While Doing Your Taxes This year

[Puckstop31]

I really and truly hate to get into this discussion for a number of reasons, but I must.

The Soviet Union replaced religion with politics. Communism WAS the religion of the official Soviet machine.

It is highly debatable whether MAD worked or not. There were many other factors involved in the relationship between the USSR and the US, MAD was just one of them. Many doctrinal publications released since the end of the Cold War show that there was much discussion inside the USSR about whether or not a nuclear war was winnable, and they had wargamed many scenarios that showed the general staff that MILITARILY a nuclear exchange was a possible win for the Soviet Union.

My point is basically that you cannot make simplistic statements about a situation with many, many variables and have them be accurate in any way, shape or form.

Interesting comments...

Indeed, one could say that Communism was the religion of the USSR. But their religion did not offer a much better existance after death. Because of this, one could say that a Islamic Terrorists views on religion play a much more important role here, no?

Also, MAD certainly was not the only reason that line was not crossed during the Cold War. The West's victory in the Cold War, IMHO, was more economic than anything else. Ronald Regan, again IMHO, won the Cold War in 1987 when we walked away from SALT II after refusing to negotiate about SDI. He knew that the Soviet Union was on the verge of economic collapse and could not afford to keep up in a SDI race.

I will also agree (as I also have read extensivley on the subject) that the Soviet Union's leadership did think that it could win, in military terms, a nuclear conflict. This is shown by that from sometime in 1978 on their plans for war in central Europe were almost entirely nuclear in their methods. It was also interesting to notice that in some of the papers I read their reasoning for this was not because of a superior conventional capability of the Western powers, but because of terrain, especially in southern Germany, that was much more favorable to defence.

All this being said, I do not think my comments were overly simplified, because it IS simple. This current enemy WANTS to die. Their goal is to either win (which means you and I worship Allah and our wives submit to Sharia Law) or die trying. How does one combat such a threat?

[Edwina's Secretary]

We invaded Iraq because:

- The Iraqi government had Weapons of Mass Destruction which the UN was simply unable to find (opps!)

- Saddam was an evil dictator who was oppressing the freedom loving Iraqi people and we needed to remove him so democracy could flourish in the Middle East.

- GW himself has said there was no connection between Al Qaida and Iraq...at least not at the time we invaded.

We did not go there to fight Fundamentalist Muslims. 9/11 and the fight against Fundamentalist Muslims who want to destroy us because we love freedom -- smoke and mirrors that has been used to confuse and convince the public.

Fundamentalist of ANY kind are scary. The video on another thread -- the Most Hated Family in America - is a scary one. But I don't think we should invade Missouri because there is a nutty family (or church as they would say) in Kansas - advocating death and destruction.