November 29, 2003. ש Steyn on Terrorism: "These five regimes must go". Via Volokh conspiracy, I see a superlative Mark Steyn article, "These five regimes must go". The five regimes are Syria's, North Korea's, Persia's, Sudan's, and Saudi Arabia's. He forget to include Palestine, I think. Libya is properly omitted. Sudan is a bit of a question mark, hateful though I find its domestic policy. Steyn's general point is the good one that civilized people will not be safe unless those regimes are overthrown, and there is no reason-- not even prudential--not to overthrow them. I'd agree. Certainly, if it's worth spending great effort building Iraq (not "rebuilding"--it never was in good shape) then that effort would be better spent overthrowing other regimes.

As far as the protection of the U.S.A. is concerned, picking up the pieces is unimportant. What we should do is overthrow a bad regime, and if it is replaced by another bad regime, overthrow that one. Keep shaking the dice, and eventually we will come up with an adequate regime in place. Since almost all dictatorships refrain from encouraging terrorism, our odds are pretty good that a randomly selected regime will be fine as far as American homeland security is concerned. The security of people in Korea, Syria, Persia and so forth is a different matter, but dealing with tyranny generally is a much bigger project, and would require overthrowing the regimes of China, Canada, and perhaps the United States Supreme Court too.

Here are a few choice selection from Steyn:

I was up on the Iraq-Syria frontier in May and, although its certainly porous, porousness cuts both ways. It would concentrate Assad�s mind wonderfully if the Americans were to forget where exactly the line runs occasionally and answer Syria�s provocations by accidentally bombing appropriate targets on Junior�s side of the border.

...

CNN had a headline this week: �Compromise Struck On Iran�s Nukes.� Not all of us are reassured to see the words �Iran�, �nukes� and �compromise� in the same sentence.

...

The war on terror is, in one sense, a Saudi civil war that the royal family has successfully exported to the rest of the world. The rest of the world should see that it�s repatriated.

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