Brightness,
You've been an active guy today and yesterday! I don't have time to go through all your posts to pick apart each and every point that I disagree with (and I don't necessarily disagree with everything you've written either), and don't even recall all of them, but here are a few observations:
1. You said that the Israelis acted preemptively--that is, without immediate provocation--in every war except the 1973 war. Well actually 1967 war is another exception, with Nassar and Assad clearly saber-rattling with armed armies at their border. 1956 is more complicated than that as well. 1982 could be construed as preemptive in some ways, but Hezballah was hurling rockets at the Israelis, even if they didn't have armed forces at the border. And the 1982 war or incursion or whatever you want to call it would have been or might have been a success if Israel hadn't overestimated the power of force, and just left soon after clearing the area. As it was, it was a long term disaster.
2. You said that the difference between assassinating Saddam and assassinating Bush is that the former is a mafia chief while the latter was an elected leader. Well, there are lots of mafia chiefs in the world. We have helped many of them in the past with weapons, training and political support. There are many who are still in command who we aren't going to remove by force. But that isn't really the point--the point is that people use the fact that Saddam wished to kill Bush as one piece of evidence that he is evil. We are guilty of the same wish and the same actions. Hell, we've even killed rulers that we helped set up just a few years earlier (e.g., a couple of times in Vietnam) when they weren't doing as well as we wanted and wouldn't go on their own.
3. The body bags may not come immediately. People may be cowed, and will pay obeisance to the US as they did to Saddam. But--you cite Machiavelli. Actually, Machiavelli said that it is easier to defeat a republic but harder to rule it thereafter, while it is harder to defeat a dictatorship but easier to rule it thereafter--as long as you too are a dictator, since that is what they are used to. It is very difficult to change a nation used to servitude to one that values freedom and is capable of self-government.
4. You said that you deliberately stated that the cause of the 1991 war was to prevent Sadddam from getting nuclear weapons, not the invasion of Kuwait. No one has ever, to my knowledge, maintained that, either then or now. If that was the indeed the goal and the cause, then we certainly should have kept marching on to Bagdhad.
5. You said that the US was never as draconian as the Caliphs of the Ottoman Empire. I don't know much about how draconian the Ottoman Empire was, though I have no doubts that they were capable of great violence when provoked. But certainly the treatment of native Americans and of blacks in this country was draconian. There are far too many incidents, lies, slaughters, violations and thefts to bother to recite them. (Of course, what were supposed to do, "they" were occupying "our" country, should we have just let them impede our greatness, continuing with their heathen nomadic life of hunting and gathering on this vast bountiful land?)
6. You seem to believe in "great nations," in the "power of responsibility" and the "responsibility of power" that Max Weber used to justify WWI for the Germans initiating that war. My opinion is that, however impressive a scholar Weber was, this is nonsense. At least it is nonsense in certain senses. But I'm afraid I don't have the time to argue the point right now, however important a point it is to argue, and however important it is to get the sense in which it is true right. Maybe some other time. But suffice it to say here that the most important responsibility of the mighty is to know the limits of power, to understand how easily that power corrupts, and to use that power only with great restraint. It is much more effective in the long run to build consensus without force, and to establish means of resolving conflict institutionally than it is to do it with guns.
AI
Market Data 
Markets 
