The other argument Mr. Currier offers is that terrorists and other enemies of the US around the world would be emboldened if we withdrew from Iraq without achieving the unachievable. As if they could be any bolder... let's see we have Iran seeking to build a bomb and using the thinnest and flimsiest legal arguments why no one should stop them. We have the North Korean theatre of the absurd where they have half a dozen bombs, and are in a position of nuclear proliferation blackmail. We have the global extremist Islamist movement which supports Al Qaida, and we have the Marxists in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, plus an increasingly aggressive Russia, and who knows what China is doing, or plans to do, in the straights of Taiwan.
It's a waste of time to worry about these people getting any bolder. We have created circumstances through our military wastefulness and power dissipation that has made them as bold as they can be. If they find a way of harming us tomorrow, they will do it, assertiveness training is not required, and calmative therapies will not work.
Here's what would help. The U.S. gets rational. Starts to act rationally. Leaves Iraq. Reconstitutes its military, conserves its economic assets, re-assures the peoples of this world that it has no hegemonial ambitions of any kind anywhere, that it does not seek to transform the Middle East, the Far East, Africa, and South America. That it wants to be a good neighbor, maintain its own Homeland Security with total diligence, but without trying to transfigure, by military means, whole regions of the globe beyond its borders.
General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz were the best American military minds of the 20th Century. MacArthur's farewell address to the U.S. Congress was largely about the concept of a littoral defense which means a defense of or along the shores. The General was referring to the friendly islands of the Pacific and the Atlantic that along with the oceans themselves, and our well-protected shores, constitute our natural points of defense they are the barrier that keeps us safe. George Washington, upon whose military prowess this entire country is based, said precisely the same thing in his Farewell Address to the Congress. The great military minds observe that there are vast oceans on both sides of the USA and they are the natural bulwarks of our defense. Not meddling around in the back alleys of Baghdad. Not trying to get the Shiites and Sunnis to just get along and stop killing each others, not hunting around in the caves of Afghanistan to see if there might be someone there who would like to take a shot at an American soldier. Those things are not as efficacious for our defense as the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, and the friendly islands, and our shores.
The next argument that Mr. Currier offers is that George W. Bush has a right as Commander in Chief to continue the war in Iraq, or expand it as he sees fit. That's not true (the Congress has concurrent jurisdiction), but even if it were, it's a very flimsy argument for staying the course in Iraq. It doesn't touch the merits of the issue it's just a legalistic argument The Big Giant Head said we should do this, so we should do it. Argument from authority is not valid, for, as Boethius said, "Argument from authority is not valid."
