Jeffrey made a
post in response to an earlier
post I made. I commented on it in his blog (see his post) and he responded. I had started to respond in his comments section again, but my response has gotten long enough that I decided to make it a post of it's own.
To begin with,
here is an article I just came across that seems relevant to this topic.
Now for my rebuttal, directed at Jeffrey, who is probably the only one reading this anyway.
1. It was a commercial, not a speech. I'm am just as sure of that as I am that it was John Kerry in the commercial. I am equally as certain that the text is what I said it was. Questioning any of this - the foundation on which I made my point - makes this whole discussion moot.
As an aside, this reminds me of a conversation I was having with a coworker once. He was making the point that the insurgency in Iraq shows that the whole endeavor was a failure. I pointed out that we had similar problems in Germany after WWII. I thought this would be an effective arguement, especially with him being a native of Poland. His response? "I don't believe you." It didn't occur to me until much later that I should have told him that I didn't believe that he didn't believe me. (Less than 1 minute of searching via Google gave me
this, BTW.)
Anyway, I do not state that rebuilding alliances is his first priority. I state that it is the first point he makes which implies that it is a high priority of Kerry's. It is certainly the point I inferred. Regardless, his
convention speech bears out what I am saying:
We need a strong military and we need to lead strong alliances. And then, with confidence and determination, we will be able to tell the terrorists: You will lose and we will win. The future doesn't belong to fear; it belongs to freedom.
2. Your assertion is that "strong alliances in all parts of the world are key to our security." Even assuming I accept the basic premise, there is still a matter of degrees. We can't be perfectly secure, so how much is enough? How many allies are enough? How strong must these alliances be? In which parts of the world do we need how many alliances of what strength?
But the answers to those questions only tell us what we want. We also need to consider what we can get. Our potential allies will have their own desires. If they are mutually exclusive to our own, we can't really be allies. If they are orthoginal, maybe we can be allies, but it will probably require some cost to us. Others will gladly pitch in because they seek the same end.
So the pertinent questions that arise from this are (in my mind): how much assistance can we get, how much will it help us achieve our goals, and how much will that assistance cost us? Answers to these questions will give us a cost to benefit ratio from which we can ask, is it worth it? Obviously, this is a value judgement.
My opinion is that the assistance we are currently getting (from the likes of our allies in the UK, Australia, Italy, Poland, Japan, and others) is sufficent for the purposes of Iraq. Futhermore, I contend that the cost of additional help from other potential allies is too high. All of this is of course said in the context of whether going into Iraq is worth it. (Which is itself in the greater context of whether or not the War on Terror is needed.) And on these points, I agree with the Bush administration's views (as determined by their actions) and not with Kerry (as determined by his votes and speeches and from that, how I imagine he would act were he President).
3. He talks about
rebuilding alliances. Which allies did we lose with our cowboy approach and several month long rush to war? China? We've never really been allies, so what is there to rebuild? Russia? There has been no deep rift in our relations over Iraq. To the degree that we are allies at all, that's an historically new thing. Austria? How much do we need their military, their money, and their intelligence service and how much should we give up to get it?
The truth is, everything would be a-okay if France and Germany were behind us because then most of the world would have followed along, grumbling like normal, instead of following their lead and finally getting the chance to throw stones at the US for all times we did them wrong in the past.
The truth is, some people hate us and will continue to do so until we are all muslims living under sharia. The truth is, some of our "traditional allies" have their own interests and wouldn't piss on our head if our hair was on fire. The truth is, the outpouring of sympathy after 9/11 doesn't mean a damn thing if those people aren't by our side when we really need them.
4. My point was somewhat ancillary to yours. If you did not consider as such before, please do so now.
Finally, the tone of your post, especially there at the end, got to be a little
arrogant, beligerant, belittling, and not, in the least, conducive to having a conversation.
