...Ad Infinitum

Robbie commented on my last entry:  "Your counter-arguments are so well thought out and expressed so succinctly, I am amazed that any of them have the cajones to respond to you."
Ah, but respond they do.  Deeper and deeper into the Republican spin.  In fact, I think there are arguments here that even the official Republican Spin Machine would find novel...

The world and the Iraq's are better off with out Sadaam in power.

Watch the news. Look at the pictures of the Iraqi dead. Look at the videos of people in orange jumpsuits begging for their lives. (Think about it for a minute...what did they have to do to those people to get them to beg like dogs for the video cameras? Would you, or your wife, or your son, perform like that for your kidnappers, unless you had been tortured to insensibility?) Had we not attacked Iraq, these things would NOT be happening.

Let me give you an analogy. The Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor but yet we declared war on Germany. With what your saying we should have never went to war against Hitler and thousands of life's would have been spared and the people of France would be speaking German today.


The actual sequence of events here was that we declared war on Japan because of the Pearl Harbor attack, and Germany, being Japan's ally, then declared war on us.
Hitler and Sadaam Hussein have absolutely nothing to do with each other. By the time we got around to Hitler, he had most of continental Europe under his thumb and was going after Great Britain. He had powerful, ruthless allies in the Japanese. Nothing Sadaam had or did even approaches Hitler's power or evil. It's been sixty years since Hitler's demise, and we still use him as the yardstick by which we measure the evil of any head of state. And if we want to completely demonize someone, we say how much like Hitler he is. I doubt that, sixty years from now, or even six, anyone is going to use Sadaam in the same way.


Your hate for George Bush clouds your thinking,Like I sent to you earlier its OK when a Democrat goes to war but wrong when a Republican goes to war. A passive approach to terrorism will put us back in those Clinton years.


Bill Clinton was not passive. I remember vividly, during his second administration, when things were getting hot and heavy with the scandal and impeachment issues, that every time Clinton proposed military response to anything, the "other side" accused him of trying to start a war in order to take the focus off the Monica problem. You can't have it both ways, though I know Mr. Clinton's critics were famous for that...

Mr. Clinton did NOT wage a pre-emptive war in Bosnia. He lent U.S. backing, power and credibility to the forces that were fighting the ethnic cleansing in the region. That is a far, far cry from what Mr. Bush has done in Iraq. If you want to talk about comparing apples and oranges, this would be an example of exactly that.

I'll say it again...if you think Mr. Bush has done a good job, vote for him. It's not that I hate George Bush. I'm sure he's a perfectly nice man. I hate what he has done. I don't have to arm myself with anyone's political spin to make my personal judgment of his performance in office, and find him sadly and direly wanting.


You;ve already voted, now let the rest us have a chance




I've never once told you how to vote. In fact I've repeatedly told you to cast your vote for President Bush if he is your choice. Arguably half the people in the country see things the way you do, and are going to vote for Mr. Bush. I can't stop them. I know it's useless to try.

But I have felt compelled to rebut some of the Republican spin included in your emails, if only to point it out as exactly that---spin. Politics. "Stretching the truth." Making the details of any situation line up to reflect badly upon your opponent and favorably upon you. Both parties

are guilty of this. It's what politics are all about in this day and age, and I hate it. I hate that our marvelous, precious right to vote in this country is poisoned by this malicious bull****. I hate that the American public responds so readily to it. I hate that we, the citizens of the United States of America, are SO ready to fight each other that we will beat each other over the heads with everything from politics, to religion, to what we ate for breakfast this morning.
 

Let's start with 1998 Desert Fox, a Mr Bill offensive to rid Saddam of his WMDs The press played it to get the focus off of Monica ( which our President stated "oral sex isn't really sex" explain that one to my then 12 year old boy)


If President Clinton had had his way, none of this would ever have been made public. It was the Republicans that endlessly dug and dug until they dug it up, and the press that paraded it so relentlessly in front of the public. I really don't think you can blame Mr. Clinton for that.

You will also note that I refer to the president as "Mr. Bush" "President Bush" or at my most disrespectful, "Bush." I believe that the office of president deserves respect. No matter who is in it. Or was in it.

 
Now lets talk about the UN and Bosina and the forces that Clinton lead into there. What is there Exit stratogy. Oh thats right, there isn't any that's why were still there. Lets look at the UN and the Exit stratogy in Korea. Oh thats right there isn't any where still there. At least we have one in Iraq. Get them a Democracy retrain there military so they can defend themsellves and the we can leave. Send in the UN as Kerry wants and we have Bosina and Korea all over again.


Exit strategy? Exit strategy? "Get them a Democracy?" You can't "get" someone a democracy. One of the fundamental rights of any country is to choose its own form of government. What would be our reaction if a foreign power invaded us in order to "get" us whatever form of government they believed in?

"Retrain their military?" Well, that's obviously going very well, judging by the field full of dead bodies the other day.

Your reasoning WAY oversimplifies the situation. Assuming the administration's exit strategy DOES include "getting them a democracy and retraining their military," at the rate it's going, this could take years. Decades. And WAY more people than the administration currently has invested in Iraq. Draft, anyone?


You got to be kidding on the draft issue. It was a democrate in the Senate that proposed a draft. The Iraqies will be voting for the first time in Jan. The demoracy is almost there. Just like John Kerry your always looking at the negative instead of the good things that are going on. Like you said if you think John Kerry can do a better job vote for him.

  And so I will.