--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Just because you say he would have talked does not > mean that this is true. Some people don't because > they are fearless and committed. Do not mistake > courage for morality. He is convinced he is morally > correct and this could have given him courage. As > for caring about what the rest of the world thinks - > well this sounds like classic Bush to me. For my > part I think we should care about the rest of the > world for completely selfish reasons. We need the > rest of the world to buy our stuff. Although we are > the most powerful nation in the world we can be > brought down by own hubris. We would not be the > first superpower to perish in this way and in fact > all past superpowers have diminished in this way. I > much prefer an approach that attempts to get a > consensus or at least an agreement to allow us to do > what we need to do. Bush 1 certaintly did with the > gulf war. Baker went all over the world building a > consensus. Bush 2 says we don'dt need one. I prefer > George 1 and Bill C's approach.
Everybody talks eventually. Even if he hadn't, though, he _would have been dead_. This would have been a net positive, in my opinion. And, I think, in most other peoples. You are defending the indefensible, Bob. I am in favor of caring about what the rest of the world thinks, in general. If the rest of the world disapproves of us doing what every other country would do in that situation - killing him out of hand - then screw 'em. It's not worth 3000 lives, and it's sure as hell not worth a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan. We're just lucky that isn't what happened. In actual fact, though, if Sudan had handed him over secretly - which he would have done - the world would not have cared. The only government in the world that actually supported him was Afghanistan, and maybe Iraq, and neither was willing to admit it. Everyone in the world agreed that he was a terrorist. No one doubted it. And you think there would have been some sort of mass outrage if we had shot him? Be serious, for goodness sake. The only governments who would have cared would be those people who applauded it. The people who might get upset - the average Arab, as it were - they're not our friends. They wouldn't like us if we shot him. They wouldn't like us if we didn't. But if we had killed him, they probably would _respect_ us, something that they don't really do right now. And sure as hell 9/11 wouldn't have happened. This was the single biggest foreign policy mistake in American history. It was simply inexcusable, and it is entirely indefensible. Gautam __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more http://taxes.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
