Has the United States fought in too few wars?

I don't know a good answer to the topic question, but i saw a useful encapsulation of Bush's failures of strategy and competence on some poliblog; might be an appropriate response to your friends:

"If George Bush is better at beating the terrorists, why is bin Laden on my television?"

You could argue that we should have fought WWII sooner.

Conversely, we lost in Viet-Nam and the subsequent years have proved that the dire consequences of failing to stop Communism from spreading to Viet-Nam never materialized - there was no "domino effect".

The stated reasons for going into Iraq have already been proven to be mistakes at best, but more likely outright fabrications. The stated goal - a democratic government in Iraq that will spread democracy throughout the M.E. and be a friend to Israel - is lunacy. Why would anyone believe a democratic govt in Iraq would suddenly turn it's back on Palestine and embrace Israel?

bin Laden is on TV and looking quite healthy for a man the Bush admin recently said was on dialisis or dead. Also, he's apparently in Afghanistan or Pakistan, not Iraq.

Edited by author 10-31-2004 09:00 AM
There's places all over the globe where we should be fighting for Human Rights - not necessarily with the military, but fighting economically and diplomatically. The Bush administration likes to claim to have influenced Muammar al-Qaddafi to get rid of his WMDs, why haven't they worked to free the five Bulgarian medics Libya is threatening to execute? Doesn't Bulgaria's membership in the "Coalition of the Willing" earn them at least that?

The real question, I think, could be: how effective is it to answer violent death with violent death? It's not serving Isreal all that well. We're not going to be able to find and quell everybody who hates us by killing them all. If we want the terror and violence to end, we may have to face the reality that was pointed out so clearly by Ghandi and by King that hate can never end hate, and violence can only beget more violence. In these terms, attacking Iraq on flimsy pretexts, just so we would have _somebody_ to smack around in our fury about 9/11 is clearly making the whole situation worse. If we really were as benevolent as we wish to be seen, and went around helping people rather than blowing them up, people would be unable to develop the hatred that leads them to strap on dynamite and blow us up. Instead, they would start to welcome us, and they would try to be like us, as we wish they would.