Who do you want to win the war?

Lesser of two evils is a fact of life in the real world, one in which you will discover after your ivory tower college years.

The moral high road? Morality is relative, and case by case in world diplomacy.

Name one superpower over the past 2000 years who has done more good with less bad than the USA.

Take any superpower of the past, Stalin's Soviet Union, Hitler's Germany, Great Britain, Spain, Rome, etc., and tell me that they were more humanitarian overall than the USA.

We are evolving, naturally. We make mistakes, naturally.

I really think people expect the USA to be perfect, and judge us by unrealistic standards.

I will never say we are perfect, just at this time in history, we are the best there ever has been, the most Democratic, the most humanitarian, and the most generous on the whole.

Imagine any other superpower of the past couple millenniums. Would they even care about the citizens of Iraq at all? Would they take any efforts at all to preserve life of the enemy?

You are a very unrealistic young man. I understand, I was young and idealistic at one time too, until I began my real education in life, which happens when you graduate from the safety of the college campus.

 

That's odd...ap is reporting this at 3:10 pm???.........so you defintiely are not in this counry are you my bitch?
SIT!!! ...Good doggy

 

Comp, you still don't get it do you. Who or what is Iraq harboring? Where is the damn evidence?
If you meant to say that you truly don't give a fuck, just kill all the fuckers and "save" America, fine. At least you'll be one of the few honest ones.

Did you happen to notice all the smilies my posts where interspersed with? That's usually a good sign that the "insults" weren't being taken to heart. (Most were banal, but TM's style itself was actually quite funny.)

 

I had to look at this post becouse of TM. MSFE is a towel head that just doenst get it. When are your people gonna learn that we are coming over there to get rid of idiots like you?

Now go get that paper for TM b4 we send a tomahawk miissle up you arse!

 

Don't you try and get bunny points with me....Im still praying tonight that your dad get's Cancer and that you die in a horrific car accident...I would urge all ET memebers to join me in prayer for these two events......

 

The New ork Times Editorial/Op-ED March 27,2003

Casualties at Home
By BOB HERBERT


WASHINGTON — On Tuesday, as President Bush was asking Congress for the first installment of the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to finance the war in Iraq and its aftermath, the students and teachers at a high school within walking distance of the White House were struggling through their daily routine in a building that has no cafeteria, no gymnasium, no student lockers, not even a fully reliable source of electricity.

A few weeks ago bricks were falling from the facade of the building, which is more than 100 years old.

As we continue the relentless bombing of Baghdad, which the military tells us is the necessary prelude to saving it, it's fair to ask when the rebuilding of essential institutions like the public schools will begin here at home. (Don't hold your breath. The money for that sort of thing has completely evaporated.)

"We actually have rooms where the water comes in when it rains," said Sheila Mills Harris, the principal of the School Without Walls, an academically rigorous high school that routinely finishes first or second in the District of Columbia's rankings.

Laura Bush has visited the school, which has won a series of national honors. But academic honors and a visit by the first lady are, frankly, irrelevant in an era in which social concerns — such as support for public schools and health care, and the need to assist the poor, the hungry and the unemployed — have been forced to the perimeter of public consciousness. Those issues, crucial to our conception of ourselves as a just and humane people, have been devalued and shunted aside by an administration that is committed to an ill-advised, budget-busting war and a devastating parade of tax cuts for the very wealthy.

With our attention riveted on the death and destruction in Iraq, and the continued threat to Americans in the war zone, the other very serious problems facing the U.S. get short shrift. We knew last fall that the proportion of Americans living in poverty had risen, and that income for middle-class households had fallen.

We know that unemployment, especially long-term unemployment, is a big problem. And we've known that the states are facing their worst budget crisis since the Great Depression, a development that has led, among other things, to drastic cuts in education aid that are crushing the budgets of local public school districts.

These issues aren't even being properly discussed. The Bush administration sounds the alarm for war and blows the trumpet for tax cuts, and Congress plunges ahead with the cuts in domestic programs that must inevitably follow. The voices of those who object are effectively silenced by the war propaganda and the fear of seeming unpatriotic.

With attention thus deflected, the administration and its allies in Congress have come up with one proposal after another to weaken programs that were designed to help struggling Americans.

In his budget last month the president offered a plan to make it more difficult for low-income families to obtain government benefits, including tax credits and school lunch assistance. This month, as The Times' Robert Pear reported, the administration proposed changes in the Medicare program that would make it more difficult for elderly people, many of them frail, to appeal the denial of benefits like home health care and skilled nursing care.

The extent to which the most vulnerable Americans are being targeted is appalling. Billions of dollars in cuts have been proposed for food stamp and child nutrition programs, and for health care for the poor.

Collectively, these are the largest proposed cuts in history. Even cuts for veterans' programs are on the table — in the midst of a war!

The administration is actually fighting two wars — one against Iraq and another against the very idea of a humane and responsive government here at home.

At some point, hopefully sooner rather than later, the war against Iraq will end. Americans will then have the opportunity to look around and be stunned by the fix we'll be in. We'll look at the enormous costs of the postwar occupation in Iraq, and at the social and economic dislocation that's occurring here. And we'll look at the disaster that the federal budget has become. We'll be broke, and we'll ask ourselves, again and again, "What have we done?"


Hunger in America 2001 provides a comprehensive profile of the incidence and nature of hunger and food insecurity in the U.S.

Our study provides extensive demographic profiles of emergency food clients at charitable feeding agencies and comprehensive information on the nature and efficacy of local agencies in meeting the food security needs of clients.

The study is the largest of its kind. More than 32,000 individuals agreed to share their personal stories with us through face-to-face interviews at charitable emergency hunger-relief agencies like pantries, soup kitchens, and shelters. Nearly 24,000 local emergency hunger-relief agencies completed survey questionnaires about their efforts to serve millions of hungry Americans.

You can easily explore Hunger in America 2001 through this web site.

http://www.hungerinamerica.org/


America´s Second Harvest

http://www.secondharvest.org/

 

this is valid to a point, but you still do not understand. It is that region we are looking to subdue becouse of the terrorist camps etc. Iraq is a bonus country with oil that can help us pay for our endeavor. Get this, we are doing the only thing we can and that is putting a huge military presence in the region so we can watch what these fuckers are doing they brought this on themselves. After 9-11 we lost faith in peace for now and mark my words this war on terror has just begun and it will be death to all of those who WE feel are against us notice I said WE not france or germany or russia they are bias and like sadamm couse he fills there pockets, and your nieve ass is on there bandwagon. I hope you understand that it is not up to these peice of shit protestors anymore it is up too national security, not anyone else.

Say

 

Okay Optional, I'll admit that I'm being somewhat idealistic. (Which also a relative term.)

Regarding your analogies, they are good ones, but you do realise that the superpowers of the past all tended to be empires?
If so, I agree that the American empire is indeed the most humanitarian of them all.

My question is, why does it have to be an empire at all? Why can't it be content to simply be just another nation? As it was, for the most part, before its emergence from WW2 and the Cold War as the big dog on the block.

And by empire, I don't mean the classical colonizer, a la Britain, Rome etc. Imperialism itself has also evolved. To the point where you don't need to always physically conquer a nation and take away its land and resources. Comparable results can be achieved via other means.

 

Comp, you've been hoodwinked dude. You've been sold a rotten bill of goods and you don't even have the sense to ask for a refund.

This crap's not about national security. It's about lining the pockets of the fat cats at the top of the pecking order that stand most to gain from it. Some things in human history never change.

The funny thing is, I'm the one being called naive.

 

Al baby we are going to change your name to ipkus, it fits you better, realize this if becoming an empire is what we need to do in order to insure national security is sound than that is what will be done.