Gedunker said:
El Feo I do not believe the whole china shop needs wrecking.
Your comment brings to mind the quotation by a US Serviceman in Vietnam, questioned as to why a village was burned to the ground. He replied 'In order to save the village it became necessary to destroy it.'
Depends on what china shop we're talking about G, and I'm sorry if I didn't make it clear which one I was talking about - let me do so.
But first, I'll have to disagree with you about folks thinking the US was weak. OBL, Saddam Hussein, Kim Il-Jong, Khameini, and plenty of others
did think the US was weak, or at least weak-willed, which is worse, and we'd given them plenty of reason to think so, from our withdrawal from Beirut in the 80s right through Mogadishu in the 90s. Why did Saddam Hussein invade Kuwait in 1990? GHWB's very own "subtle diplomacy." And September 11th wasn't
just a result of our laziness and sloppiness - it was just as much or more a result of our reticence to respond to earlier provocation.
Now to my china shop. The one I'm talking about is the whole kabuki of international "relations" jaw-jawing EU and UN-style. It was/is sick, soulless, meaningless, provides cover for dictators, puffs up waning powers with delusions of importance, covers up real suffering, keeps people in chains, accomplishes nothing except providing feel-good opportunities for coddled kambayah-ers, lavish lifestyles for do-nothing diplomats, and generally f---s the world up. The system of symbolic conference leading to nothing needed to be trashed, needs to be trashed some more, and I don't feel a bit bad about having the US being the one to trash it.
Sorry, but I strongly believe good ol' Clausewitzian "kinetic diplomacy" is necessary every once in awhile to remind foreign relations rationalist clowns that it takes more than simple talk to take out nuts with nukes (or nuke ambitions), free oppressed peoples, and prevent more mass graves. And I think the contracting decision drives the point home.