The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 6 of 12)

br> -- B.N. /p>

Well, Mr. Laksin, we agree. Iran should be confronted. The Bush doctrine should come in to play. Iran is working toward the ability to make nuclear weapons, and they seem to silently endorse and support Al Q. But, sir, just how are we to "confront" them? Our military is bogged down in a place called Afghanistan (remember it? The situation is falling apart there as the Taliban becomes resurgent and the warlords find that they can ignore Kabul) and another place called Iraq.(We are busy trying to keep our promise to the Iraqi people that we rather foolishly made when we invaded their country. And let us remember that it was a just war because the Iraqi people needed to be freed from the oppression they were suffering. And it was all going to be over in a heartbeat and the Iraqi people would love us and become staunch supporters of American-style Democracy and we would all live happily ever after so we didn't really need to think about the aftermath of our invasion.)

It is requiring the use of most of our available military force to hold the insurgency there in check. So with what will we "confront" them? Most of our National Guard units are not combat-ready and those that are being converted to Military Police instead of combat arms. Our equipment is wearing out in the sands of Iraq. Our recruitment of new soldiers is faltering, to the point that the Pentagon has recalled 6,500 of the ready reserve. The Army has instituted stop-loss. The Air Force is seeing reductions in sortie rates and aircraft availability.

So now what do we do about the real threats? Well, we ignore them. We pull our troops off the DMZ in South Korea and reduce their number and hope the Chinese and the Japanese and the other Asian countries most concerned with North Korea can talk them out of their nuclear weapons. As for Iran we hope that Canada and the U.N. can do something about them. In short, for one man's, or perhaps an administration's, hubris we have put our safety at considerable risk.

p>If you are going to have a "Bush Doctrine" you need people smart enough to implement it. br> -- Philip Hall /p> p> DEAD ON ARRIVAL br> Re: Sean Higgins's Democratic Signs of Pro-Life :

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Taxes, Nancy Pelosi, Bill Clinton, Islam, Law, Military, Iraq, Iran, NATO, North Korea, Nuclear Weapons, Oil