Subject: Who can argue with that?

BC,

You post a link to and excerpt from this piece by Harry Browne and ask, "Who can argue with that?"
Seems seems to me that you did, for the better part of the last six months.

Interesting, ...how so?
 

I don't see anything in Harry Browne's retrospective that is inconsistent with most of the 'dove' talk
you refused to consider since before the bombing began.  The argument never was that Osama
shouldn't be hunted down and even killed.

Au contrare, my friend.
I realize you can't speak for all doves any more than I can speak for all non-doves,
but the premier dove argument at the time, and well-documented here, was,
"If we retaliate, it'll just make them more angry and more terrorists will spring up,"
to which I replied, "Then we will kill more of them."

Again, maybe those people didn't speak for you,
but you can't say that point of view didn't surface.
 

Many times it appeared that you were attempting to put that argument in our mouths,
in effect creating a straw-man argument that we all thought America should just sit on it's thumb,
but that was specious at best and I called you on it consistently.

You're going to make me spend the time to search back issues for that?
You're saying those words never appeared on this page?
You're saying I made that up from whole cloth?
 

The argument is and always was that killing innocent Afghans would be an unavoidable consequence
of going after Osama militarily, and that the fallout from that would not only come at a much higher cost
than we were prepared to acknowledge, but that it would in fact be handing the evil son of a bitch
exactly what he wanted to begin with. A conclusion that you appear to be understanding better every day.

I understand that reasoning, but show me the difference between that position and
"We can't retaliate for Pearl Harbor, because innocent Japanese might die,
 and that's just what Hirohito wants - a world war."

Two truisms:
1. Innocent people die during wartime.
2. War is often unavoidable.

When you bomb Pearl Harbor or the WTC, there's going to be war and nothing will stop that.
You can pie-in-the-sky until the cows come home, but it's fantasy to suggest otherwise.

I think every time you fail to mention your alternative to retaliation, you should
be forced to do five minutes in the penalty box, if you're a hockey fan.

I hear from you, "war and retaliation is wrong," then you scream "straw man"
when I suggest the alternative to war and retaliation is total surrender.
We're on this endless merry-go-round, where you criticize my position,
but fail to take a position of your own that I can dismantle.
I say that's cheating.
 

You're almost there, but I'm still waiting on your admission that giving Smirk the green light
was a dumb idea from the get-go.  After all, Smirk got what he wanted out of it too:  a permanent war.

I still support the effort to kill bin Laden.
Ninety percent of America agrees with that.
Repeated hand-wringing is supported by very, very few people.
 

How many ways can we say this was dumb?

Scott
 

Maybe you're not a hockey fan - maybe you're a football fan.
Remember the last Super Bowl?

EVERYONE said St. Louis was going to mop the field with the Patriots.
When Vegas put the line at 14, they were saying it was a runaway train for St Louis.

You sound like a Patriots fan who waited until AFTER the game to say,
"I knew all the time we were going to win."

That's horse hockey.

You seem to be accusing me of failing to see the OBVIOUS that Smirk would
backtrack on his promise to kill the man who designed the events of September 11th.

Show me where you predicted that six months ago.