My email to Rudy Giuliani

Never ever again will this country ever be
on defense waiting for (terrorists) to attack
us if I have anything to say about it. And
make no mistake, the Democrats want to
put us back on defense!

I'm not sure I understand what is wimpy about defending the nation. Keeping a ready military to defend the nation against outside attack sounds like something the Founding Fathers would have encouraged. I think you would agree with that.

But you're wanting the U.S. to be constantly on the offensive. Unfortunately, when you use offense as defense, you will never reach a point when you can stop the waging of war. You will have conflicts, which the U.S. itself provokes, in several theaters at once. The military will be stretched thin and will be unable to contain any of the conflicts effectively. I believe you would agree with this too.

Most likely, the provocative statments in your speech in New Hampshire were simply speechifying, revving up the crowd at a pep rally. Not even the most hawkish of Republican leaders would deny that being constantly on the offensive militarily would be an enormous drain on the economy. The entire nation would have to become employees of the corporations which benefit from the waging of war in order for it to make any economic sense.

The point you seem to miss, or to ignore for murky reasons, is that American aggressiveness fuels terrorism. If the U.S. were to "wimp out" and take a less aggressive stance in the world, the leaders of jihad would find that there is much less impetus for the ordinary guy to become a jihadist. The leaders of jihad could rant all they want about the evils of complacency, but the population would simply want to get back to the business of living, now that the evil giant no longer looms over them. Ask the terrorists themselves. Their primary motivation for waging war is the defense of the Islamic state. When that state is not under attack, they are not motivated to wage war. Ask the terrorists yourself. Go ahead. Ask them.

...

Addendum 5/12: Oh. Giuliani's pro-war rhetoric is intended to compensate for his pro-choice position. Actually, that combination makes more sense to me than pro-war plus pro-life. It's okay to terminate soldiers but it's not okay to terminate barely formed fetuses and stem cells? At least Giuliani's position treats fetuses and soldiers equally, rather than elevating the worth of the fetus and the stem cell far above the worth of the soldier.