Random, occasionally rambling thoughts with links to interesting, scandalous, or partisan news of the day.

Fair and Balanced

Dead Heroes
• Thomas Paine
• Thomas Jefferson
• Benjamin Franklin
  

Living Heroes
We owe the liberty and freedom we take for granted to the enlisted men and women in the armed forces. They sacrifice family, ease, and even life laboring in service to all of us. The least we can do for them is honor their devotion with dignified pay scales, decent education for themselves and their children, and reasonable compensation for service away from their families and death on the battlefield. Flag waving politicians who praise the troops on one hand and cut their pay and benefits with the other should be deeply ashamed of themselves.

Blogs I Read Often
• Talking Points Memo
• Atrios
• FireDogLake
• Brad DeLong
• The Daily Howler
• Daily Kos
• Glenn Greenwald
• MyDD
• The News Blog
• Oliver Willis
• Political Wire
• The Volokh Conspiracy
  

Lileks keeps rolling along This is for brother Jim, far away. This is the authentic voice of Minnesota, of parents, of Minnesota, of terminally good people confronting the 1930's of the 21st century. How do you know if this is an "appeasing Hitler" moment, or just the US trying to pick up some cheap oil? How do you choose between the German/French "give inspections time" plea and Bush's "it's already been 12 years."? Well, some common sense, some girding of the loins, and some crystal ball gazing clarifies the world immensely. As an Iraqi professor told some visiting Congressmen, "What makes you think WE want to live under Saddam?"

This guy is a vicious tyrant, a bully, and a murderer, torturer, and rapist of his own people. That, snidely speaking, qualifies him for a French position of honor, but it puts him pretty far down on my pecking order of good guys. By itself, it's not enough to go after him. Couple it, however, with his stated desire to be the next Saladin, his pursuit of nuclear arms, and his pattern of unrestrained aggression and you've got a situation that could be lethal to the US. We're already stymied, as are the South Koreans, by the presence of a psychotic dictator in North Korea. It's not just that he's already admitted kidnapping, assassination, and bombing a plane filled with the South Korean cabinet. No, Kim Jong Il also has nuclear weapons to go with his giant conventional army within artillery range of Seoul. Do we want to give Saddam that type of leverage? Nuclear tipped missiles within range of Cairoy, Teheran, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, or Riyadh? I don't think so.

9/11 taught us one important lesson. Terrorists will reach out and kill us and the more the merrier. Our answer must be forceful, broad, and terminal. Appeasement was bad with Hitler. It could be far, far worse with Saddam. Do I want war? No. I'd much rather see Saddam ride out of town into exile and live happily ever after. Easier on the Iraqis and our stock of precision guided bombs. Do I expect that ride into the sunset? Nope. We're going to have to dig this sucker out of a deep, deep bunker. But we can. And we will.
posted by Dave on 4:49 PM | 0 comments link

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