Gautam wrote:
This is absurd. I can just imagine the Russians - who think the largest long-term threat to their security is the Chinese - the Chinese, who are dependent on a $150BB trade surplus with the US - and the EU, which is over any significant period of time going to be absorbed by its demographically determined slide into irrelevance - getting together and deciding to counterbalance the US. Right. China might possibly be able to put together a military capable of challenging the US...in 2040. By which time, _I_, the second-youngest person on the list, will probably be retired. So it's not exactly imminent.
They don't need a military capable of challenging us, Gautam, all they have to do is string us out in the Middle East. We've fallen into a trap that we are going to have a very difficult time extracting ourselves from. The only way I can see us achieving a military victory in Iraq involves a much more violent approach than we're taking now, and probably many more troops (which in turn will mean reinstating the draft). Many Iraqis and U.S. soldiers will die, the country will be devastated and all the people of Iraq and the Middle East will hate us more than ever. Here at home, the country will be further polarized and sapped by the war. Our enemies, the list of whom will have grown much longer, will strike at us any way they can in order to weaken our resolve and sap our resources.
The belligerence of the Bush administration has provided the impetus for our adversaries to unite against us where they _never_ could have come up with it on their own.
-- Doug _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
