Posted on 08/20/2003 1:36:11 PM PDT by Korth
Likewise it is better to fight our enemies in the Middle East on their turf at the risk of our soldiers and theirs but also with any civilian risk being theirs and any damage to property being theirs as well than to ignore their vows of destroying us, our religions, our civilization, our way of life and wait for the airliners full of our folks to be hijacked in our country and sent against White House, Congress, World Trade Center and Pentagon. If there must be a next time here, Mecca would make a good target along with the Dome of the Rock, Medina and anyone vowing vengeance. They should know that in advance as an incentive to corral Muhammed el Rootie Kazootie and the mad bombers. Enough of this.
You and I must have very different reactions to the goings on in Israel (the canary in the coal mine). I want these guys done BEFORE they start blowing up school buses here. If they will muder Israeli children, they will murder our children. In our world, we are NOT geographicaly protected as once we were, if at all. If we give up internationalist pretensions of how good our victory will be for them and concentrate on interventionist strikes that are good for us. We are not making enemies. The Islamonuts (not all Muslims) are our enemies and have been for a very long time and will be until they are crushed.
As to offense, few people of whatever persuasion had the effrontery or brazen nerve to hijack soviet airliners in the heyday of the KGB much less fly them into the Kremlin. They were far too feared for that. Soviet ambassadors were not assassinated. Likewise. Other than in the foolish overextension of trying to occupy Afghanistan, few soviet military barracks were attacked or soviet personnel. Likewise. As Macchiavelli observed, given a choice, it is better to be feared than to be loved. However unpopular, that is still the practical view. The UN, the French, the Germans, the Canadians, their collective Belgian and Luxembourgian poodles, and what not can fry ice. So can the UN. If we do some good along the way, it is nothing to be ashamed of.
Geographical protection --- a very 19th (and early 20th) century notion. It ended with the invention of the ICBM and biological weapons. ....And our (relatively) open-borders policy doesn't help either.
If neocons are properly defined as a handful of elderly New York intellectuals like Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Donald Kagan of Yale, the now deceased Daniel Patrick Moynihan (who stayed Democrat), that is one thing, but the "paleos" want to regard lavender queen Justin Raimondo of antiwar.com as their foreign policy oracle and he is certainly no conservative of any kind. They embrace the libertarians who have a bad name and would like to be called conservative of some sort because it is a better name. You should also read Midge Decter's work on the lavenders after they tried to pick up her sons one summer at the beach. She is no libertarian on that sort of thing at least.
What the paleos want to call neocons is the entire conservative movement which had long since marginalized the few of them that existed in the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s. Few of them exist now either and they are not going to hijack conservatism.
Most importantly the "paleos" want to "purge" Bill Buckley, National Review, YAF, YRs, CRs, Human Events, and the entire mainstream post-1945 conservative movement and, though they may deny it, Ronald Reagan by inference. No sale now or ever!
No, the geography advantage holds true for any time frame since our borders are secured by our power and having only two bordering neighbors, both friendly. With the removal of territorial gain from the scenario that would leave a big open question as to why someone would want to attack us? Well there have been a few instances of interference with our shipping. These previous events would be unlikely to reoccur today but there always could be minor tensions here and there. Doubtful any would escalate into a full blown war though. Since we are the world's most powerful economy and the biggest market it is not advantageous for others to seek conflict and with the proven ability of our military it would also be suicidal, which is also bad for business. What then would be the most likely cause of future friction? The obvious answer is that our meddling could irritate others to the point that they strike out. Militant activism, contrary to popular notions does not increase security rather it invites tragedy.
Stalin style! LOL.
If it were the case, as you propose, Mojo, that all it takes is missiles--then we would not have several Divisions on the ground in Iraq.
A military conquest MUST include ground troops who root out and execute the resistance which remains.
There is no enemy Gummint which has tried that in the USA since 1812, and it's not likely to happen soon. This country still has more guns/person than anyplace else on Earth.
Try another fable.
Hey--it worked.
Mexico is not a "friendly nation."
With the removal of territorial gain from the scenario that would leave a big open question as to why someone would want to attack us?
As far as nation-states are concerned, you're probably right. And if they did attack us, it would most certainly be in an unconventional manner meant to destroy us economically, not occupy us militarily. Of course fanatical terrorist orgs would have no other option than to attack us in this manner, and plenty of reasons to do so (none of them rational, however).
Militant activism, contrary to popular notions does not increase security rather it invites tragedy.
I'd imagine you're talking about pre-emptive military action here. And if you are, my reponse would be that sometimes it increases security and sometimes it doesn't. There are a number of variables to consider.
And so I advocate pre-emptive action against both them and their sponsors. I can appreciate your non-interventionist stance -- I held that same stance not too long ago. But I strongly believe that this situation requires pre-emptive actcion. And yes, I'm well aware of the dangerous precedent it could set.
But I agree with you that the no-assassination policy should be scrapped, even though we could just do our business covertly (completely disregarding the amendment) and few would know the difference, or would be able to prove that we ordered the hit. Castro has lived way too long.
The Sharon Statement of YAF is available, unchanged, online as written in 1960. Its criterion for foreign policy is whether a particular action serves the just interests of the United States. You may disagree as to whether hammering the Islamofascisti into the desert rather than fighting them off in Manhattan or at our nation's capitol is in our interest or our just interest. You may disagree on whether we should stand idly by while our ally (like it or not) Israel suffers further actions by the generic and morally degenerate Muhammed el Rootie Kazootie and his homicide bombings of buses full of Hasidic Jewish children, including five Americans. I cheer when the IDF surgically takes out a carful of Hamas cowardly thug leaders who arrange the slaughter of little children.
I do not personally care whether those Islamofascist enclaves have democracy or not. In some ways, we would be better off if they did not so that we can squeeze their bosses until they bleed and surrender.
It is harder than you think to distinguish between the expansionism of the soviets and the expansionism of the so-called religion of peace.
Buchanan was NEVER an isolationist until after the Reagan administration was over. Like thee and me he was not impressed with Daddy Bush ideologically or as to his failure to care much about social issues. Patrick found his way to neo-isolationism and Raimondo was more than willing to attempt to divide the right by being the foreign policy court jester. Bill Buckley does not write for Pravda but Justine does. Justine is, shall we say, a little weaker than Daddy Bush on social issues by lifestyle and commitments and not a fit ally for traditional Catholics.
So don't be gung ho about the war with Iraq. We have an elected government and a volunteer military which should suffice.
The Chicoms are certainly a problem. All in good time. All in good time. We were set back a bit by the Arkansas Antichrist's enthusiasm for handing the Chicoms our latest technology of his time. We need to recover the massiveness of our edge by further technological racing to achieve the necessary ability to face them down if possible and deal with them more militantly as necessary or possible. Our Pacific fleet is a serious stumbling block to Chicom ambitions to seize Taiwan. Even after receiving from the Arkansas Antichrist all that technology, the Chicoms have done nothing but saber rattle as they have done for 55 years. Even the Chicom leaders understand that they will lose only one war and that, when they have the opportunity to lose one, they will lose it to the U.S.
When Reagan left Lebanon, it was a low priority compared to bringing down the Iron Curtain and the soviets, whose downfall has freed necessary resources to deal with the pestilences we are dealing with now. We also used battleship New Jersey and a heavy cruiser until New Jersey arrived to deal death from the sky (without POWs) onto the Bekaa Valley training camps of those responsible for the Marine barracks bombing. Those camps were a few millenia deeper in the Stone Age when the Navy finished its work there on that go round. I don't think Ronaldus Maximus would agree that there was no good reason or useful purpose.
You will surely concede that I have never, in all of our conversations, been a devotee of free trade any more than you or PJB and certainly not of exporting American jobs, much less to the Chicoms.
There are three groups who are being purposefully confused by political prestadigitation by the paleotheorists that Frum so well describes.
First there are actual neo-conservatives. There are more of them than ever there will be of paleos and they have had far greater impact on public policy which is understandable because they represent numerous constituencies in transition. Nonetheless they are a very small group of refugees from the Democratic Party: Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb, the late Senator Moynihan, the late Senator Scoop Jackson, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Donald Kagan, and a few others. Every generation of conservatives has had its refugees from the left. Winston Churchhill is famed for saying that the conservative under thirty has no heart and the liberal over thirty has no brain. Other than Bill Buckley, the early editors of National Review: John Chamberlain, Willmoore Kendall, Will Herberg, Frank Meyer, Elsie Meyer, James Burnham, Max Eastman were all refugees from the Stalinist, Trotskyite or Socialist left. As Catholics, we do not reject John Henry Cardinal Newman, Gilbert K. Chesterton, Sam Brownback, Robert Bork or so many others. That they are converts is a cause of joy and not for grumbling. Neo-conservatives thus defined were mugged by the McGovernization of a Democratic Party which was once willing to defend freedom and the United States in foreign affairs. Their arival in supoport of conservatism is welcome even if they are not perfect.
A second group are conservatives. They would include the conservative movement of my youth: YAF, YRs, CRs, Eagle Forum, American Conservative Union, National Review, Human Events, Conservative Book Club, taxpayer groups, Gun Owners of America, Richard Viguerie groups, Morton Blackwell groups and the many, many others which coalesced to elect Reagan as president and simmered with an increasing crescendo of resentment against all things leftist (including "antiwar" movements to make any sensible person gag) through LBJ, Nixon, Ford and Carter. Our enemies (and particularly our "antiwar" enemies) had to wait until 1992 to elect their Bobby Kennedy clone in Southern drag. Now they want to elect his wife. These are and have been since Pearl Harbor the conservatives and the conservative movement. It was and is a broad coalition of groups: moral groups, financial groups, military groups, taxpayer groups, gun groups, sportsmen. It does not believe with the Flemings that labor unions are all inherently communist. Nor with Justine that the extension of American military power by intervention in what our nation deems its best interest is somehow a tragedy. It does not believe with Justine or with libertarians that homosexuality and abortion are just acceptable alternative lifestyles and that if one does not like them one need not participate. The conservatives were not mugged by anyone but the tax collectors, the gun grabbers and the lifestyle left.
And now, "paleoconservatives" are the folks who want to take the remains of the good reputations of John Flynn (your former neighbor and mine), Charles Lindbergh, Colonel McCormick, Garrett Garrett and maybe even Robert Welch out of the grave from which they shall not rise until judgment day and illicitly poach on those reputations to claim a legacy not theirs to claim. As Frum has explained (and I have no doubt that book length explanations in minute detail will follow), we have here a group of ideological eccentrics, styling themselves "paleoconservatives" and nanny-nagging the legitimate conservatives in some futile effort to restore the personal and political misery of the Flynns, Lindberghs and McCormicks of yesteryear as "conservatism" or "paleoconservatism" or whatever. They will not concede their distance from social acceptability as the cause of their failure to secure coveted jobs and credentialling from the Reagan administration. Reagan often said of his more embarassing supporters: "Just because they support me, does not mean that I support them." Our local institute of paleo-Serbophiles (an interesting and picturesque little culture to be preserved, as though even interventionists, much less paleo-isolationists, should care a feather or a fig about such an insignificant little satrapy) devotes itself increasingly to love for our French enemies, the Dixie Tricks, all things anti-Jewish, and above-all the mantra of the year: (delivered in grave tones): "Once a nation embarks upon the path to empire, it will surely seal its ultimate destruction." This theory works for leftists like Paul Kennedy, Yale historian and otherwise an academic shill for Planned Barrenhood (quelle surprise!), and for "paleowhatevers" like the institute. While conceding that Rome embarked upon the path to empire more than 700 years BC by appropriating forcefully those Sabine women to bear Roman children, and that the Roman Empire "fell" a mere 1100 or 1200 years later, I am having a problem with tying the alleged cause to the alleged effect. Sounds more like entropy to me.
PJB: was certainly no "paleo-isolationist" under his political patron Richard Nixon. PJB arose NOT in the conservative movement but in the employ of Nixon, who was NOT, shall we say, a movement kind of guy: yours or mine. PJB was no "paleo-isolationist" under Reagan either. Neither Pat Buchanan nor any other conservative in Reagan's administration uttered a paleopeep in protest of doubling the Navy to 600 ships, bringing the battlewagons out of mothballs and very expensively refitting them as strategic weapons, advocating the Strategic Defense Initiative, raising military pay and recruitment, deploying Pershing missiles in Europe despite the squealing of the Euro-surrender monkeys, delivering a strategic airstrike against Qaddafi and his family in retaliation for Lockerbie which seems to have worked a permanent improvement in Qaddafi's manners, the walk in the woods at Reyjavik, the Evil Empire speech and myriad other efforts.
The allegation of empire as a goal of American foreign and military policy is ludicrous on its face. If we are going to fight terrorism in the region, we need a base. Iraq's desert is that base since it allows us to pressure the Saudis, the Iranians, the Syrians and others in the region. We cannot very well practice pure gunboat diplomacy in the desert. Sand clogs the screws. It is always useful to have infantry and armor and artillery components. Turkey might have made this unnecessary but Turkey did not. This is no more imperialism than Alfred Thayer Mahan's policy of acquiring Pearl Harbor, Subic Bay and other naval bases.
I know you do not agree with the above. I am sorry that you don't. You are one of the very few people who has ever changed my mind about any issue as an adult. That does not mean that you should attempt to climb Everest shoeless in a teeshirt and Bermudas without ropes, pitons, hammers or a radio.
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