The American Spectator

Questions for those who would buy, rather than lease, a Volt. What will be the electricity cost to charge its battery? Where will such a large battery be disposed? And how does it affect resale price when the second buyer has to factor in replacement of a multiple-thousand dollar battery?

I think I’ll stick with my Impala.
— John R. Tannehill
Dallas, Texas

MISSING THE TARGET
Re: Jed Babbin’s Bonfire of the Neocons and Bonfire of the Neocons, Part 2:

Jed Babbin stands vindicated by the facts in Afghanistan. “Nation building” was the optimist’s corollary to Colin Powell’s statement: “you break it, you own it.” Well, Powell was a warrior once young and brave. But he later embodied the caution of bureaucratic and political war that cannot understand the simple fact of a hard lesson delivered bluntly and without apology. Better the Mideast and all of Islam fear the secular West, which they can, than try to convert them into respecting and embracing us, which they won’t. We can break them and not own them. And we can break them again if called for. And again. We mean them no harm until they seek to harm us, then lights out. Let them own the consequences of their behavior. Anyone who makes war without a sense of historic pessimism should not be a general or national leader. War is tragedy because we must wage it from time to time….nation building is the silly idea that this war can be the last. In Afghanistan, we should administer a frightful offensive, hunt and kill the Jihadist leadership, leave our calling card, then pull out waving the flag of victory.
— Christopher Roberts
Brattleboro, Vermont

Mr. Babbin’s two-part series on the notion of nation-building is the best short analysis I have yet read on the subject of our spectacularly less than successful ventures into Iraq and Afghanistan. We may have “Scotched the snake” of al-Qaida and the Taliban but we are a long way from killing it.

Our policy of short-sighted war in which we confine ourselves to the battlegrounds of our enemies choosing and stubbornly refuse to hunt down and destroy the enablers of the fight against us is analogous to a doctor prescribing only an antipyretic for a fever and refusing to prescribe the antimicrobial necessary to kill the organism causing the fever. That is medical malpractice. Our way of 21st Century war, so far, is political malpractice verging on national calamity.

I hope those in positions of authority hear and heed the words of Mr. Babbin.
— Keith Varni 

Excuse me, but aren’t all the arguments here going in the same circle? If the root of the problem is that a militant, malignant, and imperialist version of Islam has taken over the discourse and policies of that civilization, then what other cure for the disease can America apply except the “nation-building,” which both political parties hold in horror but neither can seem to avoid as a practical proposition? Isolationism was a bankrupt ideology in FDR’s time. Today it is simply an escapist fantasy, as is the other rabid extreme of nuking them all.

Bush II and the neo-cons applied nation building without being honest about why it is needed. The old-line conservatives identify the problem but deny the cure, even while their own formula for withdrawal and disengagement makes Neville Chamberlain look like George Patton. (The liberals’ program is abject surrender and the performance of indecent acts, as always. Further than this we need not go, Allah be praised.)

IMHO, the train left the station some time ago. We should never have been reduced to such limited choices, but there’s no help for it now. It’s either shoulder the White Man’s Burden (suitably re-named) or collaborate in our own destruction.
— Martin Owens
Sacramento, California