A Blog For All - Comments - Keep it civil
Kobayashi Maru hypothesizes that if Carter was stronger against Iran in the late 70’s than a lot of this turmoil may have been avoided. I say, if Israel was allowed to publicly extract revenge for the Munich attack on its athletes in the early 70’s than the late 70’s hostage taking may not have occurred.
The problem is that we have poopooed terrorism for a very long time. We turned the cheek in Munich, we waffled in Iran, we ignored the 1993 WTC bombing, USS Cole, the Khobar Towers, the embassies in Africa. Notice, when we took a real stand, against Libya, you didn’t hear word one from Qudafi for years.
Unfortunately, an escalation of the war on terror is coming. Next targets are Syria and Iran. There is probably no stopping this now. Can you say the Crusades II?
Notice, when we took a real stand, against Libya, you didn’t hear word one from Qudafi for years.Actually, Khadafi was busy making plans to build a nuclear capability, and only gave it up when the US didn't just drop a few bombs on Saddam's tent, but sent in the troops to pull him out of a spider hole. In the intervening years, he plotted and schemed for acting against the US and the West.
That said, Carter's massive failures to counter the Iranians after they took the embassy in 1979 set us down this course - inaction breeded contempt. Somolia 'proved' that the US could not take casualties. Both of those propositions were overcome by Bush in dealing with Iraq, but the hints of inaction and inability to sustain a war effort with casualties is going to harm long term strategic goals.
actually, America's inability to wage war without taking casualties dates back to Vietnam. The "first televised war" brought the casualties, both the vietnamies and ours into our livingrooms nightly. No longer was the "War over there" it was now on the tv at 5:00.
Even later, in Beirut, the loss of the Marine baracks marked the effective end of the "war" (if thats the right word) effort. American's could not stand that kind of casualty loss.
Somalia was but one example. We lost our taste for conflict long before that in South America against the drug cartels.
If we are not careful, we will end up like the french.
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