1) Jihadists living “amongst us”?

Ok. Have you contacted your local police dept.? In my home town, the people’s republic of Philly, we have more Elvis sightings than jihadists.

2) “Their” own benefit?

And what, praytell, would those benefits be? Is Cheney plotting a future role as emperor of Baghdad?

3) Triangulating.

Can we get past any political discussion in the modern era sans that word? I’m strangulating from its over-use.

Far from it, as is amply demonstrated by the fact that neocons continue to invite the jihadis to live among us. In fact, the neocons are triangulating off this jihad, exploiting it for their own benefit.

Short answer: yep.

Long answer: I don’t pretend to know bin Laden any more than you do. But his eschatological visions and pious machinations are as clear as they are retrograde. He’s looking for life as it was portrayed and practiced in and circa, Deuteronomy. So cometh his inexorable crusade.

Oh, the joy.

Or read some Qutb, maybe Maududi, his alter-egos. The whole anti-western, anti-science, anti-intellectualism mantra therein rings as loudly as a midnight tocsin.

Double joy.

Yes, indeed, bin Laden was angered that his homeland was occupied by the infidels, the USA. But his madness transcends that episodic bitterness. Hence his ideological reach into Afghanistan, Somalia, Albania, Tanzania, Chechnya, Pakistan and beyond.

But to your direct query. See if these words, below, carefully disguised (just to make you guess)do anything for you. I ask only because to me they parallel-and suitably address-our untidy confrontation with Islamic fundamentalism of today with, well, with an equally untidy and dreadful menace from the past. So, too, do these words represent a kind of neocon mindset, perhaps less militant and less idealistic but no less convincing (and ultimately successful) in their utilitarian truths.

So why not use them. Still.

“the main element of any United States policy toward the must be a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of expansive tendencies… pressure against the free institutions of the Western world is something that can be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and manoeuvers of policy, but which cannot be charmed or talked out of existence.”

Inserts mine.

I’m thinking the author was one of your heroes, as he was to a generation.

Some of our mistakes are at meta-level, because we are trying to accomplish nation-building and modernity infusion in a land quite ill disposed to that sort of thing. Obama facilely suggests we should focus on Afghanistan. But the question begs itself: why is the same strategy that’s not working terribly well in Iraq going to succeed in Afghanistan? And is this sort of ambitious nation-building really necessary to scare off or kill folks like Bin Laden and company?

Roach forgets, or fails to introduce, that Cincinnatus had the luxury of repose and plowing fields. Conversely, the neocons are waging war against a global jihad, not against some microscopic clan from the obscure plains of Italy who got cranky cause a few Roman soldiers peed on their vineyards. Or whatever.

If you ask me, the neocons-including Roach’s erstwhile mentor Strauss-were 1) prescient and 2) ahead of their time.

(Hmm…maybe that’s the same thing.)

Anyway, the cure for the virus that is fanatical Islam is hardly a return to the farm. Better that we turn ploughshares into political modernity and awaken the brain dead.

Surely there was a leader to pattern named democratist?

Oil prices would also be a lot higher, as Saddam would control both the Kuwaiti and Saudi oil fields.

I’m all for returning to the farm myself, but this is a 20-40 year process.

Somebody do the math and get back to me on defense spending under RR. I’ll venture it was thru the roof, and that’s not counting his star wars panacea.

From which, sad to say, we witnessed the gradual usurption of first principles by the neocons.

Please tell me I’m wrong. Tell me it was not the carte blanche defense spending, spearheaded by the Reaganistas and condoned by the paleos, that let the neocon cat out of the bag. Tell me I’m blind and that what the king does is not a tacit invite for his minions to do the same, and to excess.

Tell me that Scoop Jackson wasn’t the linchpin to this sordid nexus, defind above.

Limited government is a wonderful thing; as you hint, it’s the underbelly of The FFs and defines the pristine spirit of the conservative movement. But one needs to remind the paleoconservatives that limited government is not to be bartered for hero worship, nor for the ideological phalanx that is uber-patriotism.

I don’t mind that you show disdain for the neocons. I do mind that you were silent when Reagan made the war machine the coin of the realm.