I don't think that is entirely true. Clinton did go after them only to have the UN and other elected officials to chew his ass about it. But then it wasn't a huge problem compared to now. Then it was Yugoslavia that got all the attention. Either one was a problem but Milosevic more than likely would of controlled one of THE biggest terrorist states if it wasn't stopped or better yet, take Europe into another repeat of WW1&2. Austria blamed Serbia for the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in 1914 which led to the Austrian invasion of Serbia and World War I. If Milosevic got an itch to dig up old wounds over once by gone territory disputes, it would of been another down ward spiral towards an unstable Europe.

People seemed to forget the evidence found after we went in that there was WMD in Iraq at sometime before we went into this war. Saddam surely lead on like he did. Who was working on Nuclear weapons before us? Why did Stalin make such a mad rush to Berlin at all cost? Where did we find Germany and Japan's most technological weapons of the time?

Look at it this way. Who has or had all the cash flow and the means to fund terrorist organizations/states to no end. If your fighting a battle/war, what do you do strategically? Look at a map of the middle east and what do you see? What do responsible adults do with fighting kids?

Do you honestly think our leaders are going to let us in on any kind of strategic plan? Only for the opponent to get the gest of what we're up too?

What is happening in Africa that is so different from the middle east? Isn't it Muslim extremist commiting genocide against it's neighbors and funded by who?

Genocide is defined by the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. Do you see what is happening?

Does anyone think of these things? LOL

Ben, your right their sheep. LOL

my point exactly

you have a problem with their policy on YOU

but think it's okay to enforce the same policy on THEM

eye for an eye eh?

or the golden rule?

There is no moral equivalence here. One offers a government of the people and by the people(freedom); the other offers fear and a life under tyranny. Greenman you sound like a fan of Prime Mister Chamberlain.

I see no wrong in spreading freedom and repetitive government. In some cases, governments will move that direction on their own, others will need economic coercion and others will require the sword.

So you judge the worth of repetitive government vs. continuous government balances the collateral damage of installing it or reinstalling it? And these repetitive governments would have the legitimacy to launch wars and crush internal resistance continuous governments lack?

100% correct. Why? History has proven Democratic societies do not practice wars of aggression, fundamentaism, terrorist training camps, genocide, slavery and a bunch of other discusting things. It's our duty, as the biggest dawg on the planet, to move when we see it, especially when it affects our or our allies intrests, not only to make the world a better place for the free peoples around globe but in the intrest of thier people.

Agreed. We just need to do it right... No politics. No greed. Just go in and help those that are unfortunate.

beerhunter your last post made me think of Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" It is good reading (but very complex, I had to read each paragraph 3 times before I could understand it). It deals with ultimate truth and those who think they know the truth and the interations between them. I just finished reading it for English class.

now that I'm done with with my reading advice, Even if we have the duty, do we have the right to go and cause instabilities in governments to inject models of our own? Wouldn't those people find it hard that you are changing the basis of their lives? Wouldn't this influence their views of us? A liberating army could become a occupying army in the eye of the public. And in the long run I think that will only hurt us, Mainly by influencing the lives of this future generation to hate the US, which leads to more attacks against the USA.

PS What are the opinions of the word "terrorist." IMHO I think that it is the worst word ever, it shows how blind the american public is to outside views. Instead of calling a attacker a, lets say, Al Qaida supporter, they are immeadiatly labeled as a terrorist, grouping them together as just a group that hates the US.*Got to go eat, my continue later*

Nevertheless I think we'll all be alright if we just remember my sig.

Gulp:
I think terrorists are defined as someone who uses deadly force on civilian targets to draw attention to their cause. It's surely not limited to al Queda; the western world identifies many groups as terrorists rather than legitimate political parties. Are you arguing that it's part of the culture of the middle east to blow themselves and women and children up with bombs over political differences? Because I don't believe that at all. I believe that it's a bunch of assholes who lack the courage or ability to make change in their region with nonviolent means. For nonviolent (not necessarily peaceful) political change mechanisms, look to Ghandi and how India changed; look at the US civil rights movement and how it transformed America. For a better feel about how much culture influences action in the middle east, get some friends from there and listen.

When your cause is not so just, though, you rely on fear and intimidation. I'm sure you'll turn this around on the USA, but you don't see the US Army blowing up civilians just to make a point; every care is taken to prevent collateral damage.

I find it funny that the same people who would NEVER go into Iraq or other dictatorships will bitch and moan that the US isn't doing enough to provide AIDS drugs to Africa and isn't redistributing wealth more fairly around the world. Is your goal then to prolong the plight of those suffering in tyranny as long as possible? The rest of the world should be glad that the US still has the blind optimism and the courage to TRY and improve things rather than just sitting in a committee, hearing that it's impossible, and just settling for the current status quo. Did you see the Afghanistan women at the Olympics for the first time since the Taliban? Have you seen some of the interviews with Afghan women doctors and lawyers allowed to practice their skills again? That level of oppression was ok for the world though, right, because the Taliban had the strength to take over and oppress and who are we to say "that's not right"? Give me a break.

But who are we to enforce right or wrong? (since right and wrong are detemined by morals and ethics, which are mostly detemined by religous beliefs in the world) Just because we can doesnt mean we always should. I mean... lets go after Russia, I mean Putin is becoming more and more oppressive, what about China... lets go kick some asian ass they are oppressive and have bad people.

I dont get the whole "they are bad people we should fight them" aspect of how the US works currently. I can understand Afghanistan, but Iraq was stupid and pointless. yes there was a bad man there... But there are many other bad men with many more tools and money at their disposal. But none of them tried to kill lil boy bush's daddy!

Also via Islamic teachings, oppression of women is just how it is. (I know 2 women who married into pakistani families and have become property more or less. they live normal lives here but when they travel to Pakistan yearly they must remain in the gowns, and must follow all the male insecurity aspects of Islamic culture). Its hard to conduct a "hey now lets not be oppressive" war on a religious belief.

And no I dont believe the US should provide more foreign aid. the US should stop funding all middle east countries ie: Egypt and Isreal.

I think this thread is getting a little too out of hand for me to contribute to. After reading the stuff that beerhunter says, my stomach literally aches. Obviously my mindset and how I feel this country should be run differs so far from the right that to contrast it is to compare day and night.

First, we've got Lothar talking about "a government of the people and by the people(freedom)", where in the current state of things, and the arguments he's already posted about leaders doing what they think is right irregardless of how the (uninformed, etc.) populace feel about, totally contradict themselves. The USA is the "land of the free", yes, and unless we're actually expanding our land to encompass the rest of the world, we have no reason to force feed the same ideas onto other soverign nations. If this was really a government of the people and by the people, then how is it that the government is doing so much that the people object to and feel is wrong? Sure, we've got the far right who think war in any form is a good thing, and going out with "the sword" to spread freedom and justice is right, but then we've got everyone to the left of that... even including people right of the center that feel that this war is wrong. If this was really a representative government, wouldn't we have more than such a small percentage of people (mainly the actual members of the military and the far right) thinking it's the best thing to do?

What I find funny is that the more the war goes on, the more the soldiers are actually disagreeing and blantantly disobeying orders to continue the war in Iraq, if that's what you want to call it. This forced reconstruction is ripping up the lives of nearly the entire country just so we can put into place a system we think is best for another soverign nation. This is their land, this is their oil, this is their people, these are their cities, but WE are choosing how they should live, they should build, they should work. I don't think that's right at all. And you know, the general public wouldn't think all of this is so wrong if GWB went into Iraq in the first place saying we were going to fix the situation, to right the wrongs of the past, and to make good on our mistakes. But no, he uses the war on terror as a scapegoat, and goes in to enforce his agenda without the public knowing a thing about it. I bet if the Iraqi public knew that's why we were going in, and this occupation wasn't just the end result of forced weapons inspections because we didn't believe the UN's task force knew what they were doing, that we wouldn't have so much insurgence in the first place.

I too see no wrong in the spreading of freedom and repetitive government IF they (other soverign nations) willing choose to go that route on their own. I do however see everything wrong with force feeding these ideals onto them, and making them be a model after us. These people have lived under tyranny (a lot of them their entire lives), you can't just go in and totally rip the system apart from the ground up, and expect it to work. The reconstruction of Iraq is something that needed international planning, from A-Z, and not this fly-by-night do as we go crap that's going on now. We should have had a plan for everything from the beginning, but sadly going into Iraq in the first place was not to force reconstruction at all, so this is more or less doomed to either fail, or be an eteranally ongoing process. I totally disagree with "requiring the sword" to make people follow OUR IDEAS of how a government should be run. And what's going to happen when we go into North Korea and try to do the same thing and they unleash nuclear weapons on us? That's gonna be quite lovely, and all you far-right military extremists will get to share in the wealth of birth defects and absolute ruin that is left of our country. And who are we going to blame? It sure isn't going to be me.

Back to beerhunter.... democracies don't practice wars of aggression or fundamentalism? What do you think the civil war was? Or does that one not count because we did it to each other? You don't think this force feeding of democracy in the middle east is any way fundamental? Just because our basic principles aren't in line with those of say Islamic beliefs, doesn't mean we aren't being fundamentalistic in our foreign policy. If anything, one could say that our basic ideas of freedom and justice are the very things we're going to war over, and in that case this is a war of fundamentalism. Maybe you need to go look fundamentalism up in the dictionairy. Democratic societies don't practice slavery either? Hahaha, yeah, you seriously need a history lesson. The only thing our democratic society hasn't practiced, is genocide. And I totally disagree that it is our duty to enforce this on other people. Maybe my history is a little rusty, but I don't remember the founding fathers saying anything about spread this sense of freedom and justice to the entire world. That's why it's our land of the free. They created a country, a society, a government based on these ideas of freedom and justice so we could live in peace, not us and any parts of the world we felt it necessary to spread our ideas upon.

This forced fed democracy crap is just as bad as the forced fed spiritulism/religion as it is in North Korea. There is little different from us imposing "freedom and justice in the form of democracy" on the Middle East than there is the Middle East imposing their strict and literal Islamic beliefs on us. I would venture to say there is almost no difference at all. And it makes me sick. I think it's all well and good that we (the population of the US and those who voluntarily come here) enjoy our freedom and justice, but it is definitely not our duty to force it on other people, and in that I will always disagree with Lothar and beerhunter.

And to reference all of this "in the interest of their people" makes me want to throw up. Yeah, I'm sure it was really in the interest of their people, that's why they stood by and did nothing on their own. It's not like we're going in to help the people rise up and overcome tyranny... no, we're going in to force our agenda as we see fit.

pH, if you look at the big picture, the U.S. has probably caused more civilian deaths in our night-time missiles strikes than this entire terrorist movement has. Yeah, I'm sure we try to minimize the collateral damage, but when you send a missile in to take out an entire building in order to kill 2 or 3 intended targets, I bet the civilians don't take notice that you were trying to minimize collateral damage. We may not be doing it to draw attention to our cause, but we're still killing civilians just like everyone else. It's obvious you don't agree with the fundamentals of Islam or the ideas of martys, but a lot of the people we're trying to work with in the middle east do. To them, it's honorable and the highest level of righteousness they could achieve to strap a bomb to their chest and to martyr themselves for their religion. These are religious differences to them, the politics just get in the way. To us, this is politics, to them, this is right and wrong.

Obviously I disagree with our foreign policy, but I don't think it's our job to go out and fix the rest of the world. If there was some global unification and agreement on it, then it would be about humanity, but as it stands, it's about us being world police because our leader says it's right. This isn't about terror right now, it's about us doing what we think is right, the rest of the world be damned. I'm more inclined to let the ideas of Survival of the Fittest take over, and for the Middle East to weed itself out. If eventually they destroy each other, then so be it... this is the byproduct of religious extremism. As we can never hope to get religion as a factor out of this equation, we really can't hope to solve their problems. Our country has such a huge deficit that I don't feel we're in any place to be spending the kind of money like we are in Iraq. Not to mention, if the situation in Iraq ever is concluded, are we going to move onto to another country and spend a few more hundred billion fixing their problems? No wonder my health insurance is goign up, and I can't count on society security to be there when I'm older... because we're spending all this money worrying about other countries and their problems, and seem to totally be ignoring the future of our own people. I think there is a fine line between spending our excess effort and resources making the world a better place, and spending what we would normally spend on our own people and instead on the rest of the world. I believe GWB and his administration have crossed that line distinctly, and unless something changes, I won't be able to live out the course of my life as I should in our society, because we ended up spending too many hundreds of billions on other countries, and not enough on our own. And that's why I resent the way the government is spending my tax dollars.

OK, given that this is a proper counter-argument :) , and makes good sense to boot, one more reply...

I agree with your view that where the river ends is more important than its bends, so to speak. But at some point the river (to stick with the metaphor) is in danger of taking too many twists and turns and drowning too many lives for it to end anywhere that you can look back and say: "But wasn't it worth it though?". Sometimes the end does not justify the means, because the end is the means. Democracy cannot be imposed (sic) when, and only when, it suits us.

About blame: I'm not pointing fingers to the US (or the UK, or Holland for that matter) and going: "You were a bad boy!". For me it is a matter of not forgetting the past so we are not forced to repeat it. Examining where we went wrong, and making sure we learn from this in our foreign policy, is part of fixing the problem. An ounce of prevention, you know?

See, Bush would have gained far more respect in my eyes if his let's-invade-Iraq speech went something like this:

"My fellow Americans. As you know, there is an evil dictator at work in Iraq. He is a threat to his neighbours, and an oppressor of his people. He kills men, women and children without regard. More seriously, he has been able to do so because past governments in the West supported him, or tacitly condoned his actions.

I am not shirking off our share in the responsibility for this. Past US governments have supported this dictator, and sold him arms. But today this is going to change.

Today, we, the present United States goverment, will accept responsibility. The US is a Nation that is prepared to admit to its mistakes, to learn from them, and to change its ways. It is prepared to make amends and to be an example in a new world policy where justice and responsibility prevails over selfish interest and economic greed. We are going to make this world a better place, a just place for everyone, where terrorism will find no fertile soil in the discontent and suffering of disenfranchised people.

And we are going to start by cleaning up the mess that we, the Western nations of this world, helped create. We will depose the dictator Saddam Hussein and do everything in our effort to return democracy to the Iraqi people."

Instead, we get contrived shit like "Oh, that oblong shadow in this aerial photograph just might be a WMD laboratory... And Saddam just might have some spurious connection with the 9/11 terrorists, like occupied the same world continent at some point in time...". If his motives were so pure and noble, why didn't he just say what they were?

Because they weren't so pure and noble.

excellent speech nexxo
if you run I'll vote for you
but not any of the other politicians (aka liars)

Joe- Nations moving toward democracy we leave alone and there will always be a few that fall inside a grey area. However, others are clearly fair game, i.e. North Korea.

Torin- Obviously that was well thought out and well written. However, I think the weakness in your argument is that it assumes that the people in these countries have some type of collective voice and choose to live under a dictatorship.

In terms of a democratically elected leader making unpopular decisions…The Presidency was set up for that very reason. The idea behind the office is to ensure stable continuity of government and to have someone who could make unpopular decisions in the best long-term interests of the Republic. It is not meant to be a populous office. The same is true of the US Supreme Court. On the other had the Senate and House of Reps are very populous bodies and are meant to be politically unstable. If you really like government, I highly recommend reading the Federalist Papers.

Look at civil rights a civil rights for example. It was not popular to give African Americas/minorities equal rights in this county. In fact, President Johnson knew that a vote in the house and senate would fail. Thus, much of civil rights was “ridden” into bills and some was made law by an “activest” Supreme Court.

nexxo- I agree the guiding philosophy must always be widening freedom. I think for the most part America has held the position. I agree in advance there are some instances where that was not true. However, wining the cold war was the only way to get us to where we are right now...look at eastern Europe, German reunification etc...

In terms of Saddam having something to do with 9/11, I never gave that much credence anyway since the BA'ATH Part is extremely secular. However, the WMD was a valid concern and as I have said earlier. Saddam certainly lead on as though he had the WMD and intelligence is usually a lot of educated guessing.

There is nothing in the Koran that condones this sort of activity. It's the same thing as bombers of abortion clinics operating in the name of God. Because some people do this, does that make it right in the eyes of all Christians? It's the equivalent of the Manson murders where someone told gullible people that a higher power compelled them to do wicked things. Or the Japanese doomsday cult with poison gas in the subways. Should that be ok? It was endorsed by their leader after all.

A pretty weak argument.

Here you go a nice little read :)

http://medienkritik.typepad.com/blog...kritik_vs.html

My guess is that I have had the most exposure living and working with Muslims of anyone posting in this thread. I am with you on this one. My experience is that Muslims come in all flavors, just like Christians, Jew and Buddhists and most are not extremists.

As a note most of the Muslim men, I met had one wife...and she seemed to be the one really in charge. That phone would ring and you could tell by the look on their face. Not much different from our culture :D

There will always be some segment of a population acting out a widespread cultural belief in its logical extreme. Precious few belief systems are harmless when fully thought through and acted upon.

There is a vague line between the evil acts of nationals and their government's ultimate responsibility. We shift this line pragmatically, deliberately obscuring it. So when soldiers do torture it is some bad apples acting alone. Certainly no foreign governments should launch commando operations to "take out" those criminals. When the US demanded Afghanistan hand over Osama bin Laden, just after 9/11, the sovereign state Afghanistan responded that while it condemned whoever planned or facilitated the 9/11 attacks, bin Laden was effectively a Afghani national and the US must provide some evidence of his guilt first. In the meantime, Afghanistan would investigate the allegations. The US decided to set a precedent then by refusing to produce evidence, rather invading Afghanistan.

EDIT: Swapping Panistan with Afkhistan.

New poll numbers are out

http://www.washingtondispatch.com/pa...es/000661.html

http://www.gallup.com/election2004/

Remember when Kerry was off teh charts low on polls before the primaries for the democrats? and everyone put clark and dean as the best chance since polls showed that kerry wasnt even a consideration.... then... he rolled over them?

Hmm... after that I could care less what polls say.

Kerry hasn't ever had anything going for him other than "someone high up in the DNC decided he had the best chance of beating Bush" as far as I am concerned. He's just not a compelling candidate and is pretty much running on an "Im not Bush" platform

Thats not a bad platform to a lot of people...

Umm pH there’s this things called primaries, not one person in the DNC. Money is controlled and regulated for what the DNC can provide to any candidate. In fact I don’t believe its legal for the DNC to have a hand in much of anything pre-primaries. the others saw based on the primaries that were held that it was a statistical impossibility to get more delegates than Kerry on their own.

Although conspiracy theories are fun!

It has been pointed out that, as well as missing those who often arrive home late in the evening, people who use cell phones for their primary number are not polled. Any Americans care to speculate on how that (younger) demographic will vote?

that (younger) demographic will probably be too hungover to get up early enough to vote, and too drunk/high to vote later. And the ones that arn't just wont give a shit.

You think if the (younger) demographic voted we would have a 21 year old age limit on alcahol and pot be illigal?

I suppose you're right. The vast majority of voters are people who can be surveyed by ringing residential land-lines at intervals over the course of a day and evening.

EDIT: Bush vs. Kerry it is! Candidates Michael Badnarik (Libertarian) and David Cobb (Green), were arrested when they crossed a police line at the second presidential debate. Pepper spray and tasers would have been a nice touch.

I can bet Bush is praying that the young people dont go and vote..... must disturb him to hear that people registered to vote this year at colleges is up like 400%. And few if anyone at colleges get polled in the polls that are posted around the web (gallup, etc..)

"If a man isn't a liberal in his youth he has no heart. If
he isn't a conservative in his maturity he has no brain."
- Winston Churchill

I think thats a very accurate quote. Go Winnie!

College students are not good voters. Many are at college away from their home and aren't going to drive/fly home to vote. So they have to vote via absentee ballot. That's fine but this requires forethought and preparedness; not the hallmark of the 18-22 college student.