Donald Sensing tries to understand Kerry’s doctrine of pre-emption, and the Belmont Club has more thoughts on the issue, with this good concluding paragraph:
"Voters need more than an index of a Kerry administration retaliatory threshold to judge him as a potential Commander in Chief. Kerry should clarify how he plans to win, if not the present war, then at least a future one, if it comes according to his standard. The cast of characters, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are unlikely to change. The electorate should be granted a glimpse into his roadmap to victory and whether he believes in the concept itself as distinct from mere retaliation. Any brawler with fists can retaliate but it requires a Commanders in Chief with a strategy to lead nations to victory. Even Bill Clinton was prepared to retaliate against Osama Bin Laden for the USS Cole attack by firing hundreds of cruise missiles at his training camps. But George Bush tried to defeat him and for this stood condemned. It is this precise striving for victory, not any single act of retaliation that has made George Bush so illegitimate in the liberal mind. For liberals retaliation is soley used to ’send a message’; it always an invitation to negotiation, like the ones Johnson sent Ho Chi Minh without reply; it is never part of the solution itself. In this curious mental universe, force is immoral unless it is also pointless. John Kerry’s self-chosen identification with the Vietnam War is a strangely ambiguous image, which escapes being tragic only for so long as you allow only questions for which there can be no answers."
The best invitation for negotiation is of the type Richard Nixon sent the North Vietnamese in December 1972. Sure, they fought back and shot down 16 of those B-52’s. After that, they were spent, had no defense, and agreed to meet in Paris. What good would a hundred cruise missles have done against Bin Laden?
The bottom line. The only kinds of invitations that matter are ones your opponent cannot ignore.
No matter who wins, Iraq will be a hell hole for at least a couple of years, the question we have to ask is do we want to stay the corse or change how we deal with other countrys. George Bush is an ineffective leader, he’s scorned around the world, leaders from other countrys will not deal honestly with him because lets face it, they hate him.
George Bush’s cowboy act, going it alone, tuff luck if you dont agree wins him no points on the world stage.
Do you really want to live in a state of fear and anger for the next 4 years.
And for those of you who think "who cares what the rest of the world thinks"
I care!
an American