Americans are in danger of succumbing to the fatal sins of empires-arrogance and ignorance.
We should not overestimate ourselves or underestimate those who may become our enemies.
It's very important to understand what happened with the USS Cole. Two men in a small boat with a few hundred bucks worth of explosives took out a tremendously expensive, tremendously sophisticated and hightech warship.
Except for the heroic, almost superhuman efforts of the surviving crew members, that ship would have gone to the bottom. As it is, the ship will be out of service, I would guess, for at least two years, Taxpayers will have to shell out a minimum of $150 million to get her seaworthy again.
There are lots of men with powerful convictions. There are lots of small boats and secondhand trucks. The world is awash in cheap explosives.
The disadvantages of high-tech weapons systems is that they are designed to fight conventional wars. They can be vulnerable to low-tech attack. They can also prove to be ineffective on the offense. Think back to the high-tech bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.
Despite the heifer-dust from the administration, the campaign was militarily ineffective. Robert Fisk, a great reporter with the British Independent, observed that the serb forces in Kosovo came out intact, with nearly all of their armor and artillery. we had, in addition to civilian targets, bombed a lot of plywood tanks and bridges painted on canvas.
Thats what can happen when the world's largest superpower, attacking a nation of 10 million people, is afraid to let its pilots fly lower than 15,000 feet. The agreement Yogoslav President Slobodan Milosevic signed was one he would have signed before the bombing. It took the jurisdiction away from the North Atlantic Treaty Organizaation and put it into the United Nations, and it guarantees that Kosovo will remain part of Yugoslavia.
In the meantime, the super-sophisticated and expensive Apache anti-tank hekicopters needed a month to get from Germany to the Balkans, a trip of just a few hours.They never flew combat missions, and two were lost to accidents.
The American Revolution succeeded because the British were arrogant and contemptous of "colonials" whom they considered inferior.

What scares me most is that the elites who run the federal government show all the traits of the British in 1776. They are arrogant They consider the rest of the world-including their fellow Americans-to be their inferioors, And they are grossly ignorant.
Madeleine Albright, so typical of the Clinton administration, said on television that the embargo against Saddam Hussein was worth the lives of 500,000 Iraqi children. Now, that shows, of course, her own immorality and callous indifference to other people's suffering. But it is a.also stupid diplomacy.
Her statement has been broadcast far and wide in the Arab world. It sends an unmistakable message: "You people simply don't count, as far as we are concerned."
That's how you make enemies, it is not the job of a secretary of state to make enemies.
If George Bush wins, he's going to have his hands full, not only fumigating the White House but routing out the incompetents the Clinton administration brought to power, reshaping American foreign policy and rebuilding the armed forces.
Most of all we need a change of attitude and recognition that our jurisdiction stops at our own borders. Nobody appointed us lord and emperor of the world. Trust me. The decline of an empire is bad enough. You surely don't want to be around for the fall.
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Edited by Hannibal: Americans are in a bad situation due to decades of brainwashing. They have been told they have no national identity, their sole purpose for living and the thrust of their taxation and foreign policy is to ensure the survival of Israel. They may well experience a similiar incineration along with the state of Israel as a result of their ignorance.
Americans have tolerated the likes of Madeleine Albright as Secretary of State, a woman who just recently discovered she was Jewish, (I realized this ten years ago, she should have asked me)
.Ms. Albright, is not concerned about the 500,000 dead Iraqi children. I can assure you it is highly likely that Arab nations who are now receiving some of the most sophisticated weaponry will not be concerned about 500,000 American children either. That is the way the world works. My advice to Americans is to awaken from their slumber. One cannot remain both free and ignorant for a long period of time.