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If you're going to strike back against an act of aggression,
It wasn't an "act of aggression'. It was an Act of War against the United States of America, in which a small group of state-sponsored soldiers tried to plunge the USA into chaos by removing our President (Jet into White House), our military leadership (jet into Pentagon), and the largest and most important symbol of our economy (manhatten). It was equivalent to a small nuclear strike.
I think it's important not to minimize or use incorrect terminology. An Act of War is a serious thing...it voids all treaties and laws. It empowers the POTUS to do anything -- up to and including -- destroying entire nations.
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it makes more sense to direct your response towards the people who have actually attacked you. Rather than just picking a country at random in the general geographical region from which your attackers originate.
I don't agree. It makes perfect sense in that case. The terrorist group, as you know well, was spread out from several different nations. It had support mainly from SA, Iran, some Iraq, and Afganistan. That's why it was so dangerous. Go back and re-read my original post. I adressed this. From a standpoint of global politics, you cannot allow nations to use terror groups to make war and then claim they weren't involved. It made every sense to pick one of those involved nations and attack them, to demonstrate to the rest of the nations the price they would pay for such attacks in the future. It's like cancer. You can't let it spread.
The President of the United States is the current de-facto military ruler of the human race. That's reality, as much as we choose to hide from it. He is responsible for ensuring world peace. If ruthless action is required, he has to make that decision.
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In any case, Bush already had acted: he invaded Afghanistan immediately after 9/11. This was the direct military response to the attack on the U.S.
That's the big question isn't it? I'm sure this was debated by the Bush security team endlessly. No doubt Bush himself made the final decision -- "attacking Afganistan is insufficient response to be sufficient demonstration to these terror-sponsoring nations of the price of their actions." They needed a bigger demonstration. Iraq suited that need quite well. Since Iraq had already proven itself a bad actor with it's attack on Kuwait, and had already committed an act of war against the USA by attempting to assassinate Bush Sr, they were a lovely and appropriate target. Bush was rather lucky, actually, that they were such a convenient target...attacking anybody else would have been much harder.
The fact that the UN and European nations were not supporting Bush made it an even better demonstration of pure unfettered power. He made it abundantly clear that, if pushed, the United States was perfectly willing and able to ignore the world and wipe out any enemy.
Bush is from Texas. You don't start fights with Texans.
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However, if Bush was actually serious about tackling terrorism, he should have addressed some of its root causes. At the very least, this would have included putting some serious pressure on Saudi Arabia and other gulf states to stop fomenting extremism all over the world.
He did do all those things as well. But that wasn't sufficient response to satisfy the US public and history books. Attacks on US sovereign soil MUST be paid back 10X. That's how the US fights wars. That's why we bombed Japan into the stone age, and dropped nukes for good measure.
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And if he was truly concerned about the wellbeing of his people, he wouldn't have wasted trillions of dollars of tax payer money on a war that was only likely to amplify the terrorist threat.
You claim it amplified the terrorist threat, but we all know that's speculation. You have no idea, nor do I. Most american citizens think, despite the high cost, that the extremes of the Bush/Cheney team were necessary surgery to stop the cancer from spreading further.
And, it worked. There have been no major terrorist attacks on the US since then. All attacks have been in Europe...perhaps because Europeans don't have the stomach to fight back. Who knows.