Russia adopts the Bush doctrine:
Russia is prepared to make pre-emptive strikes on "terrorist bases" anywhere in the world, the Interfax news agency cited the country's chief of staff as saying.
Well this ought to get interesting. With Putin playing the part of Bush, I wonder who in Russia will be playing the part of Kerry; you know, demanding that allies be consulted, etc. Gee, I wonder how many UN Resolutions Russia will seek before acting to defend herself?
"With regard to preventive strikes on terrorist bases, we will take any action to eliminate terrorist bases in any region of the world. But this does not mean we will carry out nuclear strikes," General Yuri Baluyevsky said Wednesday.
Jumpin' Jeebus, nothing subtle here since General Baluyevsky didn't exactly rule out nuclear strikes either. "Respected abroad" doesn't seem to matter as much when the bastards start targeting your children, I guess. Imagine the uproar if Bush or Cheney even mentioned the word nuclear, or nukular, for that matter.
"Military action is the last resort in the fight against terrorism."
Ah, but here's the problem. I can appreciate that the military is like a sledgehammer, highly effective, but blunt and capable of doing a lot of unintentional damage when used for the wrong job. But fighting terrorism is the right job for the military. Calling military action the first resort or the last resort, or anywhere in the ordinal list of resorts is the wrong way to characterize the problem. Terrorism must be defeated through all means available, whether they be military, diplomatic, financial, covert, overt, judicial, etc. That means identifying the culprits and killing them; not negotiating with them, understanding them, sympathizing with them, empathizing with them, coddling them, playing realpolitik with them, bribing them, or worrying about being accused of being politically incorrect.
Any form of compromise with terrorism doesn't necessarily mean they are going to win (because they won't in the long run), but it does mean they aren't going to lose, and they are going to keep playing until they lose. Unfortunately, we are going to continue to pay an ever increasing price as long as the game goes on. This is something less than a zero sum game since it is so much easier to destroy than to build, so any strategy (or strategery) that doesn't result in their total destruction just makes our eventual losses that much worse. We must not misunderestimate terrorism and imagine that there are utopian solutions out there somewhere, if only we can get enough allies to agree with us or craft exquisitely worded condemnations. Things are almost certainly going to continue to get worse until we have won unconditionally. The only question is how bad are we going to let them make it before we fully comprehend that only an unconditional victory will suffice and act accordingly.
Oh, and if there's anything that would encourage me to push harder to get the US out of the UN, this is it:
A majority of people in 30 of 35 countries want Democratic party flagbearer John Kerry in the White House, according to a survey released showing US President George W. Bush rebuffed by all of America's traditional allies.
How nice. And how completely unsurprising that people in other countries prefer to have America run by someone who has made it clear that he will defer to them. And once the statists are in complete control, who will speak up for liberty?
Americans have demanded unconditional surrender in every war I can think of except Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War I, and the liberation of Iraq, all of which, not coincidentally IMHO, have come in the age of transnational progressivism. I fear that it may take someone like Russia, where political correctness and self-esteem haven't neutered their sense of self preservation, to remind us all what unconditional surrender means and what it takes to achieve it. I say that not out of fear of Russia or to encourage them to act rashly, but out of fear that we have become too soft and seek to rationalize away what must be done because we think too much of ourselves (and too much of our enemies!) to take the admittedly harsh steps that must be taken.
As Keysor Soze said:
"They realized that to be in power, you didn't need guns or money or even numbers. You just needed the will to do what the other guy wouldn't."
We know what the terrorists are willing to do. Now, as Officer Jim Malone said, as he lay dying:
"What are you prepared to do it about it?"