humanities.philosophy.objectivism

In article ,
newsgroups@REMOVETHISnobsysAndThis.net says...
> "Gordon Sollars" wrote in message
>
> > But your argument seems to be that it was al Qaeda's *response* to our
> > attacks that lead to loss of support, not their defeat. OK, I will
> > grant that it is not "absurd" to claim that - as a result of our
> > attempts to defeat "AQ in Iraq" - they decided to take actions that cost
> > them support. I doubt that it was "the" cause, but even if it were, it
> > is hard to see how this accrues to the benefit of Bush's strategy. Do
> > you really want to claim that we knew that AQ would respond in this way?
>
> We appear to have went to war without knowing much of anything beyond
> what was needed in order to overthrow Saddam, including many things we
> should have better prepared for. But if the Iraq war is credited with all
> its deterious consequence, it should be credited with the beneficial ones,
> whether or not they were foreseen.

OK, let's credit the abstract entity known as "Iraq War" with indirectly
reducing support for aQ in Iraq by means of the actions they decided to
take. After all, if you manage to drive a nail while you are pounding
your head against a wall, you might indeed end up with a way to hang a
picture. ;-)

> As the phrase goes, "no war plan survives
> first contact with the enemy".

Perhaps, but in this case, our war plan survived first contact very
well; it was our peace plan that crumbled on contact.

--
Gordon