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Thread 4019

Thread ID: 4019 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2002-12-15

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il ragno [OP]

2002-12-15 04:25 | User Profile

America the Hated

December 12, 2002 The Bush administration’s threat to use nuclear weapons against Iraq, though thinly veiled in circumlocutions, should tell us all we need to know about the American image in the world today. The United States, once so admired over most of the earth, is now seen as a nuclear bully. No wonder it’s called “the great Satan” by Muslims and “arrogant” even by its European friends. And President Bush thinks they hate us for “our freedom, our democracy”?

The warning is supposed to deter Iraq from using weapons of mass destruction against American forces and allies, even though (1) we don’t know that Iraq has such weapons, and (2) the administration has told us repeatedly that deterrence doesn’t work against Iraq.

Iraq hasn’t threatened the United States, in spite of Bush’s raving on the subject. The United States definitely threatens Iraq. And it has forfeited the right to describe Iraq’s or any other regime as “evil.”

Even possessing these terrible weapons amounts to a threat to use them. But until now, most nuclear-armed states have at least been discreet about brandishing them. Bush has crossed a fateful line. He claims the right to use nukes, as well as conventional warfare, preemptively.

For decades Americans have worried about nukes falling into “the wrong hands,” as if there were “right hands” for weapons of mass murder. Well, those weapons are in the wrong hands now: Bush’s hands.

Washington is in an uproar about Trent Lott’s offhand compliment at Strom Thurmond’s birthday party, but it has taken Bush’s mad-dog threat in stride. What sort of “war on terrorism” is this, which terrorizes the whole world?

Maybe we should distinguish microterrorism, the terrorism of scattered groups of stateless, relatively helpless people with few other options, from the macroterrorism used by powerful states to back up their huge conventional military forces. When there were two superpowers, each had the plausible excuse of deterrence for amassing nuclear arsenals. Now that excuse is gone: the United States is the only superpower left. And it’s still using its nukes.

Maybe it will be said that Bush doesn’t really intend to use them. But he is already using them. When a bank robber points a pistol at the teller, he’s using it, even if he doesn’t fire it. He’s also terrifying the bystanders, as Bush is doing.

In fact, I suspect that Bush is bluffing. His tough talk may be a prelude to backing off from war, as opposition to war mounts and the possible costs of war sink in.

Still, how did it come to this? Immediately after 9/11, everyone realized that a “war on terrorism” would be “a new kind of war.” Nuclear weapons and conventional forces alike would be useless against small, elusive cells of terrorists hitting “soft” targets.

Now, by converting the war on terrorism into war on a sovereign state, Bush is able to bring nukes and conventional forces back into play. An unwinnable new kind of war becomes an old-fashioned winnable one.

But by threatening to go nuclear — and preemptively at that — against a weak opponent, Bush has set a perilous precedent. Why shouldn’t China, seeing the U.S. as a growing global threat, launch a preemptive nuclear strike against this country when it has the means to do so? That’s only one of many dark possibilities Bush’s recklessness is making more probable.

Though history allegedly ended over a decade ago, we should notice that the U.S. Government is out of control, and it continues to make enemies frequently and unpredictably. Who imagined, when its army was bogged down in Vietnam, that it would go on to wage war (or “keep peace”), not long afterward, from Lebanon to Panama to Iraq to Serbia to Afghanistan and back to Iraq? Does anyone care to place a bet on where it will make future enemies?

China is as good a bet as any. Huge, prosperous, and militarily formidable — thanks in part to the assistance of our Israeli “allies” — it has rulers who, unlike our own, have an old habit of thinking ahead. While the United States, innocent of long-term strategy, wages its impulsive wars of indignation, they watch and wait, quietly gathering strength.

If the day ever comes when China decides it is finally ready to take on the most hated country on earth, it will have no trouble finding allies around the world.

Joseph Sobran

Ragnar

2002-12-15 05:33 | User Profile

Joe comes close to the real fear: Not that the US will use nukes, but that the US will use nukes and it will work. The hollowed-out, decadent and communized USA's twitchy elite will have an empire-via-nuclear-terror for a few generations or a few centuries. The MacDark Age will begin. We will never live to see the end of PC; we will have seen only the teeny-tiny beginning; the Imperium on training wheels. We will see compulsary miscegenation on a global scale and re-education camps consisting of round the clock lectures from Jesse Jackson and Norman Podhoretz and the president of the National Organization of Women.

This is the nightmare: Bushy might win.

DRSLICEIT

2002-12-15 13:12 | User Profile

B) IL RAGNO.... The problem that America faces today is that we have a foreign policy that has been hijacked by the international expansion of Zionism and Israeli interest rather then the good of America.

We now have the same insane attitude as do the murdering maniacs like Ariel Sharon and believe that Might is Right and everyone else is wrong.

Nothing will change for the better as long as we continue to elect these bought and paid for Zionist lemmings who owe their soul and our ass to the expanison of a greater Israel. All we are doing is eliminating Israels enemies so that the Jewish dreams of total control is accomplished in the Middle East.

If you think we are in danger of high price oil now, wait till the Jewish Merchants get their fat paws on that commodity and you will see who the real enemy is.