Greetings Mr. Thornton,

First of all, you write interesting posts. And lots of them. Just how many words a minute can you type, anyway?

So are saying just take a step back, figure out who the winner is going to be and when the dust settles deal with them. I'm not trying to be flippant about your response, only that I'm not sure where you are going with it.


Other choices offered being overthrowing foreign governments, assassination of heads of state, and invasion by American armed forces to facilitate "regime change", if they haven't committed an act of war against us, then yes. I suggest making the best of a less than ideal situation and trying to wait them out.

If they are willingly hosting Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda gang, like The Taleban, then they (like Carthage) must be destroyed.

When you say setting the best example we can as a nation - what do you mean? How far do you go though? If Hugo Chavez...


I've sensed a return by some of the nations of South and Latin America to left-wing policies, Hugo Chavez being merely the most publicized. Now I am not the most informed man on this forum about that part of the world, I'll concede right off the bat. Although today's headlines wouldn't indicate it, there was a time when we had pretty good relations with South America and Latin America. What do our allies down there, such as they are, think about it? Do they consider Hugo just a publicity hound, full of sound and fury signifying nothing beyond his borders, or not? I don't get the impression that they see him yet as a threat to the region. Correct me if I'm wrong.

By setting an example, I guess I just mean updating what was once called "The Good Neighbor Policy" by FDR. At the Conference for the Maintenance of Peace in Buenos Aires in 1936, the American nations agreed to mutual consultation if there was a security threat to any of the nations within the hemisphere. At the Eighth Pan-American Conference, held in Lima, Peru, Cordell Hull managed to obtain a resolution reasserting a united front against possible Axis aggression against American nations during the war, even though most Latin American countries at the time were ruled by generals who admired European facism. Pretty good job there by Hull. So it is possible to have good relations with these countries.

If Hugo Chavez is dangerous enough that his neighbors in the region want to voluntarily work with us to build a regional coalition to deter him, then they eventually will out of self-preservation, won't they?

The absence of an Iraqi George Washington (heck, I'm not greedy, we'd be thrilled to get a John Adams or a James Madison) merely points to the unique nature of the founding of our own country. You might even date the beginning of our march to democracy to the Magna Carta in 1215. I have no idea how to transplant this system of government to Iraq. Actually, I don't even think it is possible given the kind of current divisions in the society in that land. Perhaps they could benefit from some kind of South African styled Truth and Reconciliation Commission to get going on the road? But given the religious nature of this Sunni vs. Shi'ite conflict, I wouldn't count on it.

Firestaller: Thanks for retrieving that Ho Chi Minh speech. I'd forgotten about it. I hadn't read that in 20 years, and certainly didn't know where to find it. Yeah, that's exactly what I could see being thrown back at us eventually--our founding father's own stirring rhetoric!