From the Texas thread - the debate over the nature of debate

[quote=“mofangongren”]

jdsmith – Regarding WWII, the Japanese bombed us and then Germans and Italians declared war on us. We declared war on them afterwards. Unless post-911 there were a bunch of Iraqi U-boats roaming the eastern seaboard, I don’t quite catch your drift.[/quote]

The drift is, that IMHO, Islamic fundementalism and terrorism has been picking up speed in the past two decades to the point where one rarely can watch the news without hearing of a terror attack. You see German and Japanese attcking in the open. I see Islamic terrorists attacking in the open. I believe this situation is every more threatening than WWII for the US, its allies, and for the rest of the world. I believe there is a war on, a new kind of war, and it is the hardest war to fight, because it doesn’t involve a nation, but an ideology.

I’m not a crusader. I’m not even a Christian. I’m an American and I read quite a bit, about the world, about history and about Wahibist Islam and Islamic Fundementalists in particular. They scare the shit out of me, because every day they try to either blow something I love up or try to subvert the system of government I grew up under and respect.

Fuck Saddam. He got what he deserved. He was an unmitigated monster. He did support terrorism, or what were all those terrorists with Iraqi passports and residences all about? He did have WMD and he used them, and IMVHO he would have used them again and again and again. Where did they go? I don’t know. But, Saddam lost ALL credibility in the 12 years post UN sanctions by evading and ignoring them. He rewarded Palestinan families when their children blow themselves to bits in Israel. No connection to terrorism? My pink ass!

Iraq, if I’m right, is a stepping stone to cleaning up the biggest shithole in the world. A place full of brainwashed radicals who can not strike out aganist their own governments, and are coralled into thinking that the US and Western nations are soley responsible for their insanely difficult lives.

The more you point out your personal opinion that Bush is a liar, and the war is wrong, the more I wonder if you know, or care that the US is not under some kind of psychological attack from the ME, but a very frighteningly real threat.

This is why I feel the war NEEDS to be fought.

[quote=“Hobbes”]Now we’re talking! :slight_smile:

This is exactly what I was hoping to get back to:

----You think that the assumptions that the remove-Hussein crowd were using were/are bogus.

----The people who hold these assumptions believe that they are not bogus.[/quote]

While I might feel that those who are in the “bamboozled” crowd might believe those assumptions are not bogus, I do not extend that to Bush.

The unbamboozling process for American citizens is a painful one. Sheehan went through it – and those who have caught ahold of her statements after her first meeting with the president should understand that it’s possible for people to find their own difficult path to what they understand to be the truth.

Or, to put it another way, it’s never a pleasant thing to suddenly realize that the guy who changed your currency just ripped you off to the tune of USD 200, that the car you bought was a lemon, that your best buddy was stabbing you in the back… and so on. Why would it ever be pleasant to realize that a U.S. president in wartime scammed you?

For all your panting rhetoric to mean anything, one would have to assume that Saddam was not a threat and that no one except Bush believed he was and that only Bush believed it and all while knowing that Saddam was not a threat chose to invade and convinced numerous other nations to go along with us, that the effort has been a failure and that the Iraqis were better off under Saddam and that… forget it. I am glad we went in and I do not see the present situation in Iraq as being so terrible. It is manageable. Difficult but manageable. My only disappointment is that Bush and the team does not seem to be up to finishing the job. What about Iran and Syria?

That’s fair enough, MFGR. If you honestly believe that Bush is doing what he thinks is wrong, rather than what he thinks is right, then that’s your position – and for now I’ll just let it drop right there.

I agree with you about the unpleasant nature of the unbamboozling* process, btw. I’d add that I feel it’s a part of human nature (not wanting to admit one was wrong) and that it applies pretty much equally to people on both sides. But I agree nobody likes to be unbamboozled, and the unbamboozlation facilitators (i.e. those delivering the bad news) are always going to come in for some undeserved flack.

-Hobbes

*Another great word. By the way – did you catch my use of “bolgerian” as an adjective in my original post ? I’m telling you – a lot of people give Richardm all the Funny Poster awards (not that he isn’t deserving) but every time I see ol’ Ray’s picture up there now I still laugh. :slight_smile: :notworthy:

Valid points.

Absolutely. The fundamentalists scare the crap out of me as well. The Saudis, IMHO, are the purveyors of some of the worst anti-American and anti-Western ideology. Not really ideology, even – it’s almost a kind of pornography.

For years he was our monster, he’s far from being the only monster, and he was a largely impotent monster. He deserves far worse than we’ve given him so far, but IMHO it’s taking our eye off the ball to spend such massive military resources on a guy who amounts to being a dimestore hood.

All nice points, except that again it’s going after the low-hanging fruit. Perhaps Bush thought Iraq was going to be an “easy” fight we could wage at the same time as the Afghan war. By going into Iraq, we also played right into the worst conspiracy theories of everybody else in the region – all the suspicions about oil and that Bill Kristol New American Century stuff signed onto by Bush’s cabinet members put some substance onto those rumors. Straightening out Afghanistan (a big pile of dust as far as most people are concerned) first would have gone a long way toward establishing some street credibility.

IMO, screwing Saddam, while tempting, was a bit of dessert to be savored only after doing the hard hearts-and-minds work necessary to deprive the terror networks of their recruits.

Ages ago there was the great Peter Sellers movie “The Mouse that Roared”, in which a tiny English-speaking duchy (Grand Fenwick) in the middle of France tried to instigate a war with the United States precisely to get massive redevelopment money. Just saying that in the ME there might have been a lot of prior groundwork necessary before we would ever have been greeted as “liberators.”

It might be a stepping stone, but there are plenty of stepping stones. I agree on the problem as you characterize it here, I think invading Iraq increased the problems instead of reducing them. Frankly, I would have made Afghanistan a huge success – shown the Islamic world the best possible face of the United States, and made Afghanistan a showpiece for them.

I agree with the Afghan war, and 9-11 is real to me. I’d be the first to want to see OBL rotting in hell. Al Qaeda can eat the peanuts from out of my fen-bian. But that doesn’t change the fact that I think Bush is a lying sack of crap who has diverted an enormous amount of U.S. military and economic power into an effort that has been massively counterproductive for the overall effort to get the muslim world back on track with solving their problems instead of blaming us for everything.

That a majority of Americans now feels misled about the war and feels that the Iraq war has not helped us is an indication of the larger realization going on. I see a man who has shitcanned every person who has tried to tell him any truths that didn’t jive with his preconceived notions or his political message. I see a man who is glad to use 9-11 imagery for partisan political purposes. Far from binding the nation together, I see a guy who can’t even have people who might disagree with him attend his taxpayer-funded social-security “town hall” meetings. “Out of touch” would be a highly generous way to characterize his presidency.

Please, MFGR
, we are begging you here…

You…r posts … exhibit … absurd…ness[/quote]
In the spirit of the poster to which it refers, I thought I would dowdify Hobbes’ comment to a more correct form.

MFGR, this has been a difficult day in the ole IP, and I thank you for not going off the deep end, as I did…before I clicked preview and didn’t like what I saw.

Kudos to you sir. :notworthy:

[quote]
That a majority of Americans now feels misled about the war and feels that the Iraq war has not helped us is an indication of the larger realization going on. I see a man who has shitcanned every person who has tried to tell him any truths that didn’t jive with his preconceived notions or his political message. I see a man who is glad to use 9-11 imagery for partisan political purposes. Far from binding the nation together, I see a guy who can’t even have people who might disagree with him attend his taxpayer-funded social-security “town hall” meetings. “Out of touch” would be a highly generous way to characterize his presidency.[/quote]

The majority of Americans feel safe. 911 has passed with no further attacks on US soil. In their minds, I feel, they think it’s over. Remember an American’s attention span is about as loing as…as…so watch the Yankees last night? :blush:

I agree that Bush in single minded and if what he says is true, that he doesn’t much watch TV and or read the newspaper, he’s missing something.

But listen, WE all seem to read them and watch it, and look what happens to us? IMHO, Bush has the best information available, and no, it is not always 100% accurate, but it’s a hell of a lot better than what POwerline.com gets. I don’t want him watching Fox news, or reading DailyKos.

I want his eyes on the real threat, and like it or not, that threat is squatting in the desert and shooting out tentacles into the world.

We do have problems in the US that do need tending. I will never deny that. But what’s the point of balancing the budget if some sillybilly rams an airplane into a nuclear power plant? I want that sillybilly meeting his God in his own land thanks to a well sighted US Marine, rather than over NY, my home state, which seems to be an easy, and preferred target.

Peace

jds

[quote=“mofangongren”]
That a majority of Americans now feels misled about the war and feels that the Iraq war has not helped us is an indication of the larger realization going on. I see a man who has shitcanned every person who has tried to tell him any truths that didn’t jive with his preconceived notions or his political message. I see a man who is glad to use 9-11 imagery for partisan political purposes. Far from binding the nation together, I see a guy who can’t even have people who might disagree with him attend his taxpayer-funded social-security “town hall” meetings. “Out of touch” would be a highly generous way to characterize his presidency.[/quote]

Presidents who have used imagery for partisan political purposes:


The Civil War

The Spanish-American War

The Korean War

The Vietnam War

The Gulf War

So, could you possibly cut Georgie Jr. a little slack, seems like he’s only keeping with the trends of the Oval Office. :wink:

Thank God you didn’t post any pictures of Clinton with a cigar!

Remember Little Jimmy Carter and his little cardigan that he wore around the White House to show all of America that even the president of the US was doing his part to save oil. Gosh. I sure do miss those days when an American president stood for something important like… um… well… he at least tried… to … stand…symbolize… for something, er nevermind.

[quote=“fred smith”]Thank God you didn’t post any pictures of Clinton with a cigar!
[/quote]


I wonder if that was before or after Mizz. Monica :s

Why are they all Republicans? Except Teddy.

Fred, perhaps Bush should have gotten out his cardigan. Who better than a guy with a cabinet full of oil-industry insiders to say it’s time for us to get off the oil teat. The great presidents have always played against type – “only Nixon could go to China” and so on.

[quote=“Richardm”][quote=“Namahottie”]
Presidents who have used imagery for partisan political purposes:
[/quote]
Why are they all Republicans? Except Teddy.[/quote]

The fact they are all Republican is a side note in my scarcism.

[quote=“Namahottie”][quote=“fred smith”]Thank God you didn’t post any pictures of Clinton with a cigar!
[/quote]


I wonder if that was before or after Mizz. Monica :s[/quote]

Isn’t she under the desk?

[quote=“Namahottie”][quote=“Richardm”][quote=“Namahottie”]
Presidents who have used imagery for partisan political purposes:
[/quote]
Why are they all Republicans? Except Teddy.[/quote]

The fact they are all Republican is a side note in my scarcism.[/quote]

Use of imagery has been around for a long time, and has definitely not been used only by Republicans.

[quote]Take the election of 1800, which pitted John Adams against Thomas Jefferson. The candidates remained largely above the fray, but their surrogates were merciless. A Jefferson partisan described Adams as “old, querulous, bald, blind, crippled (and) toothless,” according to the World Almanac of Presidential Campaigns. An Adams-allied newspaper in Connecticut wrote that “murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will be openly taught and practiced” if Jefferson was elected.

President James Madison was derided as a pawn of his wife, Dolly, in 1812 and Andrew Jackson was labeled a killer in the 1828 campaign. Republican John Fremont vigorously denied opposition charges in 1856 that he was a Catholic.

In more recent times, the so-called “daisy ad” that [Democratic] President Lyndon Johnson ran on television in his 1964 race against Republican Barry Goldwater was the epitome of fear-mongering. The 60-second ad, which ran only once, featured a girl picking petals off a flower and an ominous sounding countdown that ended in an atomic blast, implying that Goldwater was a threat to the planet itself.[/quote]

[quote=“jdsmith”][quote=“Namahottie”][quote=“fred smith”]Thank God you didn’t post any pictures of Clinton with a cigar!
[/quote]


I wonder if that was before or after Mizz. Monica :s[/quote]

Isn’t she under the desk?[/quote]
And I guess that’s him leaning over to shut her up as Hilary enters the room…