{"id":134,"date":"2003-07-17T06:58:17","date_gmt":"2003-07-17T06:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:16","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:16","slug":"more_yellowcake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=134","title":{"rendered":"More Yellowcake"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fellow hawkish liberal Michael Totten places the ‘yellowcake’ issues in perspective<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Even if Bush and Blair did lie, this is still a trivial distraction under the circumstances.<\/p>\n

If North Korea sells a nuclear weapon to Al Qaeda, New York City and Washington could be destroyed. Our government would be finished. The United States would then be ruled, at least temporarily, by a military dictatorship. Then we would be at total war.<\/p>\n

Think about that for a minute and get some perspective.<\/p>\n

I don’t expect it will happen. A devastating war on the Korean peninsula is a far more likely event, and tragic enough.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s a more pragmatic extension of my earlier comments about the political tactics involved in the discussion, and my thoughts on what the message should be instead…

  1. I think that Bush, charitably, puffed the heck out of this. I tend to forgive him because I think that he did the right thing; but I also am wary because I’m unconvinced that he has a clear plan except ‘hit the weak guy’ (and Saddam definitely was – weak in conventional military, weak in alliances) and see if that has any effect on the others (Saudi Arabia, Iran) that are less so. To quote our buddies, the French, we did it pour l’encourager les autres<\/i>.<\/p>\n

  2. I think we need a plan, because our original plan…that 25 American troops led by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz would win the war and somehow manage Iraq by themselves…hasn’t quite proved out. I don’t see anything resembling a quagmire, but I do see a coming test of endurance. And we haven’t been quite so good at endurance in the past. For a variety of reasons (largely led by the increasingly wacky but preferable to anything else political system which we are enjoying), ‘sticking it out’ seems to be hard for us. A plan makes sticking it out easier to handle, and, more importantly, it makes sure that we match our resources to our obligations.<\/p>\n

  3. I’m frustrated by the Democratic waffling on these issues; it is going to cost them the election in 2004 (even though Trent and I disagree by how much and have a dinner staked on it…where do you live again, Trent??), and more important, it is driving the dialog toward the kind of inane drivel that we’re seeing in the news cycles right now and away from a discussion about what’s really important (like Korea).<\/OL>I think that a Democratic party that could stay on message in these three areas would be a better party: <\/p>\n

    [a] We think Bush is blowing the national defense with his ludicrous homeland security programs and shortchanging military families and retirees, which can’t be good for retention; <\/p>\n

    [b] Bush has no ‘grand plan’ that he’s shared with us or our allies on how we deal with the real issues of the enemies of America and the West. We do, and here it is; <\/p>\n

    [c] We can’t afford an American Empire. Empires don’t make money in the modern age, they cost it. We need to secure the world to prevent more 9\/11 attacks, and to end the pervasive collapse of the marginal states. We need help doing it. Right now, the rest of the civilized world is getting a free ride, and that’s because the Bush team blew what chances there were to pull allies other than the UK and Australia along with us, and instead bought Hessians from second-tier countries. Unwinding twenty-five years of bad diplomacy wouldn’t have been easy, but it was necessary. <\/p>\n

    We need to keep our eye on the ball, and while I do think the Dems are getting traction in the polls with these issues, I do think they are losing their best chance to display leadership and sell the nation that they are safe to elect.<\/p>\n

    Oh well, maybe next election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Time to get some perspective. Here’s a more pragmatic extension of my earlier comments about the political tactics involved in the discussion, and my thoughts on a better and sounder message from the U.S. Democratic Party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}