Re: shuttle disaster
On Sat, Feb 08, 2003 at 12:37:48AM -0800, Paul Johnson wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 08, 2003 at 01:40:27AM -0600, Nathan E Norman wrote:
> > I love the liberals who have no qualms about sending the military to
> > important, strategic places like Somalia and Bosnia, cut the funding
> > for the military at the same time, and then raise holy hell when
> > something goes wrong. Why, it almost seems hypocritical.
>
> I'm more for the pre-World-War-II stance of "you leave us alone, we
> leave you alone; you attack us, we blast your ass back to the stone
> age and go home." Waiting until attacked first means we don't have to
> do any of that nation building bullshit afterwards. It's also cheaper
> and puts fewer people, soldiers or otherwise, on both sides in harms
> way.
After World War 1, there was very little nation-building bullshit, but
plenty of kicking them when they're down by insisting that their
shattered economy should pay the war costs of the victors. We all know
what the result was... World War 2. The post-war situation was pretty
much the opposite - very little kicking-when-down and lots of
nation-building bullshit. Result - we're all friends now.
No, I don't like the idea of one nation remaking another in its own
image by military force. That doesn't seem to work. But having
defeated them in a war that they started, to offer them assistance in
rebuilding their nation largely to their pattern rather than the
victors' pattern seems to work rather well.
Pigeon
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