Paul writes:

> If good 'ol Saddam is developing the means to deliver quantities of VX gas
at
> distance or decides to pack a shipping container full of the stuff along
> some explosives to disperse it, say in downtown DC, or does get the goodies
> needs to make a nuclear device then I would MUCH prefer to deal with a
> terrorist who *at best* can hijack a airliner and ram it into a building
> terrorist who can nuke a city or carry out coordinated Sarin gas attacks in
> truckload quantities across the nation.

The problem with a unilateral, pre-emptive strike against anyone is that it
sets an enormously bad precedent for the world. China will be freed to invade
Taiwan on the same pretext: a presumed danger, as will Guatemala Belize or as
the Soviet Union did Afghanistan. The United States has never acted in such a
manner and I am appalled that it is even being suggested now. It is far
better for us to be tolerant of such attacks and be perceived as weak than
ever take one "pre-emptive" action.

The common justification for a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq is: "If someone
had killed Hilter in 1938, how many lives would have been saved?" But there
is absolutely no moral, ethical or legal grounds for such a proposition,
especially among nation states -- until after some offense has been made.

Although it doesn't satisfy the visceral testicular juices of the most
militant among us, the US, Britain and UN's action to date *has* contained
Iraq. I have no qualms about forcing UN inspectors back into the country, but
the primary defense we have against the Saddams and bin Ladens of the world
is no longer military might but intelligence.

The attacks on the World Trade Centers were not an act of war. They were
simple thuggery, carried out by a band of gangster zealots. Although more
people died in the WTC attacks than at Pearl Harbor, the United States was
never put at risk by the September 11th attacks. Nor will there be any end to
the "war" in which we are now engaged. This is a war only in the same sense
that we engage ourselves in a constant war against crime, and we must fight
it in the same way, slowly, carefully, methodically and under the rule of law.

In the light of WTC attacks, no one now remembers the 739 people who died in
the destruction of the Space Needle in Seattle in 1999 or the 1,634 who died
in the twin attacks at the Los Angeles International Airport or the
destruction of the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels in New York CIty -- in great
part, I suspect, because they never happened, but they almost did. They were
stopped by alert border patrol, customs and FBI agents.

The United States is an open and wealthy and rich society, and it derives its
wealth from its openness, thus it will always be at risk. But it is also at
its core a very moral and ethical society and it cannot act in a unilateral
bullying manner. If it does, a wave of anti-American sentiment will sweep the
world, and the traditionally isolationist American nation will be transformed
overnight into a Roman society, where peace on the frontiers is maintained
only by force of arms, not by a rule of law equally applied. And we will
exacerbate our current problems many times over, extending them outwards for
perhaps all of the century to come.

Wirt Atmar

PS: for a comparison of September 11 to December 7, no better source exists
than the front pages of the world's great newspapers. They are instantaneous
history, turned one page per day, and no organization provides a better
record than the NY Times:

     http://aics-research.com/art/nytimes12sep2001.jpg
     http://aics-research.com/art/nytimes7dec1941.gif

From these two pages, you can quickly derive a sense of the relative danger
that each day presented the US.

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