What I think needs doing is a real hard look at the balance between civil liberties and the responsibility we have placed in the hands of those elected to do miricles to protect us. This is the biggest issue we face today as a free society, other then keeping our children safe.

Remove freedom to protect...freedom. I was thinking of something more in line with what degree you might take action against someone other than ourselves but you will be placed in the self-flagellation column.

Simple. It's foundation was hosted by the single most important nation, at that time most certainly led by more articulate and humble men.

What an enormous question. It's impossible to answer without getting some agreement on basic definitions. What needs to be done to do what? What is the war on terror.

Still, I'll take a crack at it. If reducing human hardship, reducing inequity and providing basic security to people of the world is the goal, then nothing short of a new way of governing ourselves will suffice.

The notion of sovereignty is at the centre of what needs to be examined.

I'll disagree with Alfons that the UN is the answer. The UN can only be effective when the member states are willing to act. After WWII (or any similar conflagration) there is willingness to act to "make sure that never happens again". As time passes the willingness to act is motivated more and more by member states strategic or national interest. That is the reason the UN has such trouble acting: it relies on individual states to form some consensus that action is necessary and justified.

In a country, or province or city the governed relinquish some individual freedoms in exchange for some public good. This doesn't scale up to inter-state relationships though because no state will relinquish any sovereignty. This is obvious from the nattering in the US federal election where both Bush and Kerry are compelled to state, and re-state, that neither would ever let another country, or group of countries, dictate whether the US can go to war pre-emptively. I expect the same answer would come from any other country.

A redefined international governance would also do a better job - in my opinion - in meeting lesser goals of promoting democracy and eliminating dictatorships. In part, the reluctance of France, China and Russia to remove Saddam was because their financial national interest was aligned with the status-quo. History is full of actions by powerful nations that promote national interest above international public good.

This is an obviously utopian viewpoint but it's true none the less. Kansas, Texas and California have given up some of their sovereignty to the US and Spain, France and Germany have similarly given up some to the EU. But, what would induce the US or Germany or France or Canada or Nigeria to offer up some part of their sovereignty ( and honor it ) to an international body.

I think what will take it being won is a declaration of victory rather than any specific action. Conditions will arise at some point where a critical number of the active participants are dead or it give up and melt away. Who knows when that will happen or, even, whether it has already happened. The goal of absolute end of organized violent events, which is now part of Bush's stump speech, will simply never happen. You can never know why doing go nuts and get violent. You may replace Saddam, or the head of the PLO or the government of Syria but others rogue states or organizations will arise for different reasons. Similarly there will be no democratization of the planet, at least not in a few generations. No one is going to take on China. <p>So in the reasonable term, there will be a point where democracies and those nations now fearful of democracies are content that most of the evil whack-jobs have been defanged. My question, I suppose, is what will it take to get there and, perhaps, are we actually already there. I would not say we are there yet but if I truly knew there were 1,000 SAS soldiers roaming the world with 1,000 Gurkhas popping off identified cell members I might start thinking we were now there. This is not unlike the world of the deaths of the IRA members in Gibralter in 1988 or the murder of the Bulgarian diplomat in London by the umbrella dart ten years earlier. Maybe that is the best we can expect.

Let'start with Iraq. The "reconstruction" or "rehabilitation" of Iraq HAS to be a success. Failure is not an option- the US needs a "poster boy" for the Bush Doctrine, and its intervention in Iraq. More Troops. More Money. The US made the "mess", now they need to clean it up. You can't rebuild this country, or any other country on the shoulders of a "coalition" of meaningless UN resolutions. Only the US has these type of resources and will. We need a non-political US leader - a leader like George Marshall (Powell?) - who has the credibility and the country's support (financially and militarily) to get the job done. I believe that this is in Bush's post-election plan - I HOPE this is in Bush's post-election plan. Bush HAS to bring the people along with him to believe that Iraq's rehabilitation is an essential element to winning the War on Terror.

If not, this type of plan may lose the Republicans the White House (maybe even Congress) after Bush's term for a long while, but they must be prepared to make this sacrifice for the good of their party and their President's legacy in the long run. Remember that it didn't take Britain long after the end of the War to ditch the one person responsible for its survival. The Republicans may have to go the same route. Iraq is too critical a battle to lose to craven political self-interest. Bush may have that flexibility in his second and final term.

Some ideas in the previous post are not particularly "well said" but I think you get the drift.

defeat bush.

No, because Kerry will have the same constraints as Bush has now: looking short sighted to a second term. If Kerry wins, it'll be a bigger mess, unless he changes his view that it was "the wrong war, in the wrong place at the wrong time" and is prepared to sacrifice his and his party's short term future to "fix" the problems in Iraq. He would have a significant opportunity to cement his place in history, if he did, but he would have to "articulate" to the American public, why the problem needs to be "fixed" by hard work and sacrifice, other than a pullout and handing the problem to the UN (like Lebanon). I don't know if he is capable of that, if it meant losing a second term.

Your pre-portland post was very well said, SN.

SayNay, are you comparing Bush to Churchill? That suggests among other things that Iraq was like the third reich istead of a pathetic little fifedom (full of not so tiny evil of course) but a fifedom nonetheless. And Bush is so far from being Churchillian that I won't even get into how lame that analogy is... On another note, the problem with Colin Powell is that he should have been President. It says a lot about the US that Powell has to stand there next to that ridiculous little rich kid faker (Bush) and hear everyone call him President.

hey SN i agree with your "have to win" sentiment. is bush the guy though? it's anybody else and the proof of that is that how everything he touches turns to dust. the guy is a student council president at best and the living proof of it is everything he's put his hand to. this country is a mess. anybody but bush no matter he promises. anybody.

Lisa, Bush is no Churchill. There will never be another Churchill, I fear. I only made oblique reference to Britain's treatment of Churchill after the WWII as an example of how people(voters) become tired of "blood, toil, tears and sweat," and how quickly they wish to put "that" behind them. One might have thought that Churchill should have been "Prime Minister for Life" (if he so wanted to be) in GB after the war, but after helping shepherd his country through the darkest days of 1940 to 43,to Victory in Europe in May 1945, Churchill was defeated in the general election in July of 1945.

Voters, as we know, are a fickle bunch whose view on matters might be crudely summed up by the phrase; "That was great, but what have you done for me lately?" or "It's the economy, stupid".

I'm cautiously optimistic about the EU. I think it's like a more complex Canada that takes its internationalist stance to another level. I think the EU, if it works, is a model that could be applied elsewhere.

Damn did I say fifedom? I meant to say fiefdom.

I reply to Portland ("...is Bush the guy?"), at this point, it is suggested, the US has little choice. Here's part of my logic:

Kerry, if elected, as a first term President will be focusing on his re-election, not on his "legacy".

He and the Dems intent on some sort of tactical withdrawal from Iraq or certainly a policy that would see LESS immediate involvement by the US in the reconstruction, and less American casualties and less financial commitment(ie "internationalize"; "sharing the burden with our friends and allies"; recuiting a NATO force etc.). He has been (not suprisingly) vague on what will happen in the meantime, and what will happen if he cannot "persuade" the friends and allies to "share the burden". There is a suggestion in his policies that a Kerry administration will try to use rescontruction and oil contracts ("encouraging [other countries] to help develop Iraq's oil resources") as the carrot for such "international cooperation".

The reality is, I suggest, that none of the G8 will come on board in Iraq, unless and until it is a secure, semi-functioning state, with some sort of appropriate infrastructure. Ask yourself this question: If Kerry was elected on Nov.2, would Canada be "persuaded" by this fact, oil contracts or no oil contracts, to send troops to Iraq on Nov. 3? or in Jan/05? or in March/05? You get the point.

So what happens in the meantime? The US has to "secure" the country, NOW. More troops. More money. Whatever your view of him, Bush, as a second term President, will be looking to his place in history, knowing that his success or failure as a President will be based on his success or failure in Iraq. He has the flexibility of knowing that this is his last chance to get it right.

As for the "turning to dust" thing, Afganistan seems to be on the right path. "It's hard, hard work, we're working hard, working weekends, it's hard..."

If Bush is dumped it won't be because voters are fickle, it will be because voters don't like the way he handled the situation. And it's not really after the war right now, it's kind of still during the war (I mean the place is a mess) so they'd be essentially firing him for bad work in the middle of the job. I don't think 'Bush/Cheney' plans to stay in Iraq either not for the long term. It's really a matter of exit strategy either way. On the home front it will be looting and pillaging of government funding for private gain. These guys really don't like social programs so they're going to run the deficit up as high as they can so that Americans won't be able to afford any for a long long time. It would be foolish to underestimate the extent to which Bush has pissed Europe off. So really I think Kerry has a much greater chance at coalition building. You have no idea how happy the French will be that Kerry speaks French for instance and the Germans have not missed the fact that he has cousins who live there. It's a big deal. I mean, the guy was educated in Europe. Bush, by contrast, is seen as a cowboy (which in Europe is bad). He embodies everything they don't like.

What I was trying to say is that if re-elected, the decisions Bush will have to make in Iraq will be unburdened by a fear that he will be a "one term President, like Dad".

As for the EU, well, it seems to be the perfection of the "bureaucratocracy".

I live in Hungary, so there isn't anything you can say to me about bureaucracy that I won't totally understand. Some bureaucrats are just plain evil and there is something about government that tends to breed these spidery, vicious, incompetent people. That's why every so often there has to be a cull. Having said that the bureaucrat-free society is also a pipe dream. I wish the EU well. I hope they get their act together.

A bureaucracy-free private sector is a pipe dream as well but its inefficiencies, not being in the public eye, are not considered the same as those in the private sector. The fact that they are not open to review is about the only thing that sets them apart.

I like the idea of Lisa's "cull": you know, with guns, horses, and bush-beaters.

You'd be the first in line to moan when your water tap made you ill, when the busses stopped running and when the garbage piled up just like the rest of the libertarians of convenience.

okay, my response to SN- as stated i'm sympathetic to your basic premise but you lose me at the we should trust bush because of some pop psychology analysis that you dreamed up? the guy has fucked up - badly. he should lose his job. i'm for letting anybody else try. it couldnt get worse, unless, of course, we let the guys who are managing it now keep going.

I do think he would have lost a position as night manager at the Truro A+W in the early 80s with his sense of fiscal control. <p>And I applaud portland for posting that in the Sox half of the 9th.

Of course, Enron, Walkerton, and the corruption scandal at Hollinger has successfully demonstrated that corporations are no more efficient or accountable than the public sector (even if we didn't already intuit that). Also, I think Alan is right that the private sector also breeds vicious 'bureaucrats': marketing departments, spin doctors, collection agencies, bank tellers, telemarketers etc.. All of these need to be weeded now and then too. And by weeded I mean get rid of those people who are constantly saying: I'm sorry I can't do that for you sir...Or I can do that but you'll have to wait thirty minutes because there's a thirty minute mandatory waiting period etc.

There's a funny section in the hitchhikers guide about a planet that sends all of its 'B grade' people into outer space because it figures these people really don't serve any purpose (I think one of the categories of people is 'telephone sanitizer'). Anyway, this is not something I'm advocating, but it's a funny section because I think we've all had these experiences.

The problem with conservatism these days is that it sees the cull of the public sector as an end in itself rather than a means to an end. We've had twenty years of cull in Canada and you still hear them crying out for more as though it were physically hurting them that we had any social programs left.

Such intellegent correspondents I have.

To portland: well, at least you called it an "analysis".

and.......SCENE.

"Cull" what "cull"?: the Public Service sector in Canada has actually been "rebounding" in the last five years. From 1999 to 2002, for instance, StatsCan reports that under the Ontario Conservative Party, Ontario experienced the greatest increase of all the Provinces: its public sector grew by 38,198 (+4%) to 986,494 employees in 2002.

Out of every man, woman and child in Canada, one in ten is a public servant.

And from 1998 to 2002 the wages and salaries to public servants in Canada increased each year, bringing total remuneration to $124.9 billion in 2002, up 4.2% from 2001.

Now if we could just find a place for those Walkerton Koebel brothers....

What was Disraeli's statement: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics"?

It's interesting how these threads take on a Jamesian "stream of consciousness".

SayNay: Can you link to your source for these stats? Because otherwise I'll have to assume that you're pulling them out of your ass.

I have suggest such a thing before but never so pleasantly.

Sorry that was rude. It's just that statistics have been used to support all kinds of baseless claims. Lies damn lies as you say. Anyway, I guess it depends on what you mean by public servant. Does the category include police officer, for instance? I'm betting it doesn't include water safety inspector.

No need to apologize - the boy needs a good talking to every now and then.

Lisa, just give me a sec.......ughhhhhhh....pulling.....some.....more......statistics......out....ahhhhhhh, there you go, see: http://142.206.72.67/04/04a/04a_009_e.htm

Now that was actually good.

I'm still a little tender, but thanks, Al. (Did you not like the "Assholes, everywhere" taking offense to their libelous comparison to Kinsella?)

You don't think I ever read any of this stuff, do you? I am a response bot. portland is the real brains behind the operation and even he is a front for a big eastern syndicate.

At the risk of opening up this thread, Ben actually addresses his idea of what the Canadian military should be doing to address the current situation.