Friday, August 30, 2002

Well, this is interesting:

Quiz for the Bush-Basher Brigade
1. The Big Question. President Bush should:

A) Declare war on the House of Saud.
B) Close the US Embassy in Riyadh, expel the Saudi ambassador, and state that the House of Saud is our enemy, but not make war on them.
C) Make demands, but not back the demands up with any threat of force or retaliation.
D) Declare the House of Saud our enemy and do nothing else.
E) Other

If you choose E) you must explain, IN TWENTY-FIVE WORDS OR LESS, what the other option is.

I suggest that if you cannot forthrightly answer this question, directly and without evasion, you are nothing but a kvetching, irrational child, and should shut the hell up and let the grownups get on with fighting the war.
I'll take E) Horribly mock those who think that policy should consist of sound bites.

What the hell is this? This is policy analysis, not a contest for the new Meow Mix slogan. Is Dean not able to handle longer arguments, or is this some sort of bizarre attempt to conserve space in his comments section? Sure, I can appreciate and understand why those who peddle simplistic arguments want to attack their opponents for not doing the same thing. It doesn't mean that they should artificially limit themselves, either by picking one of those choices (which contain assumptions that many critics don't share) or restricting themselves to a totally arbitrary word limit.

In any case, the quick answer would be that there already appears to be some change going on in Saudi Arabia; men and women are protesting side-by-side (with bare skin, no less), the religious police are under fire, and the House is under near-constant fire from domestic opponents. This implies that there may be change going on in Saudi, just as there is in Iran. No surprise: change does not always require the United States sending in soldiers, and if we can have change without chaos, so much the better.

Oh, and a government that uses terrorists as a weapons vector is as deterrable as a government that uses missiles. Just in case that comes up.

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