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Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
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Friday, March 14, 2003 :::
OpinionJournal's "best of the web" offers us this linkDiplomacy cannot work in a region where the biggest sources of insecurity lie not between states but within them. What is most wrong about the Middle East is the lack of personal freedom and how that translates into dead-end lives for most of the population — especially for the young....
The Middle East has long been a neighborhood of bullies eager to pick on the weak. Israel is still around because it has become — sadly — one of the toughest bullies on the block. The only thing that will change that nasty environment and open the floodgates for change is if some external power steps in and plays Leviathan full-time. Taking down Saddam, the region’s bully-in-chief, will force the U.S. into playing that role far more fully than it has over the past several decades, primarily because Iraq is the Yugoslavia of the Middle East — a crossroads of civilizations that has historically required a dictatorship to keep the peace. As baby-sitting jobs go, this one will be a doozy, making our lengthy efforts in postwar Germany and Japan look simple in retrospect. But it is the right thing to do, and now is the right time to do it, and we are the only country that can. and this Bill Safire column detailing an apparent Iraqi weapons embargo violation by France and China. I worry to some extent that going to war without the U.N. could prove, in some sense, embarrassing, but if we invade and uncover evidence of serious French and Chinese disregard for even the containment regime, it could be very embarrassing to them and possibly vindicating for us.
::: posted by dWj at 4:49 PM
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