There seems to be some interest in my new book Security First; frankly it is doing better than several of my other endeavors. But never mind what I think. Here are excerpts from what others say, and links to their full texts.

The debate about what to do next in Iraq is framed as if Iraq was an island. Should the US troops leave now or later? Only if the Iraqis meet certain conditions? Stay until "we win"?  Roundly ignored is that the effects of the ways the US presence in Iraq is scaled down depend greatly on a closely related decision: what the US and its allies plan to do about Iran.

The best way to highlight my point is to outline three key alternative scenarios. According to the first, the United States declares "victory" in Iraq (say, claiming that the Iraqis are ready to take care of their own security) and withdraws most of its troops. At the same time, it concludes that Iran's nuclear armament program cannot be stopped, but that like the USSR, Iran can be deterred from using its nuclear bombs. Hence, the United States and its allies can learn to live with a nuclear Iran. In this scenario Iran becomes the superpower of the Middle East, supporting ever more actively and extensively rising Islamist groups from Turkey to Yemen, from Saudi Arabia to Egypt to Palestine. A Shia theocracy is likely to prevail in major parts of Iraq, and Sunnis may well be subject to an even graver bloodshed. In the following years, the United States will be viewed in the region and elsewhere as a paper tiger and as an unreliable ally. Indeed, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are already expressing their concerns that the United States will abandon them and are increasing their anti-American rhetoric. This scenario is close to what the conventional wisdom foresees these days among those who study the Middle East.

I need help in understanding several of the arguments repeatedly made by people who posted comments here in response to my essay on DD about the nature of terrorism. Before I lay out my questions I should note that those who believe that the CIA or the Israeli Mossad were behind 9/11 need not read on. The same holds for those believe that name-calling is a form of argument. I do not believe that I can come to understand their way of thinking, although a good therapist might help them.

1. The implications of the causes of terrorism. Let's assume, as some people imply, that terrorism and other forms of violence are caused only by abuses the US inflicted on people in the Middle East and elsewhere. That the beheading of innocent civilians, the stoning of gay people, the so-called "honor killings," as well as attacks on US ships, airplanes, and embassies are all the result of US actions. WHAT FOLLOWS? Should we now sit back and remove TSA agents and security screening from airports? Stop checking the background of those who seek to travel to the US? Cease to examine the containers that arrive in US ports? In short, invite the terrorists to hit us until they are even, and then they will let us be?

On August 13, I posted the "The Best Way to Cheat"
[http://www.mydd.com/hotlist/add/2007/8/1 3/133817/215/section//_all_].  Within days, I found two items that seem to me to further support my points.

The focus on Security First as the guiding principle of U.S. foreign policy does not refer, as the followers of narrow realism might have it, only to the security of the United States and its allies.  The Primacy of Life principle places a responsibility on the major powers not only to ensure basic security for their own peoples, but also to contribute to the basic security of other peoples.  The legitimacy of the approach relies in part on its consistent application, one that respects life--not American or British or some other Western life--but life simply, indeed all lives.  This entails, under limited conditions, interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign nations.

To sort out where Security First takes us when we consider whether a foreign government acting unilaterally, a "coalition of the willing," or for that matter the United Nations, should send troops into a given nation, I proceed first to discuss the profound change in the moral weight attached these days to sovereignty and to a nation's right to be free from interventions.  I then explore the implications of this change for armed humanitarian intervention and the quest to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons.  In plain English, this chapter asks: when is it okay to bomb or invade someone else's homeland?

The lessons of recent days in the financial markets: If you steal peoples' title to their houses, raid their pension plans, or empty their nest eggs, you better do so on a very big scale.  Stealing on a national level is fine, but on the global level is best.  Only small-time crooks may end up in jail; occasionally even a crook of the Tyco caliber gets into trouble; but the real big ones get bailed out by one government or another.

In the savings and loan financial crisis of the 1980s, investors and managers made irresponsible loans, manipulated their books, and misled those who invested in them. They made out like bandits. When they were caught red-handed (most financial criminals are not), the scale of their shenanigans was so large that millions of law-abiding citizens stood to lose their life savings, homes, and retirement funds. There was even a danger that the crooks would undermine the American economy with their manipulations. Hence the government bailed out the saving and loans banks at the tune of a least 175 billion dollars, which in the `80s was really a lot of money.

Five shoppers at a Witchita, Kansas convenience store simply stepped over the body of 27 year-old LaShanda Calloway who lay on the floor bleeding severely. None stopped to ask if she was in need of assistance. None even bothered to call 911. Ms. Calloway died later that day at a Witchita hospital of injuries the result of a stabbing; she had been an innocent bystander, wounded in someone else’s fight.

Some realists argue that if the United States promotes democracy in places such as Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the opening up of these polities would lead to more Islamist states. Thus democratization would damage U.S. interests, installing even more oppressive regimes in the nations involved--regimes that will promote terrorism in other nations to boot. Some "un-realists" argue that the United States should accept such a risk because theocracies are like childhood diseases that nations may have to endure before they can grow up to become democratic.