Fair enough. I don’t think there will ever be any crossover of these two different philosophies.

I really think your idea about the relative threat posed by Saddam is based on a really unrealistic assessment.

The whole idea of pre-emption is that you take out the small threats before they get large.

Even if you believe Saddam wasn’t a threat, it doesn’t really do anything against the philosophy of first strike.

Even after 50 years, people still don’t know exactly what could have happened if Britain and France had attacked Germany when they were still militarily weak and not a threat to anybody but themselves. It may have brought in a grand alliance of Japan-Germany-Russia, ending with 10 Hiroshima sized detonations before the end, in 1980s. Or maybe not.

You want to wait until the threat manifests itself (or strikes at us) because it gives us greater power to strike back, like Roosevelt did after Pearl Harbor. I, of course, find too many problems with such a strategy.

We can’t solve every problem in the world

Rome couldn’t solve every problem in the world either. How do you think Rome maintained the military presence for a thousand years based upon the population of the Italian peninsula? They didn’t. They used local allies, auxiliaries, and local allied client states to supplement the legions of Rome.

They couldn’t do that simply by waiting in Italy until somebody attacked them. In fact, they did that one time in the 2nd Punic Wars and they didn’t much like it. Nor do Americans like the carnage in the Revolution, the US Civil War, or the race riots of the 20th century. Americans are sick of fighting on their own country.

Some of that does translate as “being sick of fighting anywhere”, yes, but such things are ephemeral.

Yes, I believe that in almost every case, preventive war is a mistake, because it creates blowback — a counter-reaction much worse than the security benefit you achieve.

Looking at it from your view, a view that states that holding the defensive brings greater advantages, I can see why you would think so. However, purposefully going and remaining on the defensive gives up your initiative advantage. No war has been won on the defensive, either. While I admit that tactical defense has its advantages, I still believe that it is not a long term strategy for victory.

A nice analogy would be the Maginot Line and Germany’s maneuver blitzkrieg style of warfare.

No defense is perfect. An attacker that strikes first and hits a critical spot, no longer worries about “blowback”. I agree, nations do come back if you attack them and don’t annihilate them with your first strike. However, while people may come back for vengeance after minor unjuries, they cannot do the same when fatally and majorly injured.

I think your views on what would cripple our enemies are different from mine, on a fundamental level.

Yes, I believe that in almost every case, preventive war is a mistake, because it creates blowback — a counter-reaction much worse than the security benefit you achieve.

Things become clearer when such beliefs are out in the open. So now we can see what it is that constitutes the reason why we both hold the views that we do.

If I believed, as you do, that blowback would (almost) always occur after an attack, then I would not strike first. But I don’t believe as you do, of course.

What I am saying is that the idea that we could remake Iraq in our image, particularly under the circumstances of the invasion, which was seen by most people in the world to be unjustified, was politically naive, because the situation in Iraq at the time of the invasion was radicallly different from the situation in Japan under Macarthur, for the reasons I stated already. You obviously disagree, but I think you’re wrong.

You have a problem that requires a solution. So solve it.

All I can say to this is: not only do I not think that Iraq was a “problem that requires a solution” I think our attempt to solve it will turn out to have caused us many more problems than we solved. Frankly, I think you were taken in by a Hollywood image of Saddam as this big evil bugaboo, because of the Gulf War. But the fact is, prior to his invasion of Kuwait, we saw Saddam as an ally, particularly against Iran. If he hadn’t invaded Kuwait we would never have given him a second look. I really think your idea about the relative threat posed by Saddam is based on a really unrealistic assessment.

We can’t solve every problem in the world. We can’t go to war against every single dictator, or every leader who dislikes us. We don’t have the resources. We need to choose our battles wisely, and I believe this was a terrible mistake for all the reasons I’ve stated.

Yes, I believe that in almost every case, preventive war is a mistake, because it creates blowback — a counter-reaction much worse than the security benefit you achieve. I’m not going to say preventive war can NEVER be worthwhile, but certainly in this case, I think it was not a good security gamble.

That too is not really the problem. meaning your analysis of the situation. It could be right or wrong, but it really doesn’t matter. What matters is what you choose to do on this information. Your strategy will be based upon what you think will secure the long term interests of the United States.

Your strategy will not include pre-emption, getting inside an opponent’s OODA loop, or most other unconventional warfare method or principle. If you ask me, I think such a strategic perspective is too limiting, regardless of whether you get Iran or Saddam’s threat capability correct. Not everything depends upon if you get things right in the beginning. A lot of things depend on the little details that occur as you implement your plans.

Having read your last comment, it is clear that you recognize the asymmetrical nature of Iran’s options, which aren’t affected by American bombs or missiles.

Yet I suspect your favored action would be to wait for things to evolve and become clearer. You favor long term security, yet I don’t see any hint that your methods will produce such long term security.

Using Iraq as a logistics base, both politically, militarily, culturally, and ideologically, I can see how a long term security interest for the US may develop. But with your stated options and methods, Mitsu, I don’t see any long term plan to win. Not just disagree with it, but I don’t even see it.

I’ve heard you mention Bismarck as being a winning strategy, but such things subordinate long term goals to short term tactical actions such as attacking your attacker. That isn’t really long term based, it is more based upon the short term benefits of being able to claim that you are not the aggressor, that someone else was. Yet even if you do claim such status, your are not guaranteed to win the war. A long term strategy should give good odds, if not a guarantee, that you win after certain traits, aspects, bases, objectives, etc have been acquired and accomplished.

How is saying that Iraq is doomed because people wanted to remake it in our image consistent with the position of believing Japan went okay due to MacArthur remaking them into our own image. He, after all, did write their Constitution for the japanese, something Bush didn’t even think of doing for Iraq.

I know you don’t believe that MacArthur remade Japan into our image, but that is just it. That is the inconsistency. You say one thing and it is inconsistent with your other beliefs.

You don’t believe so, but that doesn’t change your positions or why your positions are out of phase with each other.

Japan and Germany were unified states that had evolved over a very long time prior to the war, they had already solved their internal conflicts long before.

Does that mean the war with them was easier or harder? And if their nationalism meant that they fought harder in the beginning, doesn’t this mean that the occupation became easier? We have the reverse situation with Iraq.

The total effort is the same and the final conclusion would be the same, if you were willing to put in the time and effort, of course. You may not be willing, of course, to support putting in the required resources. You didn’t in 2003, for example. And you are only supporting the surge right now because you think it is keeping things from getting worse, not that it is truly achieving the goal of strategy advantage for America in Iraq.

You keep saying Japan and Germany were unified states, as if that matters. It doesn’t. You have a problem that requires a solution. So solve it. Why do you continue to talk about red tape and conditions that don’t really matter to the solution?

If you can’t understand that it is possible to:

What I understand is that Saddam wasn’t enough of an enemy for you to favor eliminating. This simply supports my claim that America does not have the guts to wipe out their enemies. When you get into situations where you have to debate with yourself over whether an enemy is dangerous enough to require taking out, you have already lost your deterence ability. Enemies are enemies, in my view. In your view, there are enemies that are impotent and enemies that are harder to deter. Such a view saps the will to eliminate such enemies, naturally.

I’ll say it again: I am not opposed to “war in general”, even using nuclear weapons in retaliation for a nuclear strike.

As I have described, that is not really the problem. We were talking about whether America has the will and fortitude to eliminate enemies. I say no because people do what you do with Saddam and Iran and terrorists. You say America does have the will because you favor strategic defense and tactical offense. Subordinating your strategy to your tactics, which I do not prefer, is in your view, a way to win in the long term.

I find such a method and a plan to be ethically questionable. That is simply a restatement.

You think the US has proven that it has the will and ability to deter Iran and people like Saddam. I don’t. You are the proof of why I think America doesn’t have the demonstratable will and proven capability to deter anyone except the Soviets and Russians.

Yes, you say America will launch a nuke in return for a nuke, but you also admit that such things don’t work with terrorists. So why should it work for Saddam and Iran, who has terrorists to do their work for them? How do you think you are going to deter such people by promising that you will only use nukes if they use nukes? They are not going to use nukes. Their friends will be the ones that used nukes. You are not detering Iran and Saddam from working with terrorists with such methods as you have described.

The reason why is simple. It is due to your philosophy. You have a certain belief set, which includes strategic defense and tactical offense, which you use to formulate policy, strategy, and analysis.

I won’t leave such assumptions unchallenged.

It is not “responding” because it has decided to be less hostile for the sake of harmony.

Any backing down on their part is a tactic.

I think they are doing everythign they can to avoid direct military action until such time they can be assured that they can hurt us badly.

Until then , they’re sticking to their long-term plan .. they test the waters occasionaly (like when they kidnapped the UK sailors) and continiously find the West has no will or resolve.

Actually here I (somewhat) agree. That is to say, while MAD clearly would have worked against Saddam, it’s a little less clear it would work against a suicidal fanatical leader of a foreign state. Thus I do agree that both North Korea and Iran are more dangerous than Iraq was, because they’re more ideologically driven.

Having said that, all the evidence shows that Iran, at least, does respond to external pressure, to some degree. North Korea may as well, though it’s harder to tell for sure. The most recent intelligence reports suggest that international pressure on nuclear weapons did weaken Ahmadinejad’s position considerably in Iran.

But I do agree that the fact that North Korea got nuclear weapons and Iran may someday are both very serious threats. I happen to believe that the Iraq war may have helped slow down Iran, but it probably accelerated North Korea’s nuclear progress.

But I say it isn’t, which is why there’s nothing inconsistent in what I am saying. The fact that what I’m saying is inconsistent with what YOU are saying is hardly news.

Japan and Germany were unified states that had evolved over a very long time prior to the war, they had already solved their internal conflicts long before. They were states that had evolved on their own, and had advanced civil societies and disciplined militaries. After the end of the war in either country, there were ZERO additional American combat deaths. No suicide bombings, no civilian terror — the war was just over, that’s it.

Iraq, by contrast, is an artificial construct of the British comprised of Kurdish, Sunni, and Shiite regions. It never developed naturally, and was held together only by the iron fist of a strongman. They had no tradition of civil society, and had obviously not worked out their internal divisions prior to the war. Compounding this greatly was the fact that when we went it, neither the world at large nor the Iraqi people felt our military action was justified — as a result, there was a huge amount of resistance from all groups. The combination of these factors led to what I believe was a radically untenable situation.

The two situations could not be more different, and the results speak for themselves, in my view.

This coming from someone that ties himself up into knots over the resource allocation of invading Iraq? There is a certain inconsistency in your beliefs, Mitsu.

If you can’t understand that it is possible to:

1) believe that a specific war is a mistake
2) believe that the policy of responding to a nuclear attack with a nuclear retaliation is necessary

at the same time, then I’m not sure what the point is of having a discussion. There’s obviously no contradiction whatsoever between those two viewpoints. I have said before and I’ll say it again: I am not opposed to “war in general”, even using nuclear weapons in retaliation for a nuclear strike. I am opposed to war when it hurts our national interest, as I believe this war does.

IRI is run by Twelver Shia. They believe in the imminent manifestation of the 12th Imam Mahdi.

Their eschatology says that he will not emerge until the world is already in a condition of great chaos and destruction.

The Shias have been longing for his return for a long time now and they are very anxious for the time to come.

They believe they could use nuclear weapons as a catalyst for the chaos that must precede the Mahdi’s arrival.

They have no qualms with the nation of Iran being nuked as their death would be due to thier striving in the way of Jihad for the sake of Allah and they would all go to Paradise.

That is why Iran must never get nuclear weapons, although since they’re working with North Korea, it’s probably already too late.

You can’t deter Iran or Saddam because of the terrorists. Saddam and Iran have their unconventional forces that fight as proxies for Saddam’s and Iranian interests. This means that state actors are not relatively impotent against the United States. The United States are relatively impotent against state actors when they have nuclear weapons, due to the fact that the United States doesn’t have the guts to engage in guerrilla warfare against their enemies and also won’t use conventional weapons like nukes against nuclear armed nations.

The US can only strike with armies, bombs, and nukes. Saddam can strike at you with a lot more things than that. Course, he can’t now, cause he is dead. Hard to need deterence against dead people.

our nuclear deterrent is much less effective against Al Qaeda than against Iraq or any other country.

That is just the logical inconsistency there. You said deterence was backed up by the belief that America will use nuclear weapons on you if you do certain things. However, Iraq didn’t have nuclear weapons, so how can you say that Saddam was “detered” by the US having nukes? People that don’t have nukes aren’t detered by the US having nukes because they know the US doesn’t have the guts to use a nuke against a nation that isn’t armed with nukes.

They also know that the US also doesn’t have the guts to use a nuke on a nation that IS armed with nukes.

So either way, how does deterence work when the nation-state can safely calculate that the US will never have the will to use their nuclear armament?

What makes Saddam stop killing Americans when he knew that America wouldn’t use nukes against him? What makes Iran stop killing Americans in Iraq, when they know that all Americans are willing to do is to adopt a passive defense like the one you adovcated, Mitsu?

I am not addressing your policy differences in detail due to the fact that matters is belief, specifically philosophical premises that power your political policies. Besides, Sally can deal with the political policies while I deal with the ideology behind it. It cuts down on redundancy and wasting people’s time reading the same things written by different people.

You have to actually backwards engineer your opinions to what they are based upon, if you have an interest in discussing those views with me. That, indeed, is harder than simple political argumentation.

You’re saying that because I opposed the Iraq war, that I would also have opposed war with Germany and Japan?

I am speaking of the philosophical position you hold that is inconsistent with your policy proposals. If you believe that America had a problem with Iraq due to trying to remake them into our own image, then logical consistency would only demand that you see the effort to remake Germany and Japan into our images as well as being doomed to failure. You don’t, of course. Perhaps this is because you believe that Japan and Germany aren’t like Iraq, yet I say it is.

So thus is the philosophical conflict that is present, which has little to nothing to do with whether your opinion of Iraq means you don’t support Japanese democracy.

You have said that nationalism plays a large part in why you view Iraq as futile, but nationalism is not some kind of inborn trait, so I don’t see what that has to do with whether a strategy of remaking foreign countries into something that is similar to the United States, becomes a policy doomed to failure.

People don’t start off on earth as being part of a nation. So obviously if you believe Iraq is doomed to failure, then the logic demands that the same would be true of all other people trying to become a nation. Yet this is patently false. Such are the logic problems with your arguments, to begin with.

and that the case of Germany and Japan were quite different from the situation with Iraq.

Every situation is different from another situation. It would be meaningless to state that one is different from another.

There is no strategic standard by which you can judge what is appropriate for a situation simply by stating that this situation is different. What matters is what is in common, and Germany with Japan has many things in common with Iraq.

Solutions come from drawing parallels between the past and the present, in order to figure out what can solve the problems of the now. If all you do is to focus on the differences, which you do with Japan and Iraq, then you aren’t going to get anywhere. You believe you will get somewhere, yes, but that’s a philosophical assumption that must be challenged first before it is accepted.

I simply think the Iraq war does not do this well, at all, and may in fact have harmed our security, and it has diverted precious resources away from strategies which I feel would have had a much greater impact on increasing our security

Obviously you would prefer your own policy to have priority on resource allocation. That is why humans still have turf wars after all. But it doesn’t mean you should get priority allocation, though.

I clearly don’t have a problem with going to war when necessary, in self-defense — I just think we could have been a lot smarter and a lot more effective in defending this country than going to war with Iraq.

You still think war is a choice. What do you think there is a point to arguing should have would have when you still hold to the belief that the US chose to go to war? You have no problem with going to war when you believe it is necessary, but that is independent of whether it is truly necessary or not. So you don’t know how to tell, really, whether it is really necessary or not. Given that necessity only comes after the fact, not during it.

Preventive wars inevitably make things unnecessary, because it has been prevented. Instead of such an idea, you wish to allow things to become a bigger problem so that we can then be forced into doing something that will now be necessary.

Either way, war will occur. Your way would simply delay it and turn Limited War into Total War. I am not sure why that is something to be favored by America. Certainly American Total War is effective, but as you said, even small wars have resource repercussions.

In general, going to war to prevent some vague possibility of future attack, I believe is usually a very bad idea (for the reasons I state above), and by “bad idea” I mean I think it doesn’t actually end up securing the state in the long run.

The US military will be fighting terrorists for a long time. It would be of benefit to the long term security of the United States for its military to be able to learn from fighting terrorists and our enemies. I don’t know how you think they will learn here in the United States, except as a response to attacks on the United States, which isn’t the same thing as fighting terrorists in Fallujah and Afghanistan.

The enemy always gets a vote. Since it is easier to fight Americans in Iraq, AQ has devoted resources there that they cannot redistribute and reallocate to the United States. That reduces the number of attacks and helps the FBI get their system straight. This should be a good thing.

The idea of a passive strategy, which is to allow the enemy to choose their time and place of attack, is inevitably a losing strategy.

If you recall, Bismarck’s strategy inevitably failed because France and Russia was still around when he was gone. He couldn’t, not wouldn’t, get rid of such threats so the Kaisers that came after, messed things up.

You may not be aware that the very ideas you’re proposing are the same ones offered by the Nazis — they justified many of their aggressions as “preventive wars”.

You have little interest in ideas, Mitsu. All you are interested in are the policies you believe in and advocate for and your preference for a passive defense.

You wish to wait and react to what other people do. While you may be willing to do such a thing, I am not. Thus your priority for resource allocation will always be mutually exclusive with mine.

The Nazis don’t even come into this picture, because you do not have a fundamental grasp of philosophy. And without such a grasp, you have no means of applying the lessons of National Socialism to the current problems of Iraq.

Even if one were to ignore the moral implications of being overly eager to go to war, the practical fact is: their strategy did not work for them in the long run

As you have been fond of saying, the situation of the Nazis is not the same as the situation of the Americans. If only because America beat the Germans. More than once even.

I think this is obviously absurd.

Given that you believe America would only be able to wipe people off the face of the Earth by first taking a brutal attack, then yes it would be obviously absurd to you. After all, this is why you prefer a passive defense, isn’t it. You think that America will be able to strike back adequately so long as America gets hit hard first. That is ethically very questionable, Mitsu. Americans have a responsibility to the nation to protect it, not to let it get attacked so that your personal pet theories of annihilating enemies can then be implemented.

We can and do have the “stomach” to wipe someone else off the surface of the earth — that’s what our nuclear deterrent is all about.

This coming from someone that ties himself up into knots over the resource allocation of invading Iraq? There is a certain inconsistency in your beliefs, Mitsu.

Any nuclear attack against the United States would be met by a nuclear response

You may be willing to use a passive defense and wait for a nuclear attack, Mitsu, but I’m not sure I would be willing to do the same thing just so I could see America use nukes on somebody.

Is any other justification that you would see for America using nukes to wipe our enemies off the map?

That’s the whole POINT of having nuclear weapons — so you never have to use them.

And yet you believe America has the guts to wipe any enemy off the surface of the earth. Rather inconsistent with the belief that America gets nukes only so they don’t have to use them, don’t you think?

This only works if the world knows that you WILL use them if attacked by nuclear arms.

Which is why Sadddam and Iran wants nukes so they can do anything to America and know that America won’t have the guts to reply by wiping Saddam and Iran off the face of the earth. Who would you nuke if terrorists used a nuke on a US city? You have to wait to be attacked, and Saddam and Iran didn’t attack you. Their proxies did. Can you justify wiping an enemy off the face of the earth when they only supported the actions of your attacker?

Why would anyone have to attack you with nuclear arms to kill you, Mitsu? You have just openly admitted that America will not attack a nation with nuclear weapons, even if that nation is an enemy of Americans and has killed many Americans. This means that America will not wipe their enemies off the face of the earth. Not unless American cities are being wiped off the face of the earth, but then again anybody in that situation would be desperate enough to show some guts.

That is certainly passivity developed to its full, right there. But I doubt its efficacy in the 21st century against unconventional warfare fighters.