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May 18, 2011

And Lo, the Swaggering Bully Returns

Via the Drudge Report, I read the short article linked to the post title. Honestly, how absurd can you get? "You taking defensive measures is going to force us to threaten to attack you!!" You might as well say "if you install locks on your doors, I'm going to be forced to break in and steal your stuff! It's your own fault!"

The only appropriate response to this would be "well, if you begin ramping up your ability to bomb us, then we'll just have to ACTUALLY bomb you." Granted, that's a bit juvenile, but what else can you do about this kind of behavior? Just going ahead with what you were doing in the first place as if no threat had been uttered may not be good enough. (It may, so that's definitely the first thing you should do.) I seriously doubt Russia will actually go through with this threat, too, but doubting it doesn't make it so.

I'm glad I'm not responsible for deciding what obnoxious threats, from Russia, from the Middle East, from China or India or Pakistan or North Korea, are actually credible enough that we should just go ahead and bomb them. That is a job for serious men in suits (and yes, sure, women also, I just like the mental image of serious men in suits better--I'm partial to a sharp-dressed man) who aren't reduced to anxious cowering or hysterical overreaction when somebody threatens them.

Too bad that our current government seems to be horribly short on that sort of person.

2 comments:

Parker said...

As a selfdescribed objectivist you should take a moment to consider the fact that USA (with it's allies) is the most aggresive military power since the end of ww2. Waging war on poverty stricken third world countries under the pretext of liberty is nothing more then a very underhanded way of bleeding the taxpayers dry on behalf of government subcontractors. Haliburton and Dyncorp just to mention a few are lining their pockets with your taxdollars. Billions of dollars poured down a hole. And millions of lives lost...

"The government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control."

Ayn Rand

Jennifer Snow said...

I agree that U.S. foreign policy has been a joke, however, there's a difference between randomly attacking "poverty-stricken" nations, and our imbecile policy of trying to either "fight communism" or "keep the peace" in countries that were already viciously attacking themselves and others.

The fact that I'm against Russia's aggression does not mean that I'm in FAVOR of U.S. aggression.