I remember

[chuck]

I believe the solution is to raise the standard of living among the middle and lower classes. People with mortgages and cars don't start race or religious wars.

.....

Are you sure none of the Palestinian suicide bombers came from families with mortgages and cars? Most of the 9/11 hijackers were from at least middle class. Some where from upper middle class and their education and background would have destined them for upper middle class themselves.

[chuck]

Of course, if you want more wars, tell their middle or lower class they cannot aspire to a mortgage or car because it will damage the climate....

You are the one who, on the very forum, stridently and repeatedly echoed the Bush administration's position that developing countries must accept limits on their per capital carbon emission that is a small fraction of the exorbitant American level so that Americans ability to continue to emit will not be "crushed", or else it is not worth while for America to participate in any climate agreement.

Does cognitive dissonance mean anything to you?

[Werner]

You are the one who, on the very forum, stridently and repeatedly echoed the Bush administration's position that developing countries must accept limits on their per capital carbon emission that is a small fraction of the exorbitant American level so that Americans ability to continue to emit will not be "crushed", or else it is not worth while for America to participate in any climate agreement.

You're wrong. I have never held that position. I have been warning that war will be the inevitable outcome if the neo-Luddites who push the idea of anthropogenic climate change get their way.

Does the Bush Administration hold this view? The only connection I can think of is their view that the exclusion of China and India from Kyoto rendered it meaningless. I wasn't aware they had managed any coherent view on climate change.

[Lesforan]

I think President Bush was correct when he defined an "Axis of Evil" and correctly named the members of that axis. To that end, I saw nothing wrong with taking one of those members out. The problem was not invading Iraq, but rather in grossly misjuding the resulting power vaccuum there in the absence of the Baath ruling power. We should have anticipated the power struggle between both the indigenous factions, and also the intervention by Al-Quida and Iran.

Be that as it may, we are now faced with dealing with the resulting situation. It looks to me like we are making good headway, as Sunnis and Shiia realize they must co-operate if they are ever to resurrect their country. The turning of influential Sunni leaders against Al-Qudea is a really good indication of what can be achieved. I think these people have embraced violence for so long because they dispaired of dealing with their problems by peaceful means. Thanks to Coalition actions, they now have hope.

The Kurds strike me as people who mostly want to be left alone to lead thieir own lives. It is unfortuanate that they are infested with a radical Communist faction that seeks territory from Turkey. If the Kurdish Government will shun these insurrectionists, perhaps they can be isolated and destroyed before they provoke a Turkish military response.

A basic foreign policy misconception led to our involvement in VietNam: the concept of a monolithic Communist movement to consolidate power in the region under Chinese leadership. Events after the war showed this to be mistaken: following on the heels of the South VietNam collapse, the new all-Communist VietNam government embarked on an invasion of Communist-controlled Cambodia (stopping a genocide there) and embarked on a border war with China, their alleged sponsor. The Soviet Union turned out to be the major sponsor of Vietnam. Regional rivalries were always simmering there, ready to boil to the surface as they did in the Balkans later.

Can we really expect to win? Most certainly, if we have the resolve.