Rally around? They were rallied and rallying steadily already. When you've got something as well-funded and enthusiastic as al-Qaeda, I put it to you a distinction between policing and warfare becomes pretty blurry. What will dry up the fundies to blow them away will be when the rest of Islam is actively turned against them, and we are seeing this now -- the fundies have only the disconnectedness of the Gap to offer, whereas the rest of the Islamic world would rather not get disconnected from the developed and developing world. This is particularly true of the oil states, and truest of the small ones like Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the Emirates. There is a pull to integration with the globalized economy here that will draw the bulk of Islam away from these seekers after their own notion of the neo-Caliphate. But to make this successful will take effort on our part also.

I look on this present conflict as smoking out the troublemakers to where they can be destroyed -- or given some pressing reasons to convert from their current unsatisfactory state: stop being shitheads or lose those shit heads. The one handsomely conserves lives, fortunes, and resources; the second is an acceptable alternative that no democratic partisan should shrink from, on the grounds that undemocracies are far more likely to behave inhumanly than democracies. Democracies get more people rich, too. There's basically nothing not to like, yet there are people right here who think they shouldn't like it, and these yell at me. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, you guys?

Attack our Constitution? No, Griff, that was the Clinton Administration, which did it on instinct. This is not one of the Bush Administration's failings, in truth. Their instinct goes quite the other way, and is quite in keeping with the seldom-realized Republican ideal of minimization of the Federal government -- they are far better on gun rights than Clinton's bunch ever were, and that is more important than most posters here realize: upon the citizens' gun rights hangs all the force of the Constitution and the liberalized structure of the Republic. Even noted sociopath Mao Tse-Tung indirectly grasped this when he noted "political power grows out of the muzzle of a gun."

Destroy our position in the world? This is what the Left would like you to believe is true. They certainly repeat it often enough in hopes of hypnotizing everyone -- and frankly, if you want democracy to win out, be resolute in ignoring this idea. Tell its purveyors to go pound sand into all available orifices and sundry ratholes, for this is an attempt at undermining our determination, and I for one won't put up with it. I can't imagine why anyone who likes democracy would, yet there are sightless democrats who do.

The enemies of humanity? Well, there are the Islamofascists and other Gappers. The Republicans aren't in that category at all, for they are acting in opposition to these enemies of humanity -- which isn't what the Democrats are doing by a long chalk, though they do show some signs that they've just found their glasses and can see beyond their donkey noses for the first time in six years. But really, the only way the Dems can redeem their longstanding fault is to devise a better strategy to win the War and make the Islamofascists lose the War than the Republicans can. What do you think the likelihood of that is? They have to date shown zero inclination this way, have they not?

Tell me, Griff: do you think the bad guys would like to cut your head off, either because of something specific or on general principles?

Those guys might just qualify as your enemy. They'd certainly be mine.

You came to scoff, but you've stayed to raise an excellent point.

For the foreseeable future, the troubles in the global body politic will spring from the Gap nations, not the Old nor the New Core nations. Iraq and Afghanistan are two of the Gap nations. To reduce troubles from Gap nations, you reduce the Gap.

As a practical matter, Gap reduction is likely to take place one nation-state (failed state or not) at a time -- in the hope of keeping any conflicts manageable by the forces available. This is not a process solely of military conquest, but one of social and economic development. That development must take place for the reduction of the Gap to be real and permanent. Military campaigns are only an adjunct to this, but there will be circumstances where they are a necessary adjunct. We have to expect that factions opposing global connectivity will resort to exerting force, human unenlightenment being what it is, and human fondness for exerting power likewise.

Your people did a nice job on this btw.

Funny how I don't fear them, living in America as I do. I'm going to let you fail to extrapolate a righteous foreign policy from that.

Well, speaking as a fully paid up member of humanity, can I ask that the Republicans fuck off and concentrate purely on the enemies of America ? Please? It's not like we (humanity) voted republicans in and asked them to protect us. Seriously, I'd have remembered that election.

Jurisdictions being the things they are, Dana, it's your responsibility to stop your own homi-/suicide bombers. This isn't a party thing, either: democracy wins or undemocracy wins. I know which I pick. Entirely too fucking many flaccid whiners apparently can't bear the load of freedom, to judge by the way they carry on. Disgraceful, fascist, and communist -- how execrable. How necessary for the global body politic to excrete them.

Read up on Barnett, and decide if it's really righteous to leave anyone in the Gap. Decide if it's really righteous never to let a society enter into a libertarian social order because the antilibertarians have enough guns to keep a people chained. Is that not unconscionable? Is a libertarian social philosophy somehow solely the property of the United States? Just where is that written, Griff? Just where is that proven? Nowhere.

The disputants in this thread are in a large measure talking past each other. Each one is consumed by concerns that barely register with the other.

did you hear something?

I didn't realize that you voted in American elections, Dana.

I think that's her point classic. That she didn't get to vote, but she still has to live with the consequences of those who did.

Oh yeah, I see that now - guess I was more tired than I thought last night. My apologies

Would that perhaps be a flaccid whining moan from you, V?

I do not disgrace myself so, and think it would be a bad habit for you to start.

Come on, kid; you know I don't put up with any prospect for undemocracy but its extinction.