good post.

Ok as far as Iraq and Afghanistan go... but now we're looking at Iran with nukes.

Do we wait for mushroom clouds over (insert name of city within missle range here), or do we act before that happens?

Iran's huge, not an easy space to occupy, even if we weren't otherwise engaged already.

Interesting problem, anyway.

You aren't alone in your urge to do massive harm after 9/11. I would have been very satisified if Bush would have simply nuked the entire Middle East following 9/11. However, that was the wrong move and what he actually did was the right one.

I was always behind the president's plan from the very beginning. But I'm biased. I was an active duty marine at the time and actually went over there to help put the plan into action. Being that proactive after 911 was extremely satisfying. The frustration of patriotic men and women here at home must have felt watching bogus reports on all the newschannels! I have a taste of that now that I'm a civillian again.

I admire your willingness to revise your opinions as to what counts as good strategy. You might consider withholding any moral judgment against yourself, however, inasmuch as the impulse to flog yourself appears to be similar to the impulse to violently destroy Islam. Consider keeping your options open.

I'm like you in being surprised at how well the President's strategy has worked so far, and it's for that reason that I hold my own bloody-mindedness in reserve. As much as anything else, I maintain some favorable regard for the most destructive methods, because of the Constitutional "amendment," or tinkering, that has confined Presidents to two elected terms in office. Bush has set the U.S. on a long road and, if his strategy is to succeed in the long run, it will do so through the accident of able Presidential successors. Yet I don't know of any reason why the moonbats can't succeed in 2008.

He's set us on an expensive course, too, and I'm not too proud to engage in bean-counting, because I acknowledge that a strong economy and fat treasury are important to national security. We must not show huge losses in overturning Islam. Whatever we do must maintain the strength of the economy and avoid driving the U.S. too deeply into debt. Yet President Bush's slow-motion strategy seems to seems to leave ample opportunity for attacks against us, leaves our enemies still with the hope of opposing us, and may never really amount to more than helping an inimical religious sect become a more powerful enemy. Whatever is brought about, good or bad, will have come at considerable expense to the United States.

Before it's all over, we may still conclude that it would have been better to destroy the Arab capitals and the Islamic holy sites, seize the oil fields, and sell the oil cheap, to mollify our critics and refill our treasury. We may wish we had been as "wicked" as our opponents still insist we are.

Ace;

it wasn't just you. I felt the same way.

I'm used to you being funny. I guess I wasn't as used to you being--forgive me the overplayed modifiers here--humbly heartfelt and inspiring.

I used to listen to a lot of Michael Savage right after 9/11. Sure, I thought he was a nutball, but he seemed to be the only nutball out there who was as openly enraged as I wanted to be. Because I wanted to scream daily.

Then I wanted us to nuke everything. Oh, and if we missed and took out parts of Europe too, that would have been just a bonus to me.

Maybe you're being a bit hard on yourself here, actually, because I know I felt even then that I would never have been AS angry were I not surrounded by obnoxious, simpering pundits obsessing about Why They Hate Us, and How to Talk About 9/11 to Your Children, and Grief-Counseling Resources for Your Family, and Islam Means Peace, and America's Evil History in the Middle East, and Why Profiling is Wrong and Bad, and . . . and all this frankly pussy liberal bullshit. I'm sure you remember. If it hadn't been for that I might have cooled off quicker. But nothing makes me angry like being told over and over, "Don't get angry," when it's bloody natural to be angry after your country's been attacked like that.

Sorry to ramble. It's all a long way of saying, "great post."

I don't apologize for the anger, of course. I think those who cautioned "don't be angry" were either just so dream-world-y as to have lost touch with basic reality or, as I think was more commonly the case, engaging in postures of moral superiority.

But my first (and second, and third, and fourth) impulse was to let the bombs fall, not necessarily nukes, though I can't say I had a particular problem with that, either, apart from the political, err, fallout.

And far from being partisan, I excorciated Bush as a pussy and Clinton-esque wimp.

Further, I actually questioned his religion: I thought perhaps he was taking his Christian-mercy ethic and "Forcing it down our throats" and letting it stop him from doing the Nasty Things That Needed to Be Done.

But in retrospect, I was wrong. And I'm glad I was wrong.

Great post, Ace. Your initial reactions are completely justifiable. Although my reaction at first was completely opposite. I'm glad that the adminstration has not waivered from their goals and chose to be not just vengeful. I very hopeful but i'm still holding my breath to see how this expeirment will work out.

"...all that anger is going to burn you up, kid"

reply

"keeps me warm."

Go Wolverines.

Ace:

Another moving post. Thanks for that. Just a few observations:

1) Pacificsm and bloodlust are mutually exclusive; but valor and freedom are not.
2) You cannot reason with a snake, you can only kill it.
3) Patience and determination are virtues that this president understands. He's balancing so many things that you or I can only imagine. The long view is something he has. That's what makes his re-election so fitting and the thought of Kerry as president so frightening. He can thank the Swifties for that. They, too, have determination and single-mindedness, and didn't let go. Ever.

Ace:

Now, on a personal level, as to your friend, remember this William Black poem?

The Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears
Night and morning with my tears,
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine -

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

Of course, Blake was a masterful painter, and he gave us this to see his wonderful poem:

http://www.polbox.com/m/maurycyk/drzewo.html

Think about that for those you can reason with, and think of the snake when the only course of action is to kill them.

watch it... this crowd doesn't appreciate poetics.

Ace--

Good post.

Unlike you, I didn't quite feel as, ahem, irrationally angry after 9/11.

Oh, don't get me wrong-- I subscribe to "The Chicago Way."

It's just that after the initial shock wore off a couple of days later, I took the same tack that others in my business took.

We have a problem. It's time to work the problem. Let's just go do our jobs.

Sure, America is many times more powerful than all of the bad guys put together. But ask yourself this: which is more intimidating-- going into a berzerker rage like the Hulk, or cooly popping rounds into the backs of skulls like Jean Reno?

Much like any schoolyard bully, Al Qaeda *wants* us to go crazy. I don't buy for a second that merely fighting the war "creates more terrorists." No; it usually just *kills* more terrorists. However, unrestrained rage given the provocation probably wouldn't be as productive.

Then again, I'll echo Born Free's comments above-- what do we do when the nukes come out?

Does America have the stomach to preemptively strike-- using nuclear weapons if it has to-- our enemies? Or do we have to "take the punch" in order to retaliate?

We here all may think that's a no-brainer, especially with Bush in office, but I'm not so sure.

Sixty years on, we're *still* debating whether it was moral to nuke the Japanese. And that was after four years of terrific bloodshed.

Absent a nuclear strike against us-- with a verifiable return address-- I just can't fathom that we'd ever strike first, even if we should.

Even if we *must*.

It only took me a few hours on 9/11 to start to come to terms with this fear: next time, it could be worse. Next time, it could be *down my block*. A brilliant flash, a wave of heat and pressure, and it's all over.

THEN I'll be irrationally angry.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Ace, if it turns out ultimately that Bush's plan doesn't work after all ... we can still nuke them.

And Dave, I'm afraid I agree with you (and I think Bush thinks this way too) --- the country won't stand for pre-emptive nuclear attack on Iran and North Korea, even to keep them from using their bombs against us. We're gonna have to take one hit first.

Why? Because this isn't the same United States it was in 1941. Or maybe it is -- it took a lot of years of increasing bloodshed before we finally stepped into WW2.

Bush is probably trying everything short of war to keep Iran from getting the bomb. I'd be quite surprised if the mullahs weren't missing a lot of sentries around their nuke plants.

If we will not use
nukes to stop Iran's program,
Israel ought to.

(Who says we don't appreciate poems around here, Ace?)

Same here, Ilyka. I wouldn't have been nearly so enraged if it hadn't been for the indecently-quick onslaught of reaching out, let's try to understand, we've done bad things too - it was like people honestly didn't realize that this wasn't something that had happened two hundred years ago which they were now theorizing about in a college classroom, it was happening NOW. It was like it was somehow *indecent* to be pissed off.

Great post, Ace.

I do, however, have one quibble: "Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Savagery against savagery" is an oxymoron.

The Mosaic law that has come to be distilled down to "an eye for an eye" is anything BUT savagery. It is the most articulate and merciful form of justice the world had seen (and has seen). It has been bastardized by the left as savage, but it actually admonishes us to deal with injustice in a proportional way. Until this law was promulgated, one had petty thieves whose hands would be chopped off. Under Mosaic law, the thief would have to make the victim "whole;" that is, compensate him for his loss. I'm oversimplifying, but it REALLY is the truest form of justice.

FWIW, the ward for Iraqi liberation would be considered a "just war" under this law.

after 9/11 [deleted] and [delted] also became viciously unfriendly and perhaps worse, unfunny

One of the deleteds just has to be "jexster."

Politics divides us but humanity unites us.
Anonymous

Ace,

My Dad used to say "It takes a big man to admit when he is wrong" and "A big mouth don't make a Big Man".

Your a Big Man, buddy. Press on.

Subsunk

Nick,

Think closer to home.

I was with Ace on the first one. I was in Kosovo at on 9/11/01, and if I'd been in Bush's shoes I would have called Tel Aviv, told the Israelis to hold their breath for a month, and turned everything from the Africa side of the Strait of Gibraltar to the Pakistani-India border into glowing radioactive slag, then saved a few for Indonesia and the southern parts of the Philippines. I was totally in favor of the extermination of all hostile Islamic life on Planet Earth, as in no-shit, this world is not big enough for the both of us, so you're now going the way of the buffalo-hunting Indian.

Even in Iraq when things started going "badly", I was in favor of playing nastier than the rules. "Great, we captured the guys who shot RPG's into our compound and wounded those two guys, let's string him up on the main gate by his intestines as a warning to his buddies." Wasn't allowed to.

I think history will prove my initial views wrong. I'm totally ready to change course back to my initial plan if needs be though.

Good post, Ace.

Agree ACE, and it seems many went through the same rage process, and still have doubts. But better to convince than to kill.

Just 2 things:

1. Watch China. They are our only great long-term strategic, cultural, intellectual, and economic rival.

2. Islamoids have gravely disappointed before and democracy to them is as natural as courage is to the French. Keep the powder dry, and if they use WMD, we are gonna blow up a whole bunch of innocent little brown Islami babies and cute camels that never did us harm - and feel damn good about it!

Ace, believe it or not, even some on the left are starting to see Bush was right. Did you see some of these quotes?

http://rightwingsparkle.blogspot.com/2005/03/was-bush-right-after-all.html

Indeed, I asked myself "What would Genghis Khan do?" and the answer ("Build a pyramid of human skulls") came pretty quickly.

I think Bush and company did the right thing. The Genghis Khan approach is always an option; the last resort if we face no other choice.

If a nuke ever goes off in New York City, I would think that we would take that approach at that time.

Sentiments and experiences which mirror my own, Ace.

But, as you well know, at the end of the next very bad morning in America, it will come to fire over many, many cities.

In the end, that's what it will come to absent some very good luck and the grace of God. It's good to feel good about what seems to be happening, but it is wise to prepare yourself all the same.

You say that 9/11 killed men, women, and children and you're right. There were a few children on the planes.

The next very bad morning in America will feature many, many more American children among the dead. Once that sinks in there will be no political alternative other than the fire. No alternative at all.

Geeze! Van der Leun! Not exactly optimistic, are we?

I don't see that happening. The ones who hated us the most are diminished, crippled, and without money.

Nick when was Jex anything other than viciously unfriendly, much less funny?

VdL - There is always an alternative to responding to attrocity with attrocity. The idea that we can somehow kill all of the potential enemies is deeply flawed. If we should attempt such a holocaust we would only ensure that we have more enemies, not less.

If we are going to fight a war of respect for human freedom vs. the enemies of such; a war of good vs. evil, then we must behave as a Paladin, not a Rogue. No, but seriously, if we are going to take on the mantel of the forces of good then we must behave above and beyond the desire for vengence.

I, too, agree with the 'no quarter given' approach to terrorism, but I too, agree the Bush approach may prove to be more successful to future generations of Americans. Kickin'Ass without taking names maybe too brash.

The Romans knew that to subjagate a population casualites and collateral damage should be kept to a minimum when possible, administration should be humane and enlightened when possible, and the people should be respected when possible. But they also knew that sometimes total annihilation and desctruction is the only way to deal with an enemy as they did with Carthage. Some enemies shall always be, (as Julius Ceasar wrote) " ... either at your feet or at your throat." The trick, of course, is to know when and how to act.

Unfortuneately for us, the Goddamned Ignorant, Childish, Stupid Liberal Press knows none of this this and cares not a whit anyway and they keep trying to convince the rest of the world that we are monsters bent on the murder, destruction and colonization of poor, innocent third world peoples. And then they blame W for our sinking approval ratings around the world.
The mind of a Liberal is totally amazing, isn't it?

Heck, I was there myself, Ace.

I don't feel sorry about it, though. Of course I am, as you are, glad that things have turned out the way they have, but back then we didn't know that.

What I DID know was that we had two options (other than surrender):

1) A full-out retaliatory Fear of G-d strike until they folded like a house of cards. This method would most definitely have worked. Sure, it wouldn't have been pretty, but I wasn't exactly in the mood for being "pretty" towards people harboring and nurturing scum that had just murdered 3,000 of my countrymen. I still ain't.

2) The Bush method which was, at best, a gamble. Fortunately the gamble turned out to be the right one and I am very happy that it did.

So faced with a method that WILL work and one that MIGHT work, I chose the former. I don't feel particularly bad about that.

But I'm still happy that I was wrong.

Great post. I wish those on the anti-war left had the grace and humility to perform such eloquent introspection and self-critique. I ain't holding my breath.

keggin, Some of the lefties have in fact done some rethinking of their position. Hence, the recent spate of "maybe Bush was right" articles and commentaries. They're still twits for the most part, but let's give credit where credit is due.

Urbs:

You're are correct. However, I was more thinking of the Int'l ANSWER dillwads et. al., in the streets over the weekend. It would, quite simply, never in a million years occur to those zealots that perhaps, maybe, just per chance, they got it all fucking wrong.

As Ace has stated we're still along way away from writing the history books on this endeavor but it appears a tipping point may have been reached and the street rats seem oblivious to it and the to crass hyporcisy they so eagerly display.

Ace, in previous generations your initial impulses would have not only right but the only effective response possible.
With the WW2 technology of my Dad's military, neither Iraq nor Afghanistan would have been possible, nor with the Viet Nam Era Technology of my military. I seriously doubt that these campaigns would have been possible with Desert Storm technology.
It is only today that an A-Team of Sneaky Petes, if they still use the term A-Team, can join indiginous troops and with nothing but a satellite phone, a GPS unit and a laser designator, put ordnance within a yard of a target.
Assuming enough artillery and air support an Infantry Company can now defeat a Regiment of Armor, given time to designate targets a few at a time.
You were wrong the same way I was wrong, we simply did not comprehend the capability of today's military.
Now, whether or not we have the capability to take out Iran's nuke program without massive civilian casualties I don't know. From what I understand they're buried, like those of the Norks, pretty deep.
I'm not betting against the idea that we've got some Air Force types with geat big brains working on some tac nukes built into deep penetrating bunker busters, though. I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that with a heavy enough and hard enough penetrator, we could blow up a deep underground facility with virtually no radiation reaching the surface.
Nor would I be surprised to find out that Dubya was merely waiting to see if diplomacy works before he uses such a weapon.

I didn't see the plane crashes when they happened. I was out of touch. I came to work about 45 minutes after the second plane crashed into WTC and everybody in the building was talking about it. When one of my coworkers gave me a overview of the mornings activities I blurted out what I was thinking at that very moment, "If we have to incinerate a billion arabs to get this shit straightened out then lets do it. We can't afford to keep jacking with these people. They're determined that it's gonna either be us or them, so let's get it on."

I too an glad that cooler heads prevailed.

Don't be to hard on yourself.

On quite a few forums I was the only voice of reason, or one of the few. Wanting the culprits brought to justice, and the regime that supported them destroyed. Smack dab in between the polar extremes of anihilation and pacificism.

I probably had an over-unbundance of confidence when I heard it was going to be a Special Forces war. Those guys are true heros in my book.

Ignoring the mainstream medias opinion is essential in judging our actions abroad. It took something like 3 or 4 weeks for the pundocracy to call Afghanistan a quagmire. And slightly less than that for Iraq.

If the press was this slanted during the Revolutionary War we'd never have freed ourselves. Valley Forge would have been the end of any resistance.

Regards...

Bush and Rumsfeld did not, of course, heed the counsel of Ace of Spades. And for that I thank them.

Likewise, and for the same reasons.

The good judgment they showed after 9/11 is a large part of why I am inclined to trust Bush's judgement today, and tomorrow. It is why I voted for him in 2004, instead of merely voting against the alternative, and why W's endoresement in 2008 will count for a great deal.

This does not mean I no longer wish to see my enemies dead. The jacksonian reflex is still there. However, now I see that a group I once thought was united against us is as divided as my own society, and the regular people over there like the murderous SOBs about as much as I do.

If we can teach them to fight the SOBs effectively, and if they have the guts to stand up for themselves, we may have an ally against the SOBs where my jacksonian reflex would have left a barren wasteland.

Bush saw that. I didn't.

Ace,

Thank you. You just demonstrated what I have said time and again, only the anti-war folks refuse to hear me. I have said that President Bush, rather than being a war monger, has actually tempered our anger and focused it into productive outlets. I have said that, had the President chosen all out war against the Middle East on 9/12, the national mood at the time would have supported it. As angry as I was, I also knew that was too far; and I was proud that we had elected a President who struck a balance between appeasement and slaughter.

There's a corrolary, though, that really scares me: if we get another major attack, there will be no holding back the anger. It will be the ruination of President Bush, and it will open the door to demagoguery and hatred that will spell the end of the Middle East. Whether the terrorists know it or not, President Bush is all that stands between them and destruction of their families and homes.

Assuming facts not in evidence, I believe.

It still may turn out that the only Correct Action would have been to flatten the Middle East. I, personally, still think we will one day regret not having done so in 2001.

Having said that, the Middle East is to our way of life as a mama pig's teat is to her piglets. Large scale strikes at Baghdad, Kabul, Damascus, and Tehran (for starters) would likely have sent oil prices skyrocketing, whihc in the final analysis would have killed a whole lot more than 3000 Westerners.

Valuable post, valuable comments - this is the crux of the blogosphere.

Regards, all.

Tim