wvucrazed Wrote: So what if they weren't an imminent threat
That pretty much sums up the attitude of the Bush/Cheney administration and their neo-con allies. Who cares? We are American, and we can damn well do whatever we please. We have noone to answer to, screw the rest of the world. We can go it alone.
That's the supreme arrogance and imperialism that will ultimately be our downfall. Think we have a terror problem now? How many new ones have we created.
We cannot continue this policy of "pre-emption" - we simply cannot decide we don't like the potential of what might happen in a country, so we march in and take it over and install a government more to our liking. We certainly didn't do that during the cold war - if that was what we should be doing, why didn't we march into the USSR when we discovered they were developing nukes?
Thanks for distorting my post. Standing alone, the statment "So what if they weren't an imminent threat" may sound arrogant, but not when paired with the fact that we no longer can wait for something to become imminent. N. Korea is imminent, but can we act now without some dramatically devastating consequences? The answer is no. You have to stop the problem before it becomes to large to handle. Example Iraq. We knew what Saddam had done in the past. We knew he was trying to develop his weapons program despite being watched. Waiting to act is too dangerous for America and her citizens.
This hardly a, as you say, "screw the rest of the world- We can go it alone " policy. The policy is that we will defend our freedoms, our rights, and our way of life, and if you don't want to help us, then don't get in our way. Like Bush said, we will not seek a permission slip to defend our way of life and security.
Responding to your questioning about why we didn't invade the Soviet Union, then answer is quite simple. I don't know. I wasn't president then and neither was Bush. We had a policy of containment with communism, why didn't we also do that with Hitler is WWII? Different times, different circumstances, different problem. The way I see it, we treated the Soviet Union the same way we are dealing with N. Korea. We didn't act when we had the advantage (atomic monopoly), and now are forced to the negotiation table. Of course there are differences.
Quote:Hitler was in imminent threat - he was marching through Europe. Was Saddam about to take on the rest of the middle east, or Europe perhaps? Um, no. Saddam couldn't have captured an empty slab of Saudi desert in the condition his military was in, with the US and UK watching his every move.
How about I back up to 1932. Was Hitler a threat then? Should we have taken him out of power then or waited for WWII? And even when he was attacking Europe, there's no way in hell he could attack the US. Apparently that's the liberal definition of "imminent". If they can't attack us, then they're not a threat. Same idea they applied to Iraq. Hitler was not an imminent threat to the
US at any time during the war. But the fact remains that we had a duty to intervene both in Europe and Iraq. And once again there are many differences.
