The Head in the Sand crowd often point to a regional tyrant and their relative weakness in comparison to our own power. Some seem to endorse a sense of "fairness" in dealing with them, that we should not utilize the bulk of our National ability to confront an "incapable" regional bully.
As we prepared for Our Thanksgiving Day weekend, we were confronted with the News of Terrorism in Mumbai, India, attacks which at the most recent count killed 195 people on the other side of the world. Few people in our Nation realize that India is attacked more by terrorists than nearly any other nation. And this was a major attack, designed to demonstrate by our enemy that it is alive and well, capable of a coordinated attack in the home of their enemy.
But what does this have to do with Chavez and other irritants? Chavez did not plan or execute those attacks. He was preparing for the arrival of Russia's new President at the time. Like Ahdiminijihadist, his words are more bluster than reality. The problem is that he may let himself bite off more than he can chew. The same goes for Ahdiminijihadist and others.
Chavez's power is derived primarily by the social programs he established with oil money. But as the price of oil shot up, he failed to re-invest into the infrastructure that was paying the bills. In fact, he was busy doing the opposite, running off the very companies that were investing in his financial well-being: Oil Companies.
In the last few months the price of oil has dropped from an all-time high of nearly $150/barrel to a more realistic $55/barrel neighborhood. This is good news for most of the world, including the United States, but it is bad news for those tyrants that have staked their economies solely to the high price of oil. Several Nations have break even points of $75/barrel and many of those nations have long term policies of being our opponents.
In short, this is doubly good news for Our Nation. Gas prices have dropped, the cost of goods transported to our stores should reflect the lower costs, and our enemies should begin to feel the economic crunch instead of us. Our recovery and their pains are related. And I don't feel a tad bit bad about it.
I do not propose military actions at this time even if we must continue to train and be prepared to act should such an action become necessary.
But we must also be vigilant of those yapping chihuahuas that may have gotten themselves into a position they can't get out of. And though it would not be intuitive, the Communists of the left are interconnected to the Islamists of the far right. Ahdimnijihadist and Chavez are united in irritating the United States. They are united in their desire to keep dictatorial governments like their own viable in a world shedding tyranny, just as WWI was in large part fought to keep monarchy a viable form of government.
Should it become necessary to confront these enemies militarily, it is not "fair" nor responsible to "play fair." Overwhelming force saves lives; most importantly the lives of Our Troops, but also lives of our future allies but current opponents. As important, our ability and willingness to do so, when necessary, to use force makes it less likely we will need to do so.
Our diplomats can work out more favorable deals when they have at their disposal both favorable and punitive actions to offer. Our diplomats can more effectively prevent the necessity of war when they have the best information about the preparedness of the opponent to wage war, i.e. Intelligence Reports.
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