So now you stoop to mimicry - and can't even sustain it coherently. Every day, you're becoming more like msfe, who also has resorted to this childish diversionary tactic. Such posts say nothing more than "Optional777 is upset" or "Optional777 disagrees" or "Optional777 dislikes KymarFye" or "Optional777 disapproves of KymarFye's political perspectives and writing style." Why should I or anyone care? Why should I or anyone feel obligated to respond in detail, if at all? You remain incapable of defending your political position, in particular that it makes you an objective ally of Saddam Hussein. Your customary hypocrisy also makes its usual appearance, as when, imitating my phraseology, you write, "yet once again, you demonstrate an incapacity to deal with criticism, and instead turn to your own brand of holier than thou contrived personal attacks." I presented an argument - that your compulsive personalization of political discussion causes you to mistake your own merely imaginary, emotional opposition to Hussein and other US enemies for practical, political opposition. Your response consists of a clumsy, juvenile exercise that drives this tendency even further into abstraction and irrelevance. You accuse me being "holier than thou," but I can't help it if your position is devoid of positive moral or political content. Anyone who managed even to acknowledge the mass graves, torture chambers, unending deprivation, and extreme dangers that are the inevitable by-product of your preferred policy would be unable to speak except from a position implicitly "holier" than yours.
As you probably know, Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. Rumsfeld is a Navy veteran, though there was no hot war going on at the time. I hear Colin Powell had a hitch in the service, but I may have to check on that one. I don't believe Condoleeza Rice was eligible for the draft, due to the small matter of her gender. Cheney was already in his mid-20s by the time the Vietnam war, and the draft, picked up. I suppose he could have enlisted, but by the late '60s he was already entering public service. After a stint as Defense Secretary during the Gulf War, I think he can at least be considered experienced. You can choose to believe the worst about Bush and his service, or about any of these individuals or anyone else in the Administration. The "chickenhawks" slur remains as irrelevant as it is facile, and anyone who uses it is resorting to defamation of character as a substitute for policy debate. Either the policy makes sense and is justifiable on its own terms, or it doesn't and isn't, regardless of the backgrounds of those who advance or execute it. "Chickenhawk" is just a disrespectful and inflammatory stereotype, and employing it gives you no right to complain about anyone else's offensive speech. Let's see - Bush attended fundraisers and tested a Segway... What other morale-devastating activities has he been indulging in? The war on terror and the sacrifices of the troops didn't start and won't end with Iraq. Over the time involved, Bush is going to relax. He's going to take vacations. He may even schmooze with celebrities, tell bad jokes, or play with his dog. I doubt the soldiers are going to care very much, unless he finds reason to lie about whatever spare-time pleasures under oath. Do the nude protests, vomit-ins, Mardi Gras costumes, and scabrous cartoons in your view confirm the high seriousness of the war opponents? On the subject of cartoons, specifically the one you posted, congratulations for showing a susceptibility to dialogue and alternative perspectives.
I think if the neocons had their way, they would take away the vote from all who don't share their point of view and opinions. It is getting intense in the political polarity battle, did you read this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13376-2003Jul18.html
It is the "libs" who are vociferously advocating FURTHER commitment to the rebuilding of Iraq through international cooperation and a massive INCREASE in military, humanitarian, and political involvement - to build a TRUE international coalition. Sadly it is the Bush administration, through its hubris and arrogance that is squandering success and sacrifice - just as the previous Bush administration did in 1991.
Saddam Hussein is evil, along with many other dictators and regimes around the world. However, we don't engage in preemptive military action against them. _______________________________ Correct me if I am wrong but I thought Bosnia had a preemptive military action. Also the Lewinski strike on Iraq could have been considered preemptive. The first missile strikes on Afghanistan back in the late 90's could have been termed preemptive. Even back to the Libyia strikes could have been preemptive. Operating with a 9/12 mentality might mean the last two conflicts were either retalliatory, eliminating the support of terror, soft words big stick warning, or the breaking up of the strangle grip the totalitarian regimes had on the region. To me 9/11 took the preemptive phraseology out of the eqaution.
It is the "libs" who are vociferously advocating FURTHER commitment to the rebuilding of Iraq through international cooperation and a massive INCREASE in military, humanitarian, and political involvement - to build a TRUE international coalition. ________________________________________ Please list examples of the "libs" calling for more commitment. Also I don't understand if India turned down the idea to send troops does that mean the administraion did or did not ask them. I read where Kofi Annon is calling for us to just pull out and forget democracy. Is that what you mean by a true international coalition. Even the countries that haven't helped such as Canada are deeply divided over the issue of whether to get in or not. I get a lot of calls from friends in western Canada who are very ashamed of their national and eastern dominated policies. They tell me polls in the west were even stronger than US polls in support of the war but of course you never hear that side.
Why the sneer quotes around the word "liberated"? Looks obviously like your way of sneakily re-introducing doubt about whether or not getting rid of Saddam Hussein and his regime was a good thing. For the umpteenth, if not the ump-hundred-and-teenth time, you repeat a manipulative and artificially narrow rendition of the case for war that you have never been able to support with evidence or even argue coherently. And here we go again: Because, in your mind and presumably their minds, Saddam's evil wasn't minimized (we'll forget the sneer quotes), you see no difference between supporting the only available policy for getting rid of him and opposing it. The multiple justifications for the war in Iraq and the nature of Saddam's regime are intimately linked, both in the particular context of the danger and strategic challenge that Iraq represented on its own terms, and in the larger context of the war with Islamist fascism and terror. Nor do we have flagrantly broken ceasefire agreements and ongoing military confrontation with many other dictators and regimes around the world, as has been the case with Saddam from 1991 even to the present. Nor do many dictators in the world have access to huge oil revenues and geographical proximity to much of the world's oil reserves. Nor have many other dictators in the world engaged in plots to assassinate a US President, hosted leaders and trained operatives from multiple terrorist organizations, repeatedly explored alliances with Al Qaeda, continuously engaged in fervent anti-US propaganda in the region of the world where major terrorist threats originate, repeatedly threatened to sponsor terrorism against the US, or used WMDs repeatedly and systematically applied themselves to developing WMDs and maintaining advanced WMD capacities even when subjected to sanctions, inspections, and serious military threats. Eventually, victory in Iraq may help us knock Iran, Syria, and many other dangerous and repellent regimes off the list, though more likely through means other than direct application of military force. Fighting those battles that we need to fight, when we can fight them and have a chance of managing the aftermath, isn't immmoral or inconsistent. It's the only sane policy there is. The inability to tell the difference between, say, Zimbabwe and Burma on the one hand, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq on the other, suggests extreme ignorance. No one incapable of making the distinctions is fit even to argue foreign policy.
There's every reason to believe that Saddam, like some of the tyrants before him whose methods he has studied, has long seen peace activists and related groups as components of his political strategy, going back at least to Gulf War I. It's obvious to anyone who has watched his behavior over the years, or observed the propaganda use made of anti-war protests and the numerous visits to Iraq by activists and anti-war politicians and celebrities. It's ironic, as well as typically hypocritical, that, when tatertrader was accusing the right of contributing to the "devolution of political discourse," he chose to refer to Doubter as a "useful idiot." (At least it wasn't as excessive, foul, and base as some of his other remarks.) The term, as most of us probably know (probably even tatertrader), was Lenin's designation for liberals, pacifists, and others whose naive enterprises could be counted on to impede his true enemies. War opponents don't like to acknowledge that, regardless of their proclaimed personal feelings against Saddam, their preferred policies would have meant leaving him and his regime in power. Some of the openly anti-American or anti-capitalist militants are at least clear that they consider Bush policy so dangerous that theyâd be willing to sacrifice Iraqâs future to oppose it. The most you get from the others on their side of the Iraq issue usually consists of faint hopes that sanctions or some other form of peaceful resistance might eventually bring the Baathists down. Otherwise, we're left to imagine that Saddam's victims would rise up out of their mass graves and descend on the regime like zombies in some Iraqi Night of the Living Dead. If you want to insist that the Bush policy was "immoral" or "folly," then you should first be required to hop over the mass graves and find your own way out of the torture chambers and rape rooms - even aside from confronting the repeatedly demonstrated dangers posed by Saddam's Iraq to the interests of the US and to the rest of the world outside Iraq. Those who are satisfied with pretending that they opposed both Saddam as well as the only available plan for getting rid of him, and who would prefer to focus on supposed defects in Bush's character rather than coping with the contradiction, simply can't be taken seriously. They may be hiding their true calculations. They may be indulging in political fantasies. Or they may not really have given the issue much thought. They're not all âidiots,â though many of them act and post like it. I don't think they'll be quite as "useful" as Saddam would really need them to be, so long as they're systematically fought and exposed.