POLL

If you like to decided how to spend the money you earn, vote for bush.

If you feel better letting the government decide, vote for Kerry.

don't worry so much about the international crap, most if it won't be any different regardless who's in office. There are probably 12 people in the world who really know what's going on over there and I doubt that any of them read StankNet.

WaterPog said:

If you like to decided how to spend the money you earn, vote for bush.

If you feel better letting the government decide, vote for Kerry.

don't worry so much about the international crap, most if it won't be any different regardless who's in office. There are probably 12 people in the world who really know what's going on over there and I doubt that any of them read StankNet.

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Amen brother.

I think Powell said "in order to be a good leader, you sometimes have to piss people off". Bush made decision given information that we as average citizens will NEVER be privy to. I have to trust the he made the best decisions he could at that time given the information he has. How are all the troops supposed to feel when the nation they support votes in a president who says all their efforts have been a mistake. How do you command with that kind of precedence?

I can't speak to politics for crap. But I can tell you that Bush has put a pretty sizeable increase in my take home pay. I paid enough taxes last year to pay cash for a new M3. Anything that will give me some money back is exactly what I will vote for.

Dave, if Kerry wins, you better not even think of taking the catalytic converters off of your Cobra. You already are driving one of those evil gas guzzling "assault vehicles" you hypocritical commie pinko sympathizer... If you want more power and still want to keep your membership in Greenpeace, I'll sell you my Magnaflow X pipe with cats. I'm thinking of going to a Prochamber.


Oh, just saw "Team America: World Police"

Its freaking hilarious.

HairyCanary said:

What is important to me about GW's belief structure is the conviction that he cannot make mistakes, and that his way is the only Right Way. That's what I mean by "annointed by God". He is still human, but he seems to have lost sight of that fact.

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This is simply your opinion, stated in a way to appear as fact. I've never heard anything about Bush saying that he is infallible - especially justified on the account of religion. You made the claim that he feels that he is "annointed by god" and that because of that he believes he can "do no wrong". You have to admit you've done nothing to support this viewpoint other than just restating it. The bottom line is, of course he is going to stand behind what he has done that he thinks is right, in fact - a lot of people say he’s right, and he has admitted in the debates that has had made mistakes in appointment decisions. Then you do on to talk about flip-floping, an issue I didn't even mention and will leave for the sake of sticking only to points you made in response to my statements.

HairyCanary said:

Well, 80 billion is obviously not enough to deal with bin Laden, since we have not caught or killed him yet. It could be 200 billion if we didn't have to reconstruct Iraq -- keeping in mind that it only needs to be reconstructed because we destroyed it.

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Perhaps, and this is just a guess, the variables at play in catching Osama depend on more than just money? I wonder if we spent 200 billion on figuring out where Hoffa’s body went we might find him? Or maybe, we could determine if OJ really is guilty after all?? For one thing, money doesn’t solve everything, there is no proven correlation between the amount of money spent and the success of a given operation. Secondly, we wouldn’t have spent any significant amount more in Afghanistan if we had not gone into Iraq, we have most of what is necessary for now. The fact is, people are fond of complaining about any foreign military expenditure.

To your second point - you advocate sanctions but complain about the logisitic mess we are cleaning up there? Sanctions and poor government management are what “destroyed” Iraq LONG before March 2003. There are now more megawatts of power on the grid of Iraq than there were before we kicked out Saddam. By June, there will be more power on the grid than has EVER been there, we’re talking pre-gulf war. Also, if you look at the damage as a result of the war, a huge proportion of it is the result of terrorists thinking this is a time to compete for power. Iraqis themselves are responsible for much of the bombing, chaos, and destruction. Would you have made this argument when the Marshall Plan rebuilt all of Europe?

HairyCanary said:

With all due respect to the Kurds, if it comes down to them or Americans, I will give priority to Americans -- it's our own citizens that were killed when the twin towers were destroyed.

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And it will be our citizens again if we don’t do something to stop the movement of terrorism that we are now obviously facing. Assuming that Iraq has no part in all of this is naïve.

I didn’t mention the Kurds to say that they are, expressly, why we went into Iraq, but, you cannot discount the good we did for them, or the evil of Saddam; especially when you are referring to him as a "nuisance". We lost 3000 people and the hands of Osama and company, they lost 300,000 people thanks to Saddam, and he is the nuisance – the comparison is stark.

HairyCanary said:

Alright, tell me how many nations he has attacked while we had 2/3 of his country covered with a no-fly zone. We crippled his country with sanctions, and effectively castrated his ability to do *anything* threatening to other countries. He may have been a threat in the past, but for a number of years before we invaded Iraq a second time, he has been merely an annoyance.

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The US, and your candidate, obviously did not believe that his ability to do “anything” to other nations was castrated. We are talking about terrorism here, no fly zones didn’t stop him from giving $25,000 to families of suicide bombers, all the UN rules in existence did nothing to stop him from plotting to assassinate one of our Presidents.

John Kerry voted for the war, and he believed that there was a good possibility that there were indeed weapons and a threat there. Saddam had a history of hiding things, he broke resolutions left and right, and was finding ways to get around the sanctions to re-start his weapons plans (see oil for food fiasco and darfur report). There really is no debating this issue- 30+ nations agreed to help out, even the UN was threatening to use force but could not do so due to veto power of two nations getting rich off Saddam (again, see oil for food).

HairyCanary said:

If the UN never authorized force, then we should never have used any unless Saddam became a direct threat to the United States or one of her allies.

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We know at least one of the reasons why the UN didn’t use force (see above), even though they puffed up their chest and threatened it. The problem with what you are saying is that “direct threat” is an ambiguous thing. If you support the war in Afghanistan, which incidentally, Kerry does, then you have to follow the same logic. Did the Taliban plan 9/11?? No, but we took them out of power unabashedly. In Iraq, you have a regime breaking resolutions, with a record of funding some terrorism, who plotted to assassinate the President, and was continuing to defy the will of the world. Iraq had YEARS to clean up its act, time was up. If the UN had said ok, then this would have all been justified, right?

HairyCanary said:

Saudi Arabia does more to support terrorists than Iraq. Bin Laden is a Saudi Arabia native. And have you taken a good look at the Saudi's human rights record? Why aren't we invading *them*??

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According to your argument, we're not invading cause the UN didn’t say we could. Obviously, we can’t invade every country that has a human rights problem, or has terrorists within its borders. That is like saying we feed hungry people in Venezuela, why not every hungry person in every country. You cannot take the logical extension of every argument to its end in order to attempt to prove a fallacy. We dealt with Iraq because the issue came up. We are dealing with Iran, Saudi Arabia and the like, who, not remarkably, have cleaned up their act significantly since we showed we mean business. If you read the paper, there are articles all the time talking about the terror arrests made the by governments of these countries. Syria voluntarily gave up their weapons programs and allowed military transparency as a result of Bush-led diplomacy, we gave Saddam the same opportunity on many occasions.

HairyCanary said:

No offense, but I'd like to use this phrase as a demonstration of a problem I think faces our country -- we're declaring war on nouns, because other people are declaring war on nouns. Bin Laden is waging war on "western values"? That's what we tell our self to make it all feel okay. And we're declaring war on "terrorism"?? Neither of these make any sense at all -- if we're going to declare war, it needs to have a goal. Saying that we're going to war on terrorism is like going to war on drugs -- it's a never ending war, it cannot be won, because there is no definition of winning. Watch carefully, and you will see that the real losers in this so-called war are ourselves.

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Are the real losers in the “war on drugs” ourselves as well? Should we not fight drugs because we can't eliminate them completely? Obviously, when you declare war on a noun, it is more for the purpose of a catch phrase to show intent to tackle a serious problem. I agree with you that this is a bit of a euphemism, but I disagree with your assertion that the term is essentially meaningless.

You have to look at not so much the wording of the declaration, but the effect of it. What this really is, is a war on fundamentalist groups who preach hate toward the US, its allies, and other industrialized nations. And they conspire to, and carry out, acts of terrorism on us. That is what 9/11 was about, not some isolated occurrence, but rather part of a greater movment and product of ideology. All of this is largely justified by religion, a minority of the Islamic community who believe that killing Americans and others (ie: Europeans) with “western values” (capitalism, freedom, democracy, women’s rights, etc) is sanctioned by god. It has taken root all over the world and everywhere shares essentially the same doctrine; progress is bad, Christians are infidels, 'we must strike them and their way of life from the planet'. It’s a twisted form of Islam that, most of the Middle Eastern community and world, would like help in defeating. As the recent acts in Russia, Israel, Spain, the Philippines, etc serve to show, "terror" has more substance to it than you may suspect. Will it ever completely go away, no, but we can do a lot to mitigate it. Oh and btw your candidate supports the war on terror.


Ok, I'm done..lol, I do like discussing this stuff - it is tough to do on stanknet cause the situations are more complex then this forum is really designed to deal with.

Oh as far as mustangs go, I should also give a congrats to you for the recent cobra buy - was the color of my choice, hopefully after my rates go down, i'll be able to afford to insure one of those bad boys .

Later,

Scott

Just my 2 cents but who really cares what the rest of the world thinks - about anything. Only a handfull of countries would ever lift a finger to help us in any endeavor. You don't see any other countries helping with the hurricane cleanup in Florida! I'm afraid we are on our own when it comes to protecting our interests - here or abroad. You might have noticed that we took on this role of world sheriff about a hundred years ago out of necessity and it will be some time bfore we can retire from that job. In my opinion it is better to keep those terrorist devils busy over in the middle east where we now have the troops, armor and equipment to deal with them. If we were to ever give up, they would be right back at out our door step. This is not a situation that we will ever be able to just turn our back on and hope it goes away. Remember they declared war on us - it is up to us to stomp a mudhole in their a$$.

MCABOSS said:

Just my 2 cents but who really cares what the rest of the world thinks - about anything. Only a handfull of countries would ever lift a finger to help us in any endeavor. You don't see any other countries helping with the hurricane cleanup in Florida! I'm afraid we are on our own when it comes to protecting our interests - here or abroad. You might have noticed that we took on this role of world sheriff about a hundred years ago out of necessity and it will be some time bfore we can retire from that job. In my opinion it is better to keep those terrorist devils busy over in the middle east where we now have the troops, armor and equipment to deal with them. If we were to ever give up, they would be right back at out our door step. This is not a situation that we will ever be able to just turn our back on and hope it goes away. Remember they declared war on us - it is up to us to stomp a mudhole in their a$$.

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We took our leadership role on the world stage after WWII (1945). We need to care what the rest of the world thinks because, as powerful as we are, we need the rest of the world for our economy to flourish. We cannot take-on the entire world, and there's no need to.

Alliances are made to achieve common goals. Alliances are to the advantage of the members or such agreements wouldn't last. As for our role as an example to world: a "City on the hill" for the world to see, I consider that pure propaganda by our government and I can give you endless examples. We act in our best interests. Period.

I've heard the "it's better to fight them over there" argument before and I'll tell you why that argument is flawed. There are over a billion Muslims in the world. A tiny fraction of a percent are fundamentalist extremists. But the extremists represent a more radical version of a view of the West that many moderate Muslims share to a lesser degree. They see the West as corrupt and lacking morality. They see Western women wearing few clothes which offends them. They see gambling and drinking which offends them. They see corruption and abuse of power in thier own countries which the West supports. They see the West as their murderers. They see a West that aids their enemies and kills their people wtih impunity. So they fight back in the ways that have become their hallmark. When you attack them with military force you kill some, but for every one you kill, two or three more will fall into the extremist camp. We cannot beat them with military force. We are fighting an ideology. Don't think of a finite number of terrorists. There is a near unlimited potential for growth and our occupation of Iraq is feeding them new recruits.

909 said:

Amen brother.

I think Powell said "in order to be a good leader, you sometimes have to piss people off". Bush made decision given information that we as average citizens will NEVER be privy to. I have to trust the he made the best decisions he could at that time given the information he has. How are all the troops supposed to feel when the nation they support votes in a president who says all their efforts have been a mistake. How do you command with that kind of precedence?

I can't speak to politics for crap. But I can tell you that Bush has put a pretty sizeable increase in my take home pay. I paid enough taxes last year to pay cash for a new M3. Anything that will give me some money back is exactly what I will vote for.

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If we allow Bush to ruin our position in the world with incompetent blunders and then write it off with "he knows things we'll never know", you are giving him the go-ahead to do anything. Our invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism. The invasion was demanded in a position paper written by Paul Wolfowitz of the self named "neo conservatives" written in 1992. When Bush appointed that group to powerful posts in the government, the invasion of Iraq was a matter of when, not if.

stock50LX said:

If we allow Bush to ruin our position in the world with incompetent blunders and then write it off with "he knows things we'll never know", you are giving him the go-ahead to do anything. Our invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism. The invasion was demanded in a position paper written by Paul Wolfowitz of the self named "neo conservatives" written in 1992. When Bush appointed that group to powerful posts in the government, the invasion of Iraq was a matter of when, not if.

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Let him ruin our position with the rest of the world. Maybe they will all stay the **** away from us if they think we are crazy.

And if you think we have the same information that he had, you are crazy. The information given to us through our ever so prestigous media is all here-say at best. Have you read Wolfowitz original paper? He is given information hourly on what those guys are up to over there. Things we will never ever know about.

Terrorism sucks
Saddam sucks
End of story. They all need to be removed.

Now, do I agree with how we went about it, maybe not, but it isn't my decision to make. Do I want a spineless coward like Ferry running our country, no. I would rather be known as the Amercian bad ass than the American take it up the ass.

stock50LX said:

We took our leadership role on the world stage after WWII (1945). We need to care what the rest of the world thinks because, as powerful as we are, we need the rest of the world for our economy to flourish. We cannot take-on the entire world, and there's no need to.

WE NEED TO CARE ABOUT WHAT THE WORLD THINKS TO A CERTAIN DEGREE. BUT WE CAN'T LET THAT OPINION STOP US FROM DOING WHAT WE KNOW IS BEST FOR US AND THEM. THIS WORLD WOULD BE VERY DIFFERENT TODAY HAD WE NOT STOOD TALL DUING WW2 AND WENT TOE TO TOE WITH THE SOVIET UNION.

Alliances are made to achieve common goals. Alliances are to the advantage of the members or such agreements wouldn't last. As for our role as an example to world: a "City on the hill" for the world to see, I consider that pure propaganda by our government and I can give you endless examples. We act in our best interests. Period.

WE ARE WORKING THE MIDDLE EAST WITH AN ALLIANCE BUT WE WILL NEVER GET EVERY COUNTRY ON BOARD WITH WHAT WE KNOW WE HAVE TO DO OVER THERE. YOU JUST CAN'T STAND AROUND LIKE CLINTON DID AND SHAKE YOUR FIST AT THEM AND SAY YOU'LL PAY FOR THIS, EVERY TIME THEY HIT US. WE SPENT 12 YEARS TRYING TO GET SADDAM TO CHANGE HIS WAYS BUT IT WAS OBVIOUS THAT WAS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. AS SOON AS THE UN INSPECTORS WE DONE AND GONE HE WOULD HAVE BEEN RIGHT BACK AT DOING WHAT HE WAS DOING.


I've heard the "it's better to fight them over there" argument before and I'll tell you why that argument is flawed. There are over a billion Muslims in the world. A tiny fraction of a percent are fundamentalist extremists. But the extremists represent a more radical version of a view of the West that many moderate Muslims share to a lesser degree. They see the West as corrupt and lacking morality. They see Western women wearing few clothes which offends them. They see gambling and drinking which offends them. They see corruption and abuse of power in thier own countries which the West supports. They see the West as their murderers. They see a West that aids their enemies and kills their people wtih impunity. So they fight back in the ways that have become their hallmark. When you attack them with military force you kill some, but for every one you kill, two or three more will fall into the extremist camp. We cannot beat them with military force. We are fighting an ideology. Don't think of a finite number of terrorists. There is a near unlimited potential for growth and our occupation of Iraq is feeding them new recruits.

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I GUESS THE REAL QUESTION HERE IS WHOS IDEOLOGY IS MORE CORRUPT AND NEEDS TO BE CORRECTED. THESE ARE FOLKS THAT PRACTICE GENDER APARTHEID. THEY DON'T BUILD OR CREATE ANYTHING. IF IT WASN'T FOR OIL MONEY THEY WOULD BE RIGHT BACK WITH THEIR CAMEL CARAVANS IN THE DESERT. UNTIL WE RID THE MIDDLE EAST OF DESPOTS AND AND START THESE FOLKS ON THE WAY TO DEMOCRACY, YOUR RIGHT THERE WILL BE AN ENDLESS SOURCE OF HOLY WARRIORS. JUST MY OPINION.

MCABOSS said:

UNTIL WE RID THE MIDDLE EAST OF DESPOTS AND AND START THESE FOLKS ON THE WAY TO DEMOCRACY, YOUR RIGHT THERE WILL BE AN ENDLESS SOURCE OF HOLY WARRIORS. JUST MY OPINION.

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Caps lock is your friend.

You make the mistaken assumption that "these folks" in the Middle East WANT anything to do with democracy. We Americans are just a little bit bigoted about this, for some reason it seems difficult to most of us to understand that The American Way(tm) is not the only way, or perhaps even the best way. We will never convert the Middle East to our way of thinking, because they are culturally quite different. Let them find their own path, forcing it down their throats is guaranteed to fail.

And if you think only the Middle East is a breeding ground for "holy warriors", I suggest you open your eyes a bit. What exactly do you think we're doing? If it ain't about oil ...

Dave

909 said:

.....Do I want a spineless coward like Ferry running our country, no. I would rather be known as the Amercian bad ass than the American take it up the ass.

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Jon said:

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Rootus said:

Caps lock is your friend.

You make the mistaken assumption that "these folks" in the Middle East WANT anything to do with democracy. We Americans are just a little bit bigoted about this, for some reason it seems difficult to most of us to understand that The American Way(tm) is not the only way, or perhaps even the best way. We will never convert the Middle East to our way of thinking, because they are culturally quite different. Let them find their own path, forcing it down their throats is guaranteed to fail.

And if you think only the Middle East is a breeding ground for "holy warriors", I suggest you open your eyes a bit. What exactly do you think we're doing? If it ain't about oil ...

Dave

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Your right it is about oil - you need and I need it. I don't want to have to back to subsistence farming to survive and besides, I enjoy cruzn in my mustang. The tree huggers and greenpeacers in congress won't let us drill from oil here in the US so we got to get it from over there! We can influence the middle east and we must in order to solve the conflict that has existed for the past 50 years. We can force countries into democracy also - it worked in Germany and Japan - it will work in Afganistan and Iraq. Who is to say that 100 million people deserve to live at the whim of despot. I suspect that as soon as the election is over and the terrorists realize they can't influence our election any more that the situation will be much better.

jordanvraptor said:

Dave, if Kerry wins, you better not even think of taking the catalytic converters off of your Cobra. You already are driving one of those evil gas guzzling "assault vehicles"

you hypocritical commie pinko sympathizer...


If you want more power and still want to keep your membership in Greenpeace, I'll sell you my Magnaflow X pipe with cats. I'm thinking of going to a Prochamber.

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You made up my mind. Ditching the stock H pipe for the Prochamber!

lamrith said:

I am sorry the whole flip flop thing is blown way out of proportion and I can't believe Kerry has not squashed it yet. ..

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Ohh, it IS is it?

Click below to see that its not.

http://johnkerryads.websiteanimal.com/

And I dont like how my hobby is infected with Liberals. Why arent you driving Toyota Prius' and boycotting drag races?

Stock50LX said:

We need to care what the rest of the world thinks because, as powerful as we are, we need the rest of the world for our economy to flourish.

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Our economy will flourish regardless of whether or not people agree with a specific military action – 1) That’s what NAFTA and the WTO are for, to keep protectionism down, regardless of the motivation. 2) Besides, we have a trade deficit tilted significantly on the exporting side, you think they will stop letting us buy goods from them ‘cause Bush stepped on a few toes? No. And lets not forget that this pure speculation on your part – but just for fun – lets go on and test it. 3) Considering how much it appears you feel we’ve bungled our “standing” in the world, don’t you think that some of these economic repercussions you foresee would have ALREADY befallen us? Guess what, we’ve been in war since March ’03, and in disagreement with some other nations since well before that – and nothing has happened. Is it because we really didn’t piss people of as much as you say? Or, could it be that pissing people off has relatively little affect on in a more global economy? Both.

Stock50LX said:

We cannot take-on the entire world, and there's no need to.

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Well that’s good, ‘cause we’re not. Just the people that think they are going to be welcomed in heaven with a 1000 virgins because they killed a westerner on sight. Based on the work going on in countries around the globe, it’s far closer to the “entire world” trying to take on the terrorists.

Stock50LX said:

Alliances are made to achieve common goals. Alliances are to the advantage of the members or such agreements wouldn't last. As for our role as an example to world: a "City on the hill" for the world to see, I consider that pure propaganda by our government and I can give you endless examples.

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Yeah, we’re no “city on the hill” are we? Nothing to be proud of right? Sure there is propaganda out there to promote the US, but I bet if we cut every dime of funding for all of it- or better yet never had it, we’d still have all 15 million of the people who have immigrated here since 1980 seeking opportunity and a better life. I think the fact that the people of this nation, in the form of individual contributions, donate more to aid the people of the world than all other countries national and personal contributions combined is a perfect example of “our role as an example to world”, and like you “ I can give you endless examples”.

Stock50LX said:

We act in our best interests. Period.

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As we should. Period.

“For where the very safety of the country depends on the resolution to be taken, no considerations of justice or injustice, humanity or cruelty, nor of glory or shame, should be allowed to prevail. But putting all questions aside, the only question should be, what will save the life and liberty of the country?” – Machiavelli

Like it or not, it is a realist’s world. Peace is great, diplomacy is honorable, but when it comes down to it – some things, hopefully rare, can’t be solved by reasoning.

Stock50LX said:

But the extremists represent a more radical version of a view of the West that many moderate Muslims share to a lesser degree. They see the West as corrupt and lacking morality. They see Western women wearing few clothes which offends them. They see gambling and drinking which offends them. They see corruption and abuse of power in thier own countries which the West supports. They see the West as their murderers. They see a West that aids their enemies and kills their people wtih impunity.

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And now, a great many of them will and do see us liberators. The ones that brought them a chance to slough off oppression, to vote, and to voice their opinion without fear of torture or a burial in a mass grave somewhere. A recent BBC poll in Iraq found “Seventy per cent of people said that things were going well or quite well in their lives, while only 29% felt things were bad” and “58% said the war was “right” or “absolutely right”. To be fair, I have to admit that there are negative poll indicators as well, most of which are the result of a feeling that the coalition forces “embarrassed” them. Over time, those numbers have changed; we faced and overcame the exact same cultural issues with the people of Japan.

As far as the other views of the West that they have, well, there is not a lot we can do about that. Besides Alhurra, and frequent appearances of our leadership on Al Jazeera, it is difficult to compete with the rampant anti-western bias in Arab media. On the “values” issue, unless you are suggesting that we should tell our women to put more clothes on and are going to reinstate the 18th amendment to please a different culture – I’m not hearing any kind of a suggestion for a solution here.

Stock50LX said:

So they fight back in the ways that have become their hallmark.

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Don’t you mean, try to instill fear, coerce, and attempt to change policy by killing innocent people?

Besides calling terrorism a "hallmark", your statement implies that the West is doing something to the terrorists that is eliciting that response. Oh that’s right we’re ALIVE. Al-Qaida's stated goal is to "unite all Muslims and to establish a government which follows the rule of the Caliphs”. On the road to this is to overthrow nearly all Muslim governments, which are viewed as corrupt, and to drive Western influence from those countries, and eventually to abolish state boundaries. This has little to do with actual things the US or the West has done, other than have troops in the Middle East and to support Isreal, two things we have little control over at this point.

Stock50LX said:

We cannot beat them with military force. We are fighting an ideology.

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We have two choices, one is to abandon Isreal and our military bases in any country the terrorists demand, cut all relations with the middle east and of course the UN as well, and leave them all to kill each other until we have one huge fundamentalist Islamic state (surely with WMDs) to start challenging other parts of the world. This is called appeasement, you may remember that this has been tried before (September of 1938)….and nothing short of this will get jihad off our backs without coming to blows.

The second option is to work with middle eastern nations to reduce the threat – sanction or take action against those that continue to fund or present a threat, allow a more democratic Iraq and Afghanistan to become prosperous and secure, and use their influence in the region to help maintain the stability of the middle east.

We confront this now, or later, I vote for now.

Stock50LX said:

Don't think of a finite number of terrorists. There is a near unlimited potential for growth and our occupation of Iraq is feeding them new recruits.

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First of all, we KNOW there is no finite number, and that left alone that number will grow, that is why it is imparitive to deal with it immediately.

And on the second point...wrong, the terrorist networks are exhausting their resources sending people into Iraq hoping our effort will fail. They understand what a blow this will deal them when we are successful, and that the number of places willing to take them in and support them is shrinking rapidly – arrests are being made all over the world, especially in the Arab nations.

Look, I don't agree with everything about the war or the way it was handled, there are a few legit arguments agianst it - but I'm just not hearing any of them here. Nor do I think they out-weigh the overall task at hand.

Frankenstang65 said:

Our economy will flourish regardless of whether or not people agree with a specific military action – 1) That’s what NAFTA and the WTO are for, to keep protectionism down, regardless of the motivation. 2) Besides, we have a trade deficit tilted significantly on the exporting side, you think they will stop letting us buy goods from them ‘cause Bush stepped on a few toes? No. And lets not forget that this pure speculation on your part – but just for fun – lets go on and test it. 3) Considering how much it appears you feel we’ve bungled our “standing” in the world, don’t you think that some of these economic repercussions you foresee would have ALREADY befallen us? Guess what, we’ve been in war since March ’03, and in disagreement with some other nations since well before that – and nothing has happened. Is it because we really didn’t piss people of as much as you say? Or, could it be that pissing people off has relatively little affect on in a more global economy? Both.




Well that’s good, ‘cause we’re not. Just the people that think they are going to be welcomed in heaven with a 1000 virgins because they killed a westerner on sight. Based on the work going on in countries around the globe, it’s far closer to the “entire world” trying to take on the terrorists.





Yeah, we’re no “city on the hill” are we? Nothing to be proud of right? Sure there is propaganda out there to promote the US, but I bet if we cut every dime of funding for all of it- or better yet never had it, we’d still have all 15 million of the people who have immigrated here since 1980 seeking opportunity and a better life. I think the fact that the people of this nation, in the form of individual contributions, donate more to aid the people of the world than all other countries national and personal contributions combined is a perfect example of “our role as an example to world”, and like you “ I can give you endless examples”.



As we should. Period.

“For where the very safety of the country depends on the resolution to be taken, no considerations of justice or injustice, humanity or cruelty, nor of glory or shame, should be allowed to prevail. But putting all questions aside, the only question should be, what will save the life and liberty of the country?” – Machiavelli

Like it or not, it is a realist’s world. Peace is great, diplomacy is honorable, but when it comes down to it – some things, hopefully rare, can’t be solved by reasoning.




And now, a great many of them will and do see us liberators. The ones that brought them a chance to slough off oppression, to vote, and to voice their opinion without fear of torture or a burial in a mass grave somewhere. A recent BBC poll in Iraq found “Seventy per cent of people said that things were going well or quite well in their lives, while only 29% felt things were bad” and “58% said the war was “right” or “absolutely right”. To be fair, I have to admit that there are negative poll indicators as well, most of which are the result of a feeling that the coalition forces “embarrassed” them. Over time, those numbers have changed; we faced and overcame the exact same cultural issues with the people of Japan.

As far as the other views of the West that they have, well, there is not a lot we can do about that. Besides Alhurra, and frequent appearances of our leadership on Al Jazeera, it is difficult to compete with the rampant anti-western bias in Arab media. On the “values” issue, unless you are suggesting that we should tell our women to put more clothes on and are going to reinstate the 18th amendment to please a different culture – I’m not hearing any kind of a suggestion for a solution here.




Don’t you mean, try to instill fear, coerce, and attempt to change policy by killing innocent people?

Besides calling terrorism a "hallmark", your statement implies that the West is doing something to the terrorists that is eliciting that response. Oh that’s right we’re ALIVE. Al-Qaida's stated goal is to "unite all Muslims and to establish a government which follows the rule of the Caliphs”. On the road to this is to overthrow nearly all Muslim governments, which are viewed as corrupt, and to drive Western influence from those countries, and eventually to abolish state boundaries. This has little to do with actual things the US or the West has done, other than have troops in the Middle East and to support Isreal, two things we have little control over at this point.



We have two choices, one is to abandon Isreal and our military bases in any country the terrorists demand, cut all relations with the middle east and of course the UN as well, and leave them all to kill each other until we have one huge fundamentalist Islamic state (surely with WMDs) to start challenging other parts of the world. This is called appeasement, you may remember that this has been tried before (September of 1938)….and nothing short of this will get jihad off our backs without coming to blows.

The second option is to work with middle eastern nations to reduce the threat – sanction or take action against those that continue to fund or present a threat, allow a more democratic Iraq and Afghanistan to become prosperous and secure, and use their influence in the region to help maintain the stability of the middle east.

We confront this now, or later, I vote for now.




First of all, we KNOW there is no finite number, and that left alone that number will grow, that is why it is imparitive to deal with it immediately.

And on the second point...wrong, the terrorist networks are exhausting their resources sending people into Iraq hoping our effort will fail. They understand what a blow this will deal them when we are successful, and that the number of places willing to take them in and support them is shrinking rapidly – arrests are being made all over the world, especially in the Arab nations.

Look, I don't agree with everything about the war or the way it was handled, there are a few legit arguments agianst it - but I'm just not hearing any of them here. Nor do I think they out-weigh the overall task at hand.

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Interesting points. -Some based on misinterpretation, some contradictory, others have merit. You must be listening to the polls on Fox News. I cannot spend much time on this, so I'll give the short version. You, like Bush, are misinterpreting the nature of the threat. I already explained that. Until you can address the fact that moderates are going to be pushed into the camp of the extremists you are missing the main point. You got the year 1938 correct, but that is the wrong example from history. Munich was used to justify stopping the commies in Vietnam: We have to stop them in VN or we'll be fighting them soon in Mexico -sounds just like what you are selling with regards to the terrorist. We failed in VN, remember? People kill themselves for a cause because they are desperate and they see no hope. Perhaps if you think of them as people and not "terrorists" you might be able to understand. We were not attacked by a NOUN on 9-ll. As for your belief that we are a "City on the hill," you later contradicted by writing that we should and do act in our best interest. To quote the head of our State department: "We don't have friends. We have interests". If we are so altruistic we could stop the genocide in Sudan right now. Lastly, we cannot bring-in democracy like a case of Coca Cola. You have to build institutions to have a working democracy. As soon as we leave Iraq, it will balkanize. If you know something about history you should know the British established the borders after WWI when they acquired the area as a mandate. The boundaries were not based on ethnic groups or self determination. There are other issues with Iraq I haven't even addressed -the Kurds vs the Turks (our allies) for instance.
Anyway, I'd be happy to discuss this further at a different time. I'm sure you will have a reaction to what I have written, but I doubt we will see eye to eye on these issues -ever. I will tell you that I have an advanced degree in history (and my colleague has a PHD in Middle East History) and that I have lived for more than 10 years in Europe and Asia where I wrote reports for our government assessing the manifestations of our policies. I don't do that anymore, though. So, what I am espousing is a little more than just an opinion, it's, maybe, an informed opinion.. However, I can see that it doesn't fit into your theory of how the world works and "It is the theory that tells us what we may observe." A. Einstein.

I should go through this and revise the emotive phrases I have written, but I do not have time. I intend no insults here whatsoever.

stock50LX said:

I cannot spend much time on this, so I'll give the short version.

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hehe

ZeroCool said:

hehe

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I only have one question, how come I cant vote twice on this poll?