>4. To frighten the world! Who is next?
I believe Libya and Syria have asked themselves exactly that question. Object lessons are often of great use. It was not lost on Baby Assad that in a war Iraq could have kicked Syria's butt.
The opposite object lesson, we know from diaries of captured terrorists, were taken from Somalia and Beirut - hit the Americans and they will retreat. They are soft. They can be intimidated.
I do not mean to say we should go around attacking people just to scare others, so don't even go there. But consider that the Iran embassy take-over was originally conceived as a gesture that was to last a few days - until they got the measure of Jimmy Carter.
They also had the measure of Ronald Reagan.
It is not entirely a bad thing that so many people think Rumsfield is crazy <s>
>I have not met anyone who supports the war in Iraq or our administration.
Then you live in the same world as Hollywood parties, Georgetown gatherings of the 'intelligencia' or Ivy-league faculty meetings. It is the very reason so many in the media do not see bias in their reporting. I have many friends on the Upper West Side in NYC who said "Everyone I know is voting for Mondale."
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
