Tuesday, March 30, 2004

There appears to be two ideas on how to deal with the aftermath of 911. One that it is a law enforcement issue dealing with a band of criminals. The other that it is a war against a virtual state headed by OBL.

Law enforcement deals with piecing together the evidence and bringing the criminals to justice. Warfare deals with eliminating the immediate threat and deterring future threats. The main problem with the law enforcement idea is that Western justice has very little deterrence value and notions of justice prevent you from attacking targets that are not directly related to the crime.

The advantage of the warfare model is that action can be taken that is possibly illegal yet has great strategic worth. Thus an unrelated country could be invaded if it had strategic value in the war. War has little to do with law but should have everything to do with an effective strategy.

Bush no doubt had a strategy planned long before 911 as 911 was simply the largest attack in a long string of attacks. There is no reason to believe that the attacks will abate therefore war is inevitable. Saddam can consider himself to be collateral damage in the GWOT. Could not have happened to a nicer bloke.

Saturday, March 27, 2004

Saddam wasn't a threat? But he was certainly a nuisance there is no denying it. He did invade Kuwait remember? He didn't keep the promises he made after Gulf War 1 and he repeatedly massed his army on the border forcing the US into costly troop moving exercises. And the no-fly-zone thing was becoming tiresome.

Also Saudi Arabia was becoming a liability. It is after all the location of Islam’s holiest places and, hey, we respect that now. So a move into Iraq, setting up fortresses there was a good idea. Many birds were killed with this one stone. I counted at least twenty good reasons to invade Iraq. One of them was that you cannot insult the US and expect to live in peace - we have a reputation to keep.

All you mocking, lefty leaning, bleaters have got to get in your thick skulls the fact that there exists an Anglo-American Empire. It doesn't care a wit for your hand wringing protest marches and numbskull loony ideas of moral equivalence. It cares about wealth and security. It doesn't work at the intellectual level of a Marxist college professor but is altogether more primal.

Most of these "protestors" just do it because they like playing the part of protestor. Deep down they don’t care about third world poverty or justice. They don’t donate significant money to charitable causes or do anything practical. They depart the protest marches in their gas guzzling CSV's. They hate America because they have weird notions about all the ills of the third world and Latin America being caused by the Yankees. There are some genuine types who believe all war is bad and cruel and ugly and they are probably right in theory yet utterly impractical. The reality is that the West controls vast amounts of wealth and territory and this needs to be actively protected.


Non-democratic regimes are illegitimate if they exit for too long. There should be some international law that states that there must be elections after the rulers are in power for a certain period of time. Sometimes martial law is necessary for a time but all governments should work toward fair elections.

A thug like Saddam taking control by force and ruling for decades is not legitimate. It makes me laugh when they talk of Iraq as being a sovereign state as if Saddam was installed by a Deity.