Posted by
Jake on Thursday, July 20, 2006 12:07:49 AM
I think it was Bill Buckley who said in a recent column that the US was standing by without exerting its power in the current conflict between Isreal and the terrorist accepting/supporting regimes(Lebanon, Syria, and Iran).
The US has the world's largest supply of usable nuclear weapons. They are based on land, at sea, and they can also be be delivered by air; they can reach anywhere in the world.
Bush has said that he supports Isreal's right to defend itself...coupled with expectation that Isreal shows discretion in its use of force so as not to destablize the government of Lebenon. Implicit in that statement is that with great power comes great responsibility. Don't sacrifice morals just to win....win honorably.
But sometimes the enemy doesn't understand a fair fight.
Isreal is trying to fight fairly by attacking only those things that are strategically significant while minimizing civilian losses. Their opponents are not playing by the same rules. Isreal can probably win the battle while fighting with one hand tied behind its back...but Isreal can't win the war by itself.
The "enemy" (Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, North Korea, etc.) insist upon throwing sand in our faces while we're playing nice. They unapologetically attack civilians with rockets and suicide bombers. They behead non-combatants on the Internet and television. To add insult to injury, they leave the bodies (with or without their heads) rotting by a road side.
Let's threaten to play by their rules instead of ours. That will mean threatening to kill "their" people as indiscriminately as they kill "our" people. I'm not advocating following through on the threat at this time (key words - "at this time"), but I am advocating making very public the knowledge that we can if we choose to...and that it would be better for all involved to sit down and discuss things in a calm, rational manner than to fight about it. The world should not let itself be provoked for too much longer before taking decisive action.
We could implement the threat in a very public fashion by "testing" one of the usable nuclear weapons mentioned above. We could do so in a manner which proves we can reach any portion of the world that we choose. (Perhaps, we could target an uninhabited area of the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, or Antarctica.) Some fish might die...but, I think, that's a good trade off for saving a few human lives. Such a "test" would illustrate two points: (a) the world is getting tired of playing by the enemy's rules and (b) the US has the responsibility to use the resources at its disposal.
Such a statement would be the equivalent of a father slamming his hand down on the table between two fighting toddlers and saying "That's enough!!! I'm your father and I expect the best of you. I could spank you, but I won't. Go to your rooms for some time-out. Then, when you're done crying, come out and play nicely. There are enough toys to go around if you'll start sharing instead of fighting. And, if you aren't satisfied with the toys you have, here are some tools and some wood...you can make your own instead of fighting about the ones that are already here. Play nice, or go back into time out...but I will not tolerate continual fighting."
If America truly is the world's only "superpower" it's time we started acting like it. With great power comes great responsibility. Our Founding Fathers consciously put into place a system of government full of checks and balances to ensure we don't abuse the power we have.