist on the map. That's all about to change. Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory blows the lid off the stunning true nature and checkered history of Plum Island. It shows that the seemingly bucolic island on the edge of the largest population center in the United States is a ticking biological time bomb that none of us can safely ignore. Based on innumerable declassified government documents, scores of in-depth interviews, and access to Plum Island itself, this is an eye-opening, suspenseful account of a federal government germ laboratory gone terribly wrong. For the first time, Lab 257 takes you deep inside this secret world and presents startling revelations including virus outbreaks, biological meltdowns, infected workers who were denied assistance in diagnosis by Plum Island brass, the periodic flushing of contaminated raw sewage into area waters, and the insidious connections between Plum Island, Lyme disease, and the deadly 1999 West Nile virus outbreak. An exploration of the complex world of microbiology, viruses, and bacteria, Lab 257 also shows how the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which ran Plum Island for the last half century, is far more than wholesome grade-A eggs and the food pyramid. The book probes what's in store for Plum Island's new owner, the Department of Homeland Security, in this age of bioterrorism. And for those interested in questions of national security and safety, it is a call to action for those concerned with protecting present and future generations from preventable biological catastrophes. |
Good post. Something else the media never mentions is this -- throughout Clinton's term, particularly during impeachment, we heard about his great job approval numbers. Bush, on the other hand, became president after the most divisive campaign in modern history, with millions of Democrats claiming he was selected, not elected. Anyhow, my point is that Clinton could have used his popularity to do strong things, like really fight a war on terror. Instead, he talked about school uniforms and such. On the other hand, there is no way Bush would have been able to get approval from the public, or from Congress, to have preemptively struck at Al-Qaeda before 9/11, given the 2000 election. Heck, look at the way the libs screech about Iraq -- can you imagine what their reaction would have been if Bush had declared war on Al-Qaeda in the first few months of his term?
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