I don't have many disagreement with you in general, but it is
how we perceive threats to civilization, more specifically
singapore or how should we handle them that differ.
The world united against nazis germany, imperialist jap and facist
italy only after we were attacked. The america still perceived jap
as friend until pearl habour was attacked. Wars were fought on the
victims land until later. Threats were not identified before the
invasion began.
During cold war period, the world was divided between the
communists and the capitalists, both tried to expand their
influence. Wars were fought in proxy land and threats to each
nation was clearly identified, depending which side are you
on.
With the collapse of communist system, threats to civilization came
from extremists, more specifically religious fundamentalists. Such
threats come from within the people of each nation and it is more
difficult to identify who among us could be threatening. It was
reported that the attackers in the latest attack in london were
local born and bred. It is long overdue that countries like america
should look inside their country and among their own ppl. We should
not identify perceived threats based on cold war model.
American's invasion of iraq highlights the facts that while the
world outside of america and britain, face the same threats from
terrorists, they do not consider iraq THE threat. They knew very
well that many terrorists, including osama, were from saudi,
american's strongest ally outside of israel, taleban fighters were
trained by CIA, just to name a few.
While these other nations agreed that Saddam is a tyrant of iraq,
they did not believe that Iraq, with one of the world oldest
cilivization, can be changed overnight. the yankees are still
learning the lesson there and the american invasion has not brought
peace and stability to the people of iraq, as the american
claimed.
There are necessities to identify friends and possible threats as
the direction for defense strategies, especially a small country
like singapore, it is not wise to openly identify the foe before it
proves itself one. War talks like that of the stupid chinese
general should never be supported and hawkist conclusion from such
military report should never be echoed, if we want to reduce the
chance of a war.
Besides cultural exchanges, economic cooperation, and political
engagement among countries, mutual respects among the people remain
a key factor in safeguarding the world from man made
destruction.
American want the whole world to be like america. "you call it the
world, we call it home." Can't have that if they don't know how to
respect others.
