Camille Paglia's Preemptive Military Action

I stopped short while reading Camille Paglia's scattershot ramblings on Salon with this paragraph, combining pedestrian insights with half-truths and unsupported claims.

The slaughter of the Hertzbergs and other Jews at Chabad House should be a wake-up call to Western liberals who believe that jihadism can be defeated through reason and happy talk. Only other Muslims can launch the stringent internal reform necessary to stomp this barbaric extremism out. But the events in Mumbai confirmed my opinion about the looming problem of a nuclear Iran: While I oppose all American military operations and bases in the Mideast, I continue to believe that Israel, whose security is directly threatened, has every right to take preemptive military action against Iran.

I agree that only Muslims can create the conditions and force the reforms to prevent the Mumbai-like attacks in the future. But everything else Camille says lacks much sense to me. There is no evidence that the attack was some how an attack on the West in the name of jihadism. Westerners died, but it appeared that the attack was aimed at regional greviances relating to India's northern border. I don't know of any Western policy makers liberal or otherwise who believe that reason and happy talk are enough to defeat terrorism. Obviously, defense, intelligence, economic aid, people to people contacts, and diplomacy are indispensable as well. I doubt that Isreal's desire to take military action against Iran or anyone else can be decoupled from US capabilities, including military operations and bases in the Middle East. Isreal's so-called desire to attack Iran may have as much credabilitywith Iran's so-called desire to have the bomb-- a lot of dangerous wordsaimed at riling up their respective constituancies. Finally, as a matter of ethics and international law, I deny that any country has the right to take preemptive military action, as such action is contingent on perceptions of intentionality. Just because I think you are dangerous, that doesn't entitle me to hit you. It does entitle meto be aware of the possibility that you may strike me and protect myself accordingly if you do. When I was at school, I read a study from the Rand Corporation for the Defense Department that proposed this as a response in a scenerio of nuclear conflict-- that it was more rational to absorb the first blow than to strike on the belief that an attack was imminent. The fact is that mutually assured destruction kept the peace through the Cold War, and I see no reason why MAD cannot continue to keep the peace so long as even enemy nations are held accountable as nations to terrorist entities that they harbor.