No doubt true, however, the more significant question is: What happens next.? Does Olmert expect Iran to just slink off like a kicked dog, and hide under the porch waiting for its master to stop drinking and be more forgiving? GIVE US A BREAK YOU IDIOTS!!!!
Every national leader, who still believes military force is an option in our complicated world, including the leaders of the so-called axis of evil, needs to be taken out to the woodshed and instructed in the complete lack of evidence in modern history for such a view. MILITARY FORCE DOESN'T WORK. WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO GET IT!?!?!?!
Not to say we don't have to have a reasonably effective standing army. Nope, that is needed, for Teddy Roosevelt had it right when he said: "Walk softly, but carry a big stick". The United States already has a big stick (well, sort of, our dear leaders in their wisdom seem to have wreaked the National Guard and the Army and Marine Corp), but in terms of strategic potential nobody comes even a close second to us.
The advantage of having a big stick is not found in waving it around in a threatening manner at every vain warrior-like impulse, but you just hang it from your belt when you walk into the conference. Everyone knows we can whip all kinds of behind, so much so that it is pointless to point it out. Just think how weird it would be if a future administration were to leave the violence rhetoric (like Olmert above) outside, and just walk in the room and say: Lets find a solution to our mutual problems.
The real nature, of the fact of potential violence among Nation States in our time, is that the little guys know quite well that they don't want to wake the sleeping dog (let sleeping dogs lie). Oh, they love to posture and the more we posture the more we encourage them to posture. The less we posture (stop acting like the biggest bully in the school yard), the more we take away from them any significance for posturing, because if we aren't doing it, that means they are the only ones acting on the world's stage like at ten year old. See my last post on China, for example.
Of the 8 Democratic presidential candidates who recently debated, only Dennis Kucinich actually seems to almost get this, which means - of course - that he hasn't a chance in hades because the Military Industrial Complex loves their wars, the rest of us be damned. (literally, because if they can create hell on earth in Iraq, how far behind such foreseeable consequences do you think is the continental United States?).
I'm beginning to think we have to consider getting a bit more radical (by "we" I mean the ordinary people who are so much more at risk than are the generals and the rich).
