doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Are these liberals you guys talking about?

Jake, I don't know about Pete, but I try to be pickier in my selection of friends than to choose those who would be so ignorant of history that they believe the UN is worth much when it comes to military action.

One of the things I've noticed is how quickly things change, not that I have any expectations of the West pulling its act together for UN interventions overnight. Who could have forecast, for instance, how quickly the US, with professed military power to fight major wars on two continents simultaenously, bogged down politically, militarily, economically, or how other countries are rising in influence.

The US has declared itself in the intervention business, to invade premptly and change the social, military and economic structures of any country it considers inimical to ITS national interests. The UN has been very selective and timid in exercising military interventions to the disgust of most of the civilized world. The US has discovered the limits of technology and going it alone.

I believe in intervention. Just as societies over time intervened into what happens behind factory and mine gates, and what happens in homes behind closed doors, the West has evolved to interventions across national borders, very selectively and often with tenuous results. Currently, the US can't go it alone---nor should it---as threats arise to mutual interests all over the world.

So what to do? I offered my "notion" because I think the West has reached a juncture where something has to change. Anyone not thinking that way is not thinking at all. The virtual standoff in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hamas and Hezbollah, Katrina as a terrorist propaganda gift of the US as a paper tiger, Bush and Blair repudiated, nuclear proliferation, NATO split, requires strong collective action.

So, no, I didn't offer it as a joke. The US can't be nor wants to be the world's policeman. Bush entered office promising to disentangle his country from overseas commitments. Canada and the US can't hide behind a Fortress North America. People generally try to manage their affairs better when they're bereft, where the West is now.

Terrorists and tinpots are jerking us around. What history do we draw on, Larry? Not the current UN's but those grand coalitions, those courageous meetings of great minds, where people joined together to get big jobs done. The UN has a framework. It lacks only a passion and a plan.

I believe we are becoming "slaves of freedom". By that, I mean that the many of the rights and freedoms that are being taken away from us on a daily basis are being taken away for our "safety", so we can remain a free country. Well, do you know anyone safer than a prisoner confined to solitary? Not too free though. See where we're going?

King, I try to be a student of history. And in one fashion or another, I was a "cold warrior" for about 30 years, and a post-cold warrior for a few after that. The UN, as far as I can recall--maybe you can correct me--hasn't engaged in a single significant military action since Korea. That's better than half a century, King. And the only reason they engaged there was because the Soviet Union walked out of the Security Council and was thus unable to exercise its veto. Too many competing interests in the UN for it ever to be effective in intervention.

NATO, on the other hand, can be and has been--although it continues to rely far too much on US leadership. (See my earlier Balkans example. Why did the Europeans have to wait for us to go to work solving a problem in their own backyard?)

As for preemptive war, the only one I'm aware of we've engaged in recently is Iraq. Afghanistan was obviously reactive, and I certainly hope you're not arguing the Americans--and the Canadians--should not be there. NATO is well represented, although there are plenty of members that could certainly do more--and should. Afghanistan, if one knows anything of its history, presents some particular difficulties. But as long as we don't throw up our collective hands, that's not one we're going to lose. No one is being bled badly there, that's for sure. And considering what happened the last time we declared victory and left Afghanistan--when the mujaheddin defeated the Russians--the United States certainly isn't about to pull up stakes. I don't think that would happen, even should the Democrats control both the White House and Congress as a result of next year's elections.

One way or the other, NATO or something else, it's long past time to get moving on a collective effort, heart and mind. I'm no UN lover or, for that matter, blue-helmet advocate, never was. You know as a cold warrior that intervention is big-boy business with the best infantry around.

Without a stronger public will than currently shown in Canada and the US, I think we will throw up our collective hands in Afghanistan because so few NATO partners are carrying the load, and prospects of greater participation range from maybe to nil. I give it two years and Canada is out.

Canada's famed Van Doos, Royal 22nd Regiment, go to Afghanistan in August. Quebec, a political powerhouse courted mightily by the new minority Conservative government, wants no part of Afghanistan. The Conservatives are gung-ho but if Van Doos casualties are as the RCRs we'll be out before that.

Ottawa's lies and obfuscation about conduct of the war does nothing to strengthen public support.

King, since you're in that foreign land to our North, you may not be listening to the politicians from your neighbor to the South. (And can't say as I blame you, given how many there are in the presidential sweepstakes at present.) However, the Dems--who are big on pulling out of Iraq--seem to be (pretty unanimously) equally big on prosecuting what they define as the REAL war on terror, and shifting some of those withdrawn troops from Iraq to Afghanistan.

Too bad they managed to kill Ahmed Shah Mahsood right before 9/11. We could've simply turned Afghanistan over to him, with a few CIA/specops teams and air support on call.

And from Afghanistan to Kuwait, and from Kuwait to Germany, and from Germany to anywhere they can get a headline without paying a price.

Note Hillary's shift from "no deadline for an Iraq pullout" a few months ago, to supporting Russ Feingold's Iraq deadline proposal today, because "circumstances have changed." I wouldn't rely on our current pols (in either party) for courage or consistency under pressure.

Larry and Jack, it's the peculiar Dem manoeuvering and US political change that put the UN notion in my head. It's not possible for the US to pull out regardless of what the Dems say; they may "redeploy" to Iraq's open spaces or Afghanistan but those troops are not coming home. It's too hot.

I don't buy Colin Powell's early warning "You break it. you fix it."

If US occupation is exacerbating the violence, as claimed, surely there's NATO and UN backchanelling to find a way to replace US troops and find some sort of governance to stop the killing until the Great Powers carve up the region into autonomous units more representaive than before.

King, given the rate at which US troops are coming home in body bags, who's going to raise their hand to replace them? Any ideas?

It was King's Brits who carved out Iraq in the first place.