As do I :k::k:
I agree with all the broad points you describe. We do need to demonstrate our power in an effective way. We cannot let people think that America in the present day is simply coasting on past grandeur. Muslim govts, all govts need to be alerted to the fact that these terrorists who are active now are not here to stay, that they are not more powerful than any legitimate government, etc. But I think that couching our approach in only the broadest terms has allowed people everywhere to miss the delicate but important points of which that broad ideal is composed. In short, our approach renders itself less effective in meeting the goal.
I was in favor of the Iraq war on the merits of the geopolitical benefits, wasn’t too afraid of the negatives.. until it seemed that the negatives would be given such a good shot at survival over the benefits. You might remember my arguing in frustration over the Israeli-Palestinian problem once upon a time here. Then I argued that it was self-defeating to demand or even imagine reaching the final goal without first proceeding through a series of delicate steps. Things must be taken one at a time, each event handled in isolation without the baggage of bias or naivete. I think that has been our problem in handling the War on Terror. We need to send the message to the Arab regimes that terrorists can be confronted. I don’t think Iraq enunciated that well enough. In Iraq there are so many divergent issues that the message, whatever it may be at any given time, is corrupted with background noise. I do wonder though if it would have been possible to enunciate the points needed in a meaningful way with Saddam still there to denounce them. On this I think Saddam could have been a useful tool in demonstrating our case. Once successfully demonstrated I doubt the envrionment would have fostered Saddam much longer.
I still have trouble trying to put all this to words.. Really, I think that targeting absolutes such as Elimination of the terrorist threat, Democracy, etc forces us to glide over the components which are necessary for those goals to be realized. At the least it allows us to do so–there are too many distractions. The bigger the project the more focus it demands. When that project is merely tangential to the goal it allows those distractions to absorb us. We need more talk of the steps and not the goal–the goal is included in the steps but the steps are not always included in the goal.
We’ve been dreaming of cooking the rabbit before we’ve even caught it.