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Since several people on this board seem to think that this is both the
right time and the right place to exercise petty political oneupmanship
(and, yes, I think irrelevant comparisons to the previous administration
at times when we need to be unified, and when members of that previous
administration have been fully behind the current president, is petty,
small-minded and dangerous to the nation), I want to provide my view of
Bush and, since it is relevant to today's situation, the military.
Although I am pretty much opposed to Bush's domestic policy agenda, the
one area where I think Bush has got iot right is in the area of national
defence. He and his cabinet had been taking a maverick stance in
opposition to much of the military establishment, arguing that our
current capabilities are geared to fighting the wrong war. All we can
really do is drop big bombs on big targets. Sometimes that works, like
in Serbia and Iraq, but in both situations it was expensive and sloppy,
and in both cases we have been 'losing' the peace -- Saddam is still
there, and the Balkans are still unsettled. I see Bush's war on
terrorism as an opportunity for him to prove the correctness of his
argument, since it provides an excellent context for his administration
to begin developing the 'small' capabillity he believes we need.
The same can be said for his approach to nuclear weapons and the missile
defence shield. Simply put, Bush believes Mutual Assured Destruction, a
risky approach to national security in the best of times, is a ludicrous
approach in a world where there is no more Soviet Union rallying a
communist Eurasia. Just as we need a 'smaller' military, we need a
'smaller' missile defence. The threat is no longer thousands of missiles
bearing red stars, but an instance when a nut with enough power hits his
one and only button. Bush's missile defence shield will be both safer
for the world and cheaper to maintain than the current crop of thousands
of missiles pointed at meaningless targets.
I am glad Bush is president right now, because only because in a very
narrow sense he has the right ideas for the right time. IOW, fortune has
smiled on the USA. May we all stay united on our cause, and focused on
our enemy, which in this case is definitely NOT us...
Regards
DanG
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