I agree completely. I realize that the American people are suffering from burn-out on the war on terror. But still, we don't have the luxury of waiting a few years or decades until we are "in the mood" for confronting North Korea and Iran.
I imagine that Japan and Israel are both wondering when we will get our "confront problems before they become disasters" mentality back.
"I imagine that Japan and Israel are both wondering when we will get our "confront problems before they become disasters" mentality back."
And it seems they are drawing their own conclusions: Japan thinks (again) about arming itself with nuclear weapons or doing a pre-emptive strike and Israel is confronted with a second front (from Hizbollah) and warns that those sponsoring the perpetrators (Syria? Iran?) will face harsh consequences
Tom, I completely agree. I don't blame the President too much though. I figure living under mortal strain for six years softens you up.
--"It's time to go back to a freedom agenda."
Well, yes, this sounds great to me but in reality it means looking at Iraq and the fact that Hamas was democratically elected by the Palestinians. The real question for the neocons is what to do when we don't like the results of democracy, such as when terrorist win the elections that were supposed to bring stability to the middle east. Look at the headlines today, the escalating war with Hamas is the direct result of them gaining power through fair elections (i.e. democracy).
I have finally found a well informed discussion on Iraq, including views of an instructor at the Army War College, someone from the Hoover, Rand and a university. This includes mostly solid analysis of actual conditions and some of the clearest ideas of what to do in the future without resorting to the political bikering (blaming Bush or liberals) that seems to dominate political discourse these days.
No doubt that simply holding a vote does not necessarily lead to viable democracy. Democracy requires democrats, and without them you end up with something like Zimbabwe.
We need a more sophisticated model than simply running around setting up votes, but what exactly that would be I don't completely know. I do know that just because someone or grou is elected, like Hamas, does not mean that we need to accept the results as if we were talking about a Western nation. For example, we've seen the military overturn votes in Turkey and Algeria(1991) when an Islamist party won. No one in the West objected. Likewise, we do not need to accept Hamas' victory in that I see no problem in cutting off funds to the PA.
Thank you for the link to the article "What to Do in Iraq: A Roundtable". I saw a link to it on NRO some time ago but didn't have time to check it out. There's a lot to chew on in it. It's pretty well informed, whether you agree with the participants or not. I agree that it avoids the cliche's of both sides, the partipants want us to win, and that they want what is best for the Iraqis themselves.
Whatever we do, we can't go back to the old Scowcroft/Brzezinski model of stability uber alles, whereby our sole objective is to prop up these corrupt regimes like what you have in Saudi Arabia. Their sort of thinking is what got into this mess in the first place. By unquestioningly supporting these regimes, all we were doing was putting a lid on a pressure cooker. This attitude got us Khomeini's Iran.
Further, there is a certain group of internationalist legal types and elitist diplomats who seem to believe in dialogue and negotiatons for their own sake, whether or not any actual results are ever achieved. These people couldn't care less whether people anywhere actually end up with better governments in the end, as long as the "international community" is satisfied.
Thus we end up talking forever with Iran and North Korea, as they string us along and go merrily on their way developing nuclear weapons and the missiles with which to deliver them.
So maybe setting up a vote everywhere is not the answer, but neither is listening to the traditionalists on either side of the political spectrum.
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