Doug Ross @ Journal

Thursday, October 21, 2004

Bloody Iraq

If you know anyone who isn't convinced that the War in Iraq is part and parcel of the war on terror, send them here. Of course, John Kerry thinks Iraq is a "profound diversion" from the war on terror. Personally, I think he knows better but, with him, it's all about political expediency. Review the facts and then let me know.

Nelson Ascher: Why I won't vote for Bush

An attack that manages to ground all US and most of the world’s air traffic and close down the stock markets around the planet is something qualitatively different from a bomb in an Ulster pub. Human life is fragile, so is democracy, the world economy, globalization etc. The US can absorb U$ 1 trillion in damages. The rest of the world cannot. The US can survive a nuke in Manhattan. Brazil can survive a nuke in Sao Paulo. But Brazil cannot survive a nuke in Manhattan. What most of the world’s anti-Americans fail to understand is that whatever harms deeply the US harms us even more. Were Africa to suddenly disappear, it wouldn’t make much of a change in the life of New Yorkers. Were NY to disappear, Africa would go along...

...So, this is what I have to say for those who think that Americans have overreacted to 9/11. Actually they have under-reacted. One more attack on America and Latin America will be condemned to a further hundred years of solitude and misery.

There are around 200 countries in the world today. Think that every floor of each WTC tower was one of them. The richest were those closer to the ground, the poorest the highest ones. If the base crumbles, the hundredth floor is unable to stand alone in thin air. Besides, the closer people were to the ground, the safer they were. The whole world is the WTC and those who inhabit its higher floors want to see the building collapse. That’s as clever as setting fire to the floor below your own...

...The actual damage of a terrorist attack has less to do with its dimensions than with the when and where. A single, tiny blood clot can kill a 200 pound guy. On the other hand, though some people consider the possible nuking of a Western city a nasty thing that should cause no overreaction, the truth is that a nuke cannot logically be answered by anything less than at least two nukes. How long would any US president remain in the White House if, after the nuking of, say, LA, he went to national TV to say: we’ll find the culprits, capture them, send them to the Hague and you can all be sure they’ll spend the next ten years behind bars?

Nelson Ascher: Why I won't vote for Bush