Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
Ken,
Wishful thinking on your part I believe. (And hope is not a plan )

America going to war (and not just sending in a few troops a la Grenada or Panama as an exercise of testosterone release) is, IMHO, the national equivalent of a domestic "crime of passion." We knee jerk and send the troops off somewhere because we react very much as a husband would should he come home and found the missus in bed with another man--no rational thought involved, purely a visceral reaction.

The low level troop commitments have less emotional motivation, but it is still present to some degree(as the "testosterone release" phrasing in my description above indicates).

If you want strong, "take charge"national leadership, I suspect you have to accept the propensity for irrational responses to major provocations as well.
...I said this:

""The broader point, though, is that our political process and domestic politics have been the driver in our inability to do the analysis and make rational strategic decisions and I do not see that changing in the near term, desirable as it may be. In that sense, the assessments leading to this war differ little from that (or the lack of that...) of most of our previous wars -- and much as I agree with you on what should be done, I'm not particularly optimistic that it will be.""

My point in the last few posts on this thread was to (1) Agree with Steve that what he posits is what should be done. (2) Remind everyone that it has never really happened and is unlikely to. Much as we could all agree it should.

We just get to cobble stuff together and try to make it work out -- it's the American way...