[Puddleglum]

Thanks for your assessment of the ways to wage war, and what’s at stake. I wish I had time to post as thoughtfully, but am a little under the weather. It’s something I think the country has not debated and needs to debate to reach and follow through actionably.

I think the USA is experiencing the typical perils of empire, but in an age of instant destruction and devastation. I think our global presence arouses the dissent of people who profit locally from dissent by gaining local power - some have global ambitions, but they also fight among themselves very effectively, something the USA should recognize but not foment.

I think we have seldom achieved loyalty through foreign aid or military support payola. I think that such loyalty evaporates as soon as the last dollar or bullet is spent, if not before, and that the assurance that our arms and training won’t be turned against us is a pipe dream (oil pipe).

I think we should pursue energy independence as aggressively as we went to the moon, or as aggressively as we throw ourselves into the hornet’s next of disloyalty known as the Middle East.

I think we should base our strongest alliances on shared convictions of the nature and liberties of man, not on the expedience of trade. We should strengthen an economic and cultural alliance among South and Central American neighbors, with whom we share a great deal of European/Western cultural heritage. We should not make China a most favored trading nation while we cut off Cuba. Both are communist. We should kill Cuba with kindness - its people, not its government.

As for militant Islam, the best thing to do is make Muslims themselves face the hard realities of the nihilism they tolerate so long as it directs itself to an enemy “out there” - Israel or the USA. If the Saudis, Jordanians, et al had to really deal with the viper their ambivalence nurtures, they might finally have the discourse Islam needs to mind its own house. If they didn’t deal with, they would die.

The West needs to stop hating life or thinking of the world only as consumers or producers. We need to export optimism in human nature when it is unfettered from tyrannical governments. It is a shame to think that every problem can be solved by big government, or that an individual can never find the solution to human happiness, so he had just better keep his nose to the grindstone and let the experts and politicians sort the important stuff out.

[Nuc1]

I think you reason quite well my FReeper friend. I couldn't’t find anything to disagree with in your post. I would be very aggressive about the destruction of Cuba’s communists. Since Kennedy, we have allowed the communists to persecute the Cuban people at will. Further, the country has been a spring board for murder and mayhem throughout Central and South America. And we sat by as if the Cuban people weren’t worth the effort to save. This American thinks it is way past time to lance this festering sore and let those people breath free air. Imagine what ole Hugo in Venezuela would be thinking not to mention the American left. Even in my old age I would strap up for that.