re: #488 Cato the Elder

I don’t know who you conceive to be my “brethren”, but I assure you my thoughts on this and every other matter are the result of my own poor brain working on the evidence and not the talking-points of some party line or other. As for my being a leftist, you’ll be happy to know that all the leftists in my circle of friends would vehemently disavow me as such. I’ll leave it to you to classify me as you see fit.

No, I do not want to fight the war with semantics, but rather with intelligence (in the two most obvious senses of the word). I’m perfectly fine with drones and bombardments and ground engagements and secret raids. Because, you see, the foe is shadowy. Not unbeatable, nor of mythical strength. But al Qaeda has long since gone virtual, and their bases are all belong to them. Wherever they are. If we haven’t been able to eradicate them from their hidey-holes in Afghanistan (and now Pakistan) in eight years of war, do you really see conventional warfare accomplishing that tomorrow? We could carpet-bomb the Northwest Provinces of Pakistan and still not get ‘em.

By “police action” I don’t mean any silly notion of sending in Fearless Fosdick and Dudley Dooright. I mean targeted military action based on intelligence, which we have woefully neglected while tossing trillions out the window for Iraq. We still don’t have enough trained linguists to deal with the intercepts picked up moment-by-moment at NSA. Heck, we can’t even be moved to nip a psycho army doctor terrorist in the bud, not when he was right under our noses.

I agree that the best way to fight terrorists (not the concept of “terror”, but the perpetrators of it) is to kill them. To do that you have to find them. Wandering around the Afghan countryside hoping to stumble on one is not the way.

As to Iraq, I’m glad we went in for one reason and one reason only: realpolitik. It gives us a nifty forward base for any future operations in the region. Whatever the timetable for the “drawdown”, our bases will be there forever, just like in Germany and Japan. Any notion that we did it to bring democracy to the suffering people of that nation is mere eyewash; we gave not a green fig for their suffering while we were happily in bed with Saddam for all those years before he went rogue in Kuwait, and we only pretended to care between the end of Desert Storm and the shock-and-awe of 2003. We’re there for good reason, and we’ll stay forever, but let’s not pretend it was out of the goodness of our hearts.

It might benefit the discussion if you would actually answer one or two of my points, rather than repeating empty slogans. Your call.

I thought I had covered your liberal talking points quite well…

Iraq war bad…check

Criminalize terror good…check

Terrorist bad scary…check

Talk good, action bad…check

What leftwing natterings did I not touch on? :)