IF YOU WERE IN POWER....

[patchdickens]

HOW WOULD YOU HANDLE THE WAR AGAINST TERRORISM?

[opiate69]

1. For starters..

I would demand that Israel pull back to the borders agreed upon after the war. Then I would provide economic incentives for countries like Saudi Arabia to get rid of the madrassas which indoctrinate young Arabs with Anti-American rhetoric. I would also help moderate Arab nations create jobs. Surely there would be a need for some military operations here and there, but bombing a nation back to the stone age would not be in my plans.

[patchdickens]

6. HOW

would you have Saudi get rid of the madrassas and how would you help moderate Arab nations create jobs? I am just curious as to everyones views!

[opiate69]

13. Admittedly

getting rid of the madrassas would be a challenge better suited to people more knowlegeable than me, but creating jobs is easy. We do it all over the world as it is. While I don't lke to see American jobs get "outsourced", if it's going to happen, it may as well be in places like Jordan and S.A. I suppose one way to try to get rid of the madrassas would be to get real international backing, and threaten severe economic penalties. An organization such as the UN should be able to monitor this. It would be a masive undertaking, but, if John Q. Arab saw that we weren't blindly supporting Israel, they most likely would be less inclined to take the rhetoric to heart. Of course, I should say that I'd personaly take a hard-line approach with both sides in the Israel/Palestine situation. Establish borders, move everybody back to where they're supposed to be, and if anybody steps out of line they get slapped.

[katusha]

2. question

does the time frame involved cover from the present forward or does it start with 9/11?

[patchdickens]

3. BEGINING WITH 9/11

[taxidriver]

5. that's a toughy.

what would you do?

[patchdickens]

9. it is a toughy!

i really do not know. i would want them to pay for all of the innocent americans that died but i dont want other innocent people to die.

[katusha]

14. generally

i would have followed the same strategy after 9/11 with some exceptions. mostly i would have followed the first part of the Afghanistan campaign as we used the sympathy of the world to get a UN mandate for removal of the taliban after we had exhausted diplomatic efforts to obtain osama and al-qaeda, also using the existing allies of the northern alliance made victory quick, it was a real international effort and so should be lauded as such. but immediately after victory my course would have differed from bush's in that i would have made capture of osama and al-qaeda THE top priority. while pursuing al-qaeda i also would have prioritized the rebuilding and modernization of Afghanistan to provide a model of democratization in the Muslim world and the benefits there-of. I've always thought that Afghanistan could given the right conditions be the Switzerland of central Asia. my next priority would be the resolutions of the Israeli-Palestinian and Pakistan-India tensions. my hope would be to create a situation where first Afghanistan would become a modern democracy followed by Pakistan which would then give the dissenters in Iran a reason to effect democratic reforms in Iran(peacfully) then i would turn my attentions on Iraq. unfortunately because Iraq was ruled by a Stalinist it would be near impossible to effect change from within so i fear that a military option might have to be needed to remove the cancer that was Saddam Hussein and bring the suffering of the Iraqis to an end. after that i would have to see where the situation was and decide where to go from there.

domestically i never would have gone for the patriot act etc. instead i would have instructed my agencies to come up with ways to go after terrorist organizations using existing laws and respect for liberties and privacy.

[JohnLocke]

4. Break all ties with Saudi Arabia and prepare for war with them.

[rumguy]

7. One important thing I'd always keep in the back of my head:

don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!

Should have focused on Afghanistan. And done a REAL job of rebuilding it.

Should have kept Saddam in the box we had him in and worked with the rest of world and friendly Arab states to eventually get Saddam out of power, along with other tyrants.

Should have kept pressing AQ, using most of our resouces to root them out and to counter their fundametalist propaganda.

Instead what did we do? We played right into that fucker Osama's hands...

We can still right this mess, I hope, by dumping Bush and starting on a new direction.

[patchdickens]

11. what direction do u think will be taken

[rumguy]

12. less arrogance, more creativity

for starters...

more world support, more reaching out and building coalitions...a renewed focus on rooting out AQ and all its various tentacles...

but they bottom line is I imagine, and hope, Kerry's team will be more creative and flexible, that is what is needed...

[katusha]

15. bush is al-qaeda'a best general EOM

[Cleita]

8. Perhaps many telephone calls to heads of state to

introduce myself would be a start. Of course this means I would have informed myself of whom these heads of states are, their names, their countries, where they are on the planet...you get the idea.

After this, we could discuss our differences and our common goals. Then we could discuss things about ambassadors, blah, blah, and THEN we need to get to work.

[Eloriel]

10. I'd do as much as I could in whatever time I had "in power" to

make America's foreign policy match what most Americans think it is.

That would mean, for starters, seriously reforming the CIA, and a bunch of other really dangerous, scarey, potentially deadly stuff (as JFK found out).

[Zan_of_Texas]

17. I'm with you, Eloriel. Hi!

One would need stupendous power to do what really needs to be done -- or an amazing unity of citizen backing plus almost-stupendous power.

We need to kick the war habit, and the CIA/NSA/DIA habit.

If we stopped being the world's ugliest bully, with more firepower than any nation has known in the history of human beings, we could find a way to live in peace. They don't hate us for our freedoms, they don't even hate us.

This country -- you and I and our taxes (not the taxes of corporations which move offshore or simply avoid taxes) - - are paying for things we don't believe in and don't want.

And, we've let the media cow us with dramatic pictures of 9-11, Over. And over. And over. While they ramped up the Patriot Act, and created a true state of insecurity by beating up on the rest of the world, with actions and words and economics.

If we want security, we should look at the present dangers to our health. The country has all but ignored them, to chase shadowy figures that may or may not exist or pose a threat (like Iraq, which exists but posed no meaningful threat to the U.S.).

We were willing to pay $13 billion to Turkey just to let us run some of our northern Iraq war from there --airfield access etc.

We now pay $6 billion a year for new nuclear shit.

Meanwhile, as many people have AIDS in Africa as a number that is nearly equal to the ENTIRE POPULATION OF CANADA (Canada has 31 million people, Africa has 29 million AIDS cases) -- and when Kofi Annan asked for countries to please give some money to combat that, along with malaria, do you know how much GWBush originally thought was appropriate?

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan asked the world for $7 - $10 billion to fight AIDS, TB and malaria. Bush offered $200 million for the fund in his 2003 budget, with a total of $900 million in international AIDS spending. (Source: New York Times, reprinted in Houston Chronicle, 02/14/02, Annan asks U.S. for more AIDS funding) With pressure on him, he was forced to increase that.

AIDS kills the equivalent of twenty Sept. 11s each week. Or, put another way, imagine that two years ago, every single person in Dallas plus Philadelphia died of AIDS in one year. Then, last year, imagine every single person in Chicago died of AIDS. Then, this year, imagine everyone in Houston plus Austin died of AIDS.

~~~~~~

Okay, what about the War on Tobacco? Oops, you haven't heard of it?

Number of people killed in the US by Al Queda in the past two years: Zero, to my knowledge

Number of people killed in the US by tobacco related diseases: each year 430,000.

Tobacco use is the single leading preventable cause of death in the United States, accounting for approximately 430,000 deaths each year. (CDC figures) Or, more than died in 9-11 -- every three days.

The cause isn't a secret network of people who hate us for our freedoms. The cause is tobacco use. The US government says smoking cessation saves lives and reduces smoking-related health care costs and is one of the most cost-effective health interventions available.

The government spends $520 million a year on tobacco control efforts (1998, the latest number I could find), or what we spend in 3 days on the war in Iraq (that costs over $1 billion a week).

~~~~~~~~~

Number of women killed by their husbands or boyfriends in the past two years (approx.) 2800

How about that War on Domestic Violence?
The most conservative estimates indicate two to four million women of all races and classes are battered each year. At least 170,000 of those violent incidents are serious enough to require hospitalization, emergency room care or a doctor's attention.

Oh, yeah, and how about that War on Hunger?
Deaths in the US of Malnutrition .... 3,374 each year
MORE than September 11 killed. But, the malnutrition is EACH YEAR. Richest country in the world, we like to think. But, we let those people die for lack of food.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Number of Americans in the US killed by al Qaida last year -- Zero
Number of people in the US murdered by someone last year -- 23,000

So, who hates us? Who should we fear? Statistically, the real dangers to our continued existence are things like smoking, being murdered by someone we know -- things like that.

But, that doesn't sell fighter planes or missiles or nukes, does it.


This is from Jim Hightower (Feb 2003 Hightower Lowdown):
The True Majority Campaign points out that only a 15% cut in the Pentagon budget (in fact George has been jacking it up 15% each year, plus add-ons for Iraq and Afghanistan) -- could do a world of good, including ALL OF THESE THINGS:

<> Rebuild America's public schools over the next 10 years: $12 billion;
<> Feed and provide basic health care to all the world's poor: $12 billion;
<> Reduce class size in grades 1 through 3 to fifteen students per class: $11 billion;
<> Reduce the debts of impoverished nations: $10 billion;
<> Buy health coverage for every uninsured American kid: $6 billion;
<> Increase federal funding for clean energy and energy efficiency: $6 billion;
<> Publicly finance all federal elections: $1 billion;
<> Fully fund the Head Start program: $2 billion.


This country exports violence, assassination, regime change, state of the art weapons, and, through the World Bank/WTO, economic upheaval and poverty.

If we exported peace, fairness, and the true spirit of our people instead of this cult of death, we wouldn't need to be very afraid of the repercussions.

[Cat Atomic]

16. I would've used the enormous amount of international

support to organize more effective international law enforcement and intelligence gathering. It's vague, I know, but we can only speak broadly.

Bush simply used the opportunity to seize the Iraqi oil fields.

Your question reminds me of something I always hear from conservatives. They'll ask, "well how would ______ fix the problem??!". The fact is, there's NO clear solution at this point, because Bush has completely fucked everything up.

Bush is like a spoiled kid, standing in your kitchen and smashing all your dishes on the floor. When you tell him to stop, he demands to know how you can fix the dishes better than he can.

Maybe you can, maybe you can't. But the first step is to get the snotty little bastard out of the kitchen.