Posted on 09/20/2002 10:57:58 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
Edited on 04/22/2004 12:34:44 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The White House released its new national security strategy Friday, setting out President Bush's policy of taking pre-emptive action instead of trying to deter or contain hostile states and terrorist groups.
"The United States can no longer solely rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past," the new 33-page document reads. "We cannot let our enemies strike first."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Well, I consider myself libertarian on most issues (with the biggest distinction from the Big L's of opposing open borders), and I like what I've seen so far just fine.
You're not alone. Many many people who consider themselves libertarians have been horrified by the antiwar postures of a lot of self-anointed libertarians. It may even be the majority but I don't know. I'd consider myself a fairly hawkish libertarian, much more so than Cato or Reason let's say. Unfortunately the peaceniks wing is very vocal because, well, so many of them have no life. Ahem.
When survival is at issue, I will take "might" first and think about "right" later.
Same here.
We really need Putin to flip and join this.
Pray that Vladimir will do this.
It's comforting to know that we will nuke Great Britain if its military ever gets larger than ours...
This doctrine will be received by much of the world as American arrogance — "Not only will we defend our status as the world's sole superpower, but we'll do it because we're the kindest, most benevolent country on earth. Oh, and by the way, we're better than you are."
Good call. Thank God we have adults back in the White House.
Low blow!
I'm down here in WV, working to defeat leftist incumbent Senator Jay Rockefeller, and helping fellow FReeper Jay Wolfe in his bid to replace him.
Today some Democrat, in response to our criticism of Rockefeller's support for the homosexual agenda, partial birth abortions, and the environmental extremists, called Jay Wolfe a 'reactionary'--which of course did nothing except identify the Democrat as a communist.
I mean, who else uses that term?
You ought to hear what the Democrats call us when we point out to the pro-gun voters of this state the fact that John D. Rockefeller IV also has earned an 'F' from the NRA! (It's not printable in a family forum.)
Hehehe...
;-)
Yeah, except for one thing. The vast majority of Muslims in actual practice think that a quick trip to paradise is a good idea for all those OTHER Muslims. As amply demonstrated in Iraq in 1991 and more recently in Afghanistan, most of those fervent Muslims after enough B-52 sorties, will surrender to the nearest camera crew and keep the 72 virgins waiting for awhile.
The Arabs understand force. It makes them understand that it is time to give up.
I am certainly not an isolationist Libertarian but I am deeply worried about this new "strategy". Iraq won't be a problem but who is the next "domino" in Bush's great "strategy"? And how long will it take before the rest of the potential dominoes, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Libya, North Korea, China, etc. realize that they would be better off to join forces and attack us immediately instead of waiting until we pick them off one at a time? Is that a battle we can win? And whatever happened to Bush's claim in the debates that unlike Gore, He, Bush would not be nation building? Throughout history every nation that has ever tried to conquer the world has failed and in the process doomed their own civilization.
Well, if those countries were as fat, happy and stupid as American leftists, they'd never figure it out until they'd already been hit and beaten. They'll sit and debate until the Warthogs come home, maybe longer if they ask for the UN to give them permission to fight. We had already been attacked repeatedly long before 911 and we hadn't figured it out even by that awful Tuesday. Some Americans still haven't figured it out, and since they were spared all of the grisly reality of what it is to be attacked at the leisure of our enemies, they all too quickly forget. Oh what a blessing to both peace movement and our enemies that most Americans didn't have to see burned bodyparts and pink smears on the pavement, and can simply forget until the next time.
America have never figured out that this country's been picked apart one bit at a time for decades by all sorts of factionalism and by race-baiters, political correctness, etc. We've been picked apart so much that we've lost our ability to distinguish between right and wrong and now half of Congress thinks it has to get permission from the UN on a difficult issue instead of debating and making a decision on their own to say yes or no. That's really sad- none of us ever elected the UN to govern. We did not give our power to the UN, we loaned it to our elected officials. Now our elected officials give it to the UN?
Since they're not even debating among themselves, I guess they are waiting for the UN to give them permission to debate, too. And what is even more sad is how many Americans do not see how absurd it is to let an unelected UN think for them. But then, we don't even see how government itself has creeped in and taken away our rights because we aren't willing to fight, telling us how to raise kids, what to eat, what is hate speech and what is not, telling us where to send our kids to school or what kind of coolant we can use in our air conditioners and dictating whether or not we can plant a certain crop. Raising taxes and redistributing wealth... no one fights it, so we keep getting milked. And people think that if we don't go after terrorists wherever they lurk, that terrorism will just go away?
Al Gore would indeed have done the same thing. Only it would have been called "Forward Engagement", as in the DEM platform of 2000. The Democrats couldn't bring themselves to use such a masculine term as "strike first", and "pre-emption" to them sounds like something Bill Clinton did in the oval office with the pizza girl.
It is sad that GW has chosen to emulate McKinley, and T.R., when the appropriate reaction to international terrorism should be more like Eisenhower and Golda Meir.
It is ironic because GW's father was a company man, including the top spot, all his life. I guess Barbara's belligerent/pious gene won out.
"It's comforting to know that we will nuke Great Britain if its military ever gets larger than ours..."
No, it means that we'll work to make sure our military remains the best, so that we won't have to put up with blackmail nor have to submit to a superior miltary force, nor have to take massive losses because we failed to remain on the cutting edge or slacked off in training. It does NOT say we'll arbitrarily attack all nations whose militaries are reaching par. It merely states that we will train hard, work steadily, study , and maintain and develop the best means to defend the country- in short, we'll remain vigilent so as not to be taken by suprise.
So if Britain wants to work hard too, that's fine. In fact, it would be great. We'll keep working just in case, so we don't have to wait for Britain to come to our rescue because we were slacking off.
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