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To: Alberta's Child
You have articulated your displeasure with the Bush administration foreign policy. You will note that the author, in contrast to yourself, as confronted at the question of, if not the Bush doctrine, then what? In this, the author is intellectually honest. Now it is your turn to step up to the plate. You have yet to answer whether you think that the nation faces an existential threat from Islam. Let's hear it!

If there is no threat, what then is the reality of the situation? But if there is a threat, what then do we do about it? It does no good to carp and inveigh about the deficiencies of the Clinton administration and lay them at the threshold of the Bush administration or at the feet of the philosophy of neoconservatism. It does not unveil our thinking 1 inch of advancement to indulge in petulance about George Bush. You must contribute a bit more than cynicism to this thread.

As an incidental reaction to your remarks at the foot of your post concerning George Bush's incomprehensible and obdurate failure to seal the borders, I can only say that I agree with you entirely and have so posted some years ago. Indeed, I recall saying, that if an American city were to be struck by a smuggled weapon of mass destruction, Bush would certainly go down as one of the worst American (Republican) presidents. However, if Bush is following the neoconservative approach which the author says is to install democracies where jihadism now obtains, then his lapses on the border, while otherwise unfathomable, are not inconsistent.

I now set forth a portion of that post concerning the disconnect between waging a war against terrorism abroad and failing to secure the border's at home. I do this to demonstrate to you that the idea of there being no serious threat posed by rampant Islam is not original to you (if indeed you share it.) I incorporate some of that post to illustrate that these are imponderable questions and we have to make the best judgment balancing risks and probability. Here is that post:

The irony of this situation is that Bush has staked his presidency on the war in Iraq but his obdurancy on the issue of immigration amnesty threatens to take away the last pillar of support for that war and leave Bush a legacy of defeat and the ignominy of being branded the worst Republican president in American history. Despite his recent victory on funding the war in Iraq, the left has moved considerably closer to taking away control of the war from him. (I obviously got this wrong)

The base instinctively sees that there is a moral as well as an intellectual repugnancy between Bush's policies in Iraq and on the border.

Contrary to the pervasive belief among leftists around the world, America, under Republican administration, does not seek to wage war where its vital interests are not at stake. The gravamen of the justification for the war in Iraq was to prevent Saddam Hussein from trading petrodollars for weapons of mass destruction which he could then turn upon us or pass off to terrorist groups who would in turn inflict them on us on a scale more ghastly than 9/11.

Why fight and die in the barrios of Baghdad to protect America from WMDs when it took only 19 terrorists to bring down the World Trade Towers? Are there not 19 more terrorists in the world ready to smuggle a couple of nukes across the Mexican border? Have we in any sense made ourselves safer against infiltration across our border? Most thinking people would conclude that we have not. They would reasonably conclude, there cannot be any risk or surely we would have closed our own borders!

If there is a risk, Bush has been stunningly irresponsible in failing adequately to police the borders. So egregious is his misfeasance that the government admits to 12 million illegals on the loose somewhere in our midst! The number is more likely 20 million. Whatever the number, how can one have confidence in a Commander in Chief properly to wage war in Iraq when he has been so demonstrably inept at home?

If there is no risk, why are we fighting and dying in Iraq?

Finally, while you are getting around to publicly stating your solutions to the apparent threat of Islamic terrorism, you might also explain how it is that a policy of birthing and nurturing democracies in "third world hellholes" can under any rational rubric be identified as "Empire building?" I had rather thought that imperialism and democracy were two concepts much at variance.


14 posted on 10/03/2007 10:25:08 AM PDT by nathanbedford ("I like to legislate. I feel I've done a lot of good." Sen. Robert Byrd)
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To: nathanbedford
If Islam is a threat, then how about -- at a bare freaking minimum -- immediately ceasing to allow any immigration into the U.S. from Islamic countries?

. . . you might also explain how it is that a policy of birthing and nurturing democracies in "third world hellholes" can under any rational rubric be identified as "Empire building?" I had rather thought that imperialism and democracy were two concepts much at variance.

There are something like 190+ soveriegn nations in the world today. The U.S. currently has military personnel stationed in about 130 of them. Establishing and/or supporting countries that can only function as protectorates of the U.S. is hardly a case of "birthing and nurturing democracies." In fact, I suspect most of the countries where the U.S. has engaged in active military campaigns in the last 25 years all share one thing in common . . . they do business in U.S. dollars.

15 posted on 10/05/2007 3:53:05 AM PDT by Alberta's Child (I'm out on the outskirts of nowhere . . . with ghosts on my trail, chasing me there.)
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