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re: Perceptions
Robert — (archived)

If you think that you understand that my position is based on partisan politics, then you're dead wrong. I would judge harshly any President whom I believe lied to the country, or made an egregious miscalculation, in a matter as vital as our national security.

It took me a while to track down Tommy Franks' comments, and finally found an article in Pravda excerpting comments from an interview in Cigar Aficionado magazine. That the one?

Franks' worst fears aren't out of the question. A WMD attack that resulted in large-scale loss of life would certainly put considerable strain on our commitment to our principles. I'd like to think that Americans would have more courage than to go running to a strongman who offers security through a military dictatorship. I agree with Ben Franklin's statement that a people who would trade liberty for security deserve neither. If it happens, I'd be disappointed, and to be blunt, I'd conclude in all sadness that Americans aren't the people we tell the world, and ourselves, that we are. If we fold after 100,000 deaths when other nations have suffered millions and survived, we're failures.

In the context of this thread you seem to be using the figure of 100,000 (which Franks didn't use himself) as a way of upping the threat ante to see if I'll fold, and concede that maybe Bush really was justified to attack Iraq. It won't work because it's artificial. That's 33-1/3 times the deaths from 9/11, but that doesn't make the war against Iraq 33-1/3 times more justified. Nor would raising to 200,000 make it twice as justified as before.

For the first 35 years of my life I lived under the cloud of the possible nuclear annhilation of 250,000,000 Americans. That threat was very real. The Soviets not only didn't deny it, they delighted in rattling their missiles and even tried to inflate the threat. We never lost our nerve and succumbed to the cowardly temptation to launch a preemptive nuclear strike. Once upon a time we believed that unwillingness to go to war preemptively was a sign of courage and moral superiority. Bush has changed his mind, but I haven't changed mine.

You can't frighten me by hypothesizing 100,000 American deaths. I've lived with a much greater threat that was based on reality.

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