Political comment on an editorial I read today by Tom Teepen
Bush security strategy redefines nation
Mr. Teepen makes it sound like U.S. efforts to defend itself are a bad thing. Whose side is he on? Is he one bit concerned about the possibility of American lives being lost?
Mr. Teepen casts doubt on the Bush policy statement "the threat of retaliation is far less likely to work with against leaders of rogues states," asking "Is that really so?". Has he considered how nuclear warfare would look different today than in, say, 1984? The era of Mutually Assured Destruction is over. The U.S. has no nuclear peers, except maybe China, thanks to our most recent former President.
Mr. Teepen claims "It is not obvious why even the vilest tyranny, such as Saddam's, would commit regime suicide just to get a nasty lick in." Maybe Saddam wouldn't have to. Consider this scenario: Saddam gives his weapons to a terrorist organization and gives them resources to set them up in some remote area, or even to move them around, say by sea. Someone gets nuked or bio-attacked, maybe Israel, maybe us, but when we want to retaliate, every anti-war protestor would say "we don't know who did it, we can't kill innocent people", and this time they'd be right. How could we morally retaliate when the next WMD hits us from an unknown aggressor? Now we might say, "It was Saddam's fault!" but there would be just enough doubt, just like the doubt after 9-11. Last year we asked "Was Saddam really involved in killing 3000 Americans?" Will some future date see us asking "Was Saddam involved in killing 10 million of us yesterday? Or was someone else responsible?" How would we retaliate? Indeed, if nuclear or bio-weapons fall into the hands of terrorists, how will retaliation serve to prevent people who are willing to die while killing us?
My position: Why does the anti-war left talk about this issue as if Americans were unworthy of defending?Why should we pay any attention to the anti-war left when it talks this way? It seems to me that it would be a lot wiser to get it over with now while the stakes are lower. The sooner we get this over with, the better. Why wait for Americans to be killed? If we know that Saddam is supporting terrorists, we should be able to connect the dots and know that his weapons will be aimed at us. And we certainly know he sympathizes with terrorists - his providing financial aid to terrorist bombers' survivors tells us that.