Check out fling93’s great post on why I shouldn’t even think of voting for Bush.
His outline of points:
- Hearing only what you want to hear
- Opportunity cost and threat prioritization
- The Duelfer Report — no WMDs
- The 9/11 Commission report — no ties with Al Qaeda
- The real reason for the war?
- Contrast with other leaders
- What’s a conservative to do?
I’ll go through this point-by-point when I have time. But this is one of the best arguments I’ve seen, and it’s a series of arguments that I have to take seriously.
If that’s the best count me as unimpressed.
I have to agree with Sparky. That was a pathetic defense for voting for Kerry. I was not impressed at all. If that is the best case that can be made against Bush he should win by a landside.
Well, guys…since Kerry isn’t going to lose by a landslide (defined as 60/40 or better), perhaps you’d best think about why…
A.L.
I’m in academia. The vote here at Caltech is running something like 95-5 for Kerry — if not more. So I have a pretty good idea what the standard litany of pro-Kerry arguments is; I don’t really need to do more than scan the headers of this guy’s Yet Another Argument.
As far as I can tell, they *all* come down to this: the perfection of what Kerry promises sounds better than the messy, imperfect reality of what Bush has actually done over 4 years.
Did I mention that I’m in academia? Not the armed forces, where the vote is running something like 4-1 for Bush. Could it be that proximity to the concrete reality of human conflict has an effect on one’s vote?
Welcome to sanity, A.L. We are welcome to have you.
Sparky, Bob Greene, put some arguments behind your dismissals. Make it more interesting. Otherwise your easy dismissals will be easily dismissed.
_#32894 Posted by Armed Liberal on October 19, 2004 04:49 AM_
_Well, guys…since Kerry isn’t going to lose by a landslide (defined as 60/40 or better), perhaps you’d best think about why…_
Don’t be too sure about that AL. I would like to see how someone will justify voting for Kerry who is not medically fit to be the President.
I have been informed, from a reliable source that John Kerry suffers from *Parasomnia*.
“Parasomnia”:http://www.psychnet-uk.com/dsm_iv/parasomnias.htm?print.x=56&print.y=9, which means “around sleep,” includes sleepwalking, night terrors, bedwetting, and narcolepsy. All can create family difficulties, and some may be harmful to the child.
They are a group of acute, undesirable, episodic physical phenomena that usually occur during sleep, or are exaggerated by sleep. Even though parasomnias occur during different stages of sleep and at different times during the night they are characterized by partial arousals before, during, or after the event. Most parasomnias are precipitated or perpetuated by stress, and an interaction between biological and psychological factors is presumed in many cases.
The Presidency is a 24/7 job and the President is expected to be able to make decisions, even at night after having to be woken up.
*Disoriented arousals*, though sometimes occur in adults, are more commonly seen in infants and children. These arousals may begin with yelling or crying and violently moving around in bed. The sleeper seems to be alert and upset, but may resist any attempt to be comforted. In most cases, awakening a person who is experiencing a parasomnia can be very difficult. Disoriented arousals can last any where from a few minutes to half-an-hour. After the agitation ceases, the sleeper may awaken for a short time and then return to sleep.
While it says that it only occurs sometimes in adults, he have an eyewitness report from none other than John Kerry’s wife.
From the Washington Post
“The Heart of Politics”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39691-2002May31?language=printer
*One Woman, Two Senators and Presidential Ambitions: The Washington Tale of John Kerry and Teresa Heinz*
Part of Heinz’s charm is that she has no patience for this. *When Kerry is asked about the nightmares that haunted his sleep for years after he returned from Vietnam, he shrugs. “I don’t think I’ve had a nightmare in a long time,”* he says. But then *Heinz begins to mimic Kerry having a Vietnam nightmare.*
*”Down! Down, down!” she yells, patting her hands down on her auburn hair.*
*”I haven’t gotten slapped yet,” she says. “But there were times when I thought I might get throttled.”*
Kerry quivers his right foot and steers the discussion to the counseling programs he has supported for Vietnam veterans. *Asked if he has been in therapy himself, he non-answers. “It doesn’t bother me anymore, I just go back to sleep.”*
Heinz presses him. *”Not therapy for the dreams, therapy for the angst,”* she says, and looks quizzically at him, awaiting an answer. *Kerry shakes his head “No.”* This is not your father’s political couple, though you wonder, at this moment, if Kerry wishes it were.
Now we know why John Kerry will not sign the form 180. I think that the health of the Leader of the Free World should be open to us regardless if it is physical or mental health.
After I received this information, I did a search on Google and found this story written in August about this very subject. I wonder why it was not given any attention.
“The American Thinker”:http://americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=3789
*Sleepless in Cam Ranh Bay*
The President of the United States holds the most demanding job in the world. The physical and mental fitness of a candidate are matters of legitimate concern for voters. The refusal of John F. Kerry to release his complete medical records should be disconcerting to the press and public. All the more so, given disturbing indications that there may be serious questions about Kerry’s health and his ability to perform in office, questions which could be resolved only by the full release of his medical records.
Read the rest and judge for yourself.
SBD
Of course, I’m being optimistic, I’m sure!
The way I see it, there is no argument on who is going to win.
It’s going to be bush. Truth always wins out in the long run, and this has been a long run.
Granted, they are both politicians, I have seen more truth from Bush rather than Kerry.
Just to dive into one of these: the “flip-flop” deal.
It was, IMO, wise of those little sleaze-dog mercenaries in the Bush campaign to stick Kerry with the flip-flop label. Good politics, that is. It hit Kerry hard, because he has to straddle so many issues to keep his head above water. That’s because the Michael Moore left-heads get to stay up late with the grown-ups, and influence Democratic politicians who have to pretend that such folk are serious people.
But I know, and you know – hell, we all know that the real problem with Kerry is not that he changed his mind about some things. Everybody does. My problem with Kerry (who is pandering in every direction at once with remarkable agility) is that I have no confidence in his ability to deal with the deadly serious issues of Iraq and Iran, among other things.
Just think: If 20 years ago I had voted for John Kerry in the belief that he would go to the senate and be a great Stakhanovite for liberalism – boy, wouldn’t I be disappointed.
A.L.:
I can’t believe you take these arguments seriously. They’re mostly just rationalizations or deconstructions. I’ve argued most of these points with people, and what they usually boil down to is a general impression backed up by some disinformation. What’s the most important set of facts revealed in the Duelfer report, for instance? Could you actually vote for someone who simply ignores the findings about Saddam’s intent to rebuild a WMD arsenal, and how his corruption of the humanitarian Oil-for-Food played into that? Do you really consider someone who holds the view that these are unimportant facts compared with whether or not Saddam actually had WMD arsenals?
I mean, we knew he hadn’t any strategic weapons before we went in, because if he had he’d have used them as a deterrent.
The basic argument employed by my Democrat friends who plan to vote for Kerry? “I can’t stand Bush, and maybe Kerry won’t be as bad as people think. We need a change, etc.”
Well, we already know that Bush isn’t as bad as most Kerry voters think he is, and we also know that Kerry’s career has been less about governance than about being a professional dissenter.
I can’t believe you’re still considering voting for Kerry. You keep promising to provide an explanation, but all I’ve seen so far are lame third party arguments like those above.
I greatly appreciate the link, A.L. Thanks!
Kinda surprised you like it, and am not surprised most of your commenters don’t (although some of them seem to be reading only the headlines, not the post). It was really aimed more towards people who haven’t been keeping up with current events. But I tried to get it right and be as objective and nonpartisan as I could. I suppose I must have succeeded at that.
No, I probably don’t say anything you guys haven’t already heard, especially if you read Drezner — except maybe the last section. I seem to be the only person who keeps hammering away on electoral reform (and I know I’ve mentioned it at least a few times here). There’s no good reason to be limited to two choices. The only reason we have a two-party system is because plurality can’t handle more than two choices gracefully. But this is an _artificial_ limit, and there’s nothing magical about the number two.
I hope the conservatives who dislike Bush — and liberals who dislike Kerry — will at least think about that for a bit.
Do any of you read previous posts? I find it amazing that not one person other than JC has commented on the information I posted which in my opinion is not something that should be glossed over.
SBD
Well, I’m not a moderate libertarian, so his case against Bush is obviously not mine. On foreign policy, the most urgent issue is Iran’s nuclear program, next is moving forward in Iraq (and Afghanistan), next is North Korea, and then a whole a host of other issues. Frum a humanitarian perspective, Darfur is just as urgent as Iran, and there is also Haiti, Liberia, Venezuela, Cuba, etc. etc. On domestic policy, 600 billion dollar (having Biblical knowledge of) deficit, 600 billion dollar (having Biblical knowledge of) deficit, 600 billion dollar (having Biblical knowledge of) deficit, . . .and health care, poverty, job creation, the coming retirement of the Baby Boomers, rising levels of household debt, and all that unimportant stuff. It seems to me you should vote based on who you trust more to deal with those problems. And the extent you think these are problems.
It seems to me that the key difference is that 1)Kerry is hard-working, willing to bust his hump 2)Kerry is not intellectually insecure, and is willing to listen to constructive criticism, and change his mind accordingly. 3) Kerry is a member of the reality-based community. It seems all these criticisms of Kerry’s ideology miss the point, because Kerry is capapable of changing positions if the facts warrant it, and of quickly correcting his mistakes . Bush, who asserts his economic policies are working despite the deficit, and despite being the first President since Hoover to lose net jobs, is not. Or else he is just a liar. Likewise, compare the polls of Iraqis on the liberator/occupier question in mid-2003 with the current polls. Read Chris Albritton’s latest posts. The strategy we have to be following in Iraq is pretty clear. Keeping in mind Bush’s record on this score, who do you trust to execute the strategy in a more effective, results-oriented, paying-attention-to-detail manner?
Israel is in deadly peril from Iran’s nuclear program. Who do you trust to deal with the problem in a prompt, energetic, immediate manner? Keeping in mind what Bush’s Iran policy has been for the past 4 years, and keeping in mind Kerry’s passion for dealing with the problem of nuclear proliferation.
Whatever your answers are to the previous questions, especially, IMO, Iran’s nuclear program, is who you should vote for.
I’m not going to read the arguments because what is the alternative?
Kerry is very bad news, and not because he might have some esoteric form of insomnia. Kerry has a long history as an appeasenik and anti-military funding. He disses our allies and the people we are trying to help in Iraq. The allies he wants diss him. He rarely exercised any leadership in the Senate, or even showed up, and he has had no other career since he left the Navy. There are way too many unanswered questions about his Vietnam service (which would be irrelevant, except in one of his acts of bad judgement he made it the centerpiece of his campaign). In a time of war and heightened security at home, our military doesn’t trust him and our police won’t endorse him.
Even if you think Bush screwed up this and that, what is the alternative? I mean, Leiberman or some other grownup isn’t running. You have to believe our foreign policy is totally fucked to pick Kerry over Bush. I know many people believe that, but not too many who read this blog, who have enough evidence that good things are happening too.
SBD: “Do any of you read previous posts? I find it amazing that not one person other than JC has commented on the information I posted …”
Well, I’ll go you one better: Kerry is lying about being Catholic, because he’s been excommunicated.
So what? That’s not why I’m voting against him. Besides, medical arguments rarely cut much ice (assuming you’re serious).
A.L.,
I have a friend who is struggling his choice of candidate, as are you. I suggested to him that the heart of his predicament is this:
That to vote for Kerry would conflict with his image of the world.
And that to vote for Bush would conflict with his image of himself.
My friend found this at least somewhat insightful. Perhaps you will too, perhaps not.
_#32916 Posted by Glen Wishard
Well, I’ll go you one better: Kerry is lying about being Catholic, because he’s been excommunicated._
_So what? That’s not why I’m voting against him. Besides, medical arguments rarely cut much ice (assuming you’re serious)._
How can you compare the “excommunication” which is a political issue with a mental illness that he is hiding from us that can prove disastrous. There are certain things that only the President can give the authority and according to the information I read, his condition is more likely to manifest under stressfull situations. The President of the United States has the most stressful job in the world which would not be condusive to someone in his condition.
SBD
_#32916 Posted by Glen Wishard
Well, I’ll go you one better: Kerry is lying about being Catholic, because he’s been excommunicated._
_So what? That’s not why I’m voting against him. Besides, medical arguments rarely cut much ice (assuming you’re serious)._
How can you compare the “excommunication” which is a political issue with a mental illness that he is hiding from us that can prove disastrous. There are certain things that only the President can give the authority and according to the information I read, his condition is more likely to manifest under stressfull situations. The President of the United States has the most stressful job in the world which would not be condusive to someone in his condition.
SBD
SBD: How can you compare the “excommunication” which is a political issue with a mental illness that he is hiding from us that can prove disastrous.
I can only think of one case, off hand, where a candidate was sunk for medical reasons: when George McGovern dropped Thomas Eagleton as his running mate in 1972. John F. Kennedy, on the other hand, found it pretty easy to conceal his own poor health.
What I’m saying is: As long as Kerry is walking around on his hind legs, you’ll never convince people that he’s medically unfit.
The excommunication thing, though, is going to be something else. I doubt if it will influence the election, but unless it turns out to be totally bogus it has repercussions that go way beyond John Kerry.
Armed Liberal,
Own your choice, already.
You believe in something, or you have some ideal in mind, or some reward. Or something. I don’t know what it is, because you’ve never outlined your shining vision, that I know of. But it’s very strong for you.
John F. Kerry is your leader. He stands for whatever it is you stand for. You trust him, otherwise it would take a lot more than fling93’s points to make you think you should vote for him.
You don’t trust George W. Bush. And you won’t, because, guess what, there is no October surprise, no gimmick, no stunt. There never has been. You’ve seen what the guy has done for four straight years. You know he can’t explain it very well, but he will stick to it. On that basis, he asks people to trust him and vote for him. That’s his appeal, he has no other. If you don’t trust him, it’s pointless to keep talking. You need to vote for your own guy.
Abide faithfully with strong determination and full confidence in the cause you think is right, That’s the best any of us can do.
Also, frankly, I don’t want to hear later about how it was the can’t-decide-whether-to-fish-or-cut-bait folk that saved the world. You, Daniel W. Drezner and his P, Andrew (shill) Sullivan – all these guys upon whom so much attention is focused because of your endless painful toil in choosing – you only get one vote apiece, the same as Vodkapundit (Stephen Green), whose take is – if you don’t know who you want to vote for by now, why don’t you just stay home, m-kay?
This isn’t single combat with champions, and the winner of this heavily loaded dice-roll won’t receive the favour of the gods in the coming battle. Andrew Sullivan is going to vote for court-enforced gay marriage absolutely regardless of other considerations. Daniel W. Drezner’s P will point to Kerry regardless of how many futile man-hours his readers invest in shifting it around between 70% and 90%. The Liberal is likely to vote for the liberal. And that’s all there is to it.
So fish or cut bait, and own your choice, already.
PS: No offence intended.
But just vote, own your choice, and you’ll feel better.
PPS:
Yes I did read fling93’s argument, though I didn’t follow the links, ’cause I’ve spent enough time on those points and even those documents long ago.
I’ve got to agree: fling93 has done a great job there. No kidding.
That’s all the reason you should need to make the call and do what it is a guy with your political orientation does, the thing that makes you a liberal. Afterwards you can always say: I was a John F. Kerry man – all the way!
Can lefties give explainations OUTSIDE of their talking points? Please. The “No connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda” is a real laugher.
If you believe THAT, you’ll believe ANYTHING (which explains the blind devotion to Michael Moore, and other left-wing hysteria).
I find fling93’s arguments telling for one reason: all save the first rely on one claim, cognitive bias, which is simply an assertion by the writer. A number of people (Armed Liberal here, Steven den Beste and Bill Whittle elsewhere, among other) have constructed detailed analyses and philosophical arguments which lead to the exact same courses of action Bush had chosen, yet still consider others in detail. To assume a posteriori that the chosen courses of action taken by the administration were the only ones considered is extremely sloppy, faulty reasoning.
There are certainly some people who are able to claim whether this assertion is true based on first-hand knowledge of the President’s decision-making process; unless fling93 provides some evidence proving to be among them, this case can be readily dismissed as a more verbose restatement of “Bush is dumb.”
Well, first, don’t assume I’ve made up my mind. I’m working on writing the issues out – kind of as Drezner does, except that I expect to have made a decision by the time I do. And it’s not like my vote matters, given where I live (but Oren’s right and I do have to step up and take a stand).
A.L.
Philosophical arguments are intersting, but they exist in their own little world. My bottom line is: Iraq isn’t going very well, and Bush can’t be trusted to fix it. His advisors–Feith, Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Bolton do not inspire confidence in me, but they’re still there. The Pentagon’s official explanation of why Iraq went wrong seems to be that we didn’t immediately put Chalabi in charge and pull out most of the troops. How can you trust people like that to make good decisions down the road?
Fling relys to heavily on the testimony of Clark and others who are currently making mony bashing Bush. Most of his points rely on assertions supported by one or two quotes from people antagonistic to the current Bush administration.
For many of his points, he generally assumes the war in Iraq is going poorly, and that is entirely Bush’s fault. I would argue that the consant support of the MSM for the terrorists and insurgents, plus Iran’s shadow war have as much to do with things as Bush’s policies.
fling93: “Kinda surprised you like it, and am not surprised most of your commenters don’t (although some of them seem to be reading only the headlines, not the post).”
Well, even the headlines are more reliable than some parts of your post:
Unless I woke up in a parallel universe this morning, or you’re talking about some other Union of Concerned Scientists than the one we all know, I just have to flat disagree with your “nonpartisan” characterization.
The UCS exists only to exploit science (and junk science) in the service of left-head politics. They were shameless flacks for Nuclear Winter, the Nuclear Freeze, and unilateral disarmament.
After they lost the Cold War (they were totally on the other side) they should have had the sense to shape up or shut up. But now they’re out to squeeze “Global Warming” for every drop of political worth. All of their “science” adds up to the same thing: vote for Democrats or die a horrible death.
Praktike,
Not having been in Iraq and having only the MSM to go on, I’m going to refrain from argument about how well or badly things are going in Iraq, although, from what I’ve read there are some encouraging signs (Samarra, rifts between Baathists and Foreigners etc). In any case, while you don’t trust Bush to fix what’s wrong in Iraq, I don’t trust Kerry to finish up in Iraq. Keep in mind, OBL didn’t attack us because he hated us (he did, but that’s not why he attacked us). He attacked us because he wasn’t afraid of us. If Kerry pulls out of Iraq, he’ll be reinforcing the perceptions that led to OBL’s lack of fear. We’ll regret that for decades.
Fling93, thanks for putting the arguments and links together. No sale to this 9/11 Democrat, but it helps to see the workings of thoughtful people on the other side. People, that is, who remember who constitute the real other side.
A.L., thanks for the introduction to F93.
“David Blue, your comment nailed it,”:http://windsofchange.net/archives/005751.php#32936 for many members of my own family as much as for A.L.
RE: The Real Reasons for the War
This section was a weak part of your arguments against Bush.
1. Economic reasons were a factor, but not the deciding one. If all we wanted was cheap oil from Iraq we could have lifted the sanctions. The most important economic reason was that we would have another oil producer to replace the Saudi production. Iraq is sitting on the second biggest puddle of oil, and if we ramp up production there (as we have) we will be able to put the squeeze on Saudi Arabia. Since Saudi Arabia is heavily in debt and has lots of welfare payments to make, this would be bad bad bad for them.
2. The WMD issue makes a lot of sense when you weigh the relative dangers of false negatives versus false positives. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine a scenario in which a WMD attack in the US will take more lives than were lost in the war.
3. The reason we were “hotly debating” the WMD issue is because we just didn’t know. Our intelligence services had just failed us on 9/11 and in that context it would be criminally stupid to give Saddam the benefit of the doubt. No mainstream politicians, including Kerry, believed that Saddam had disarmed.
4. North Korea has a nuclear weapons program due to the wonderful help of Jimmy Carter, who took the “Dear Leader” at his word in 1994. Yeah just give food and fuel to the poor starving North Korean Army, uh I mean people and everything will be well. Bush cut off all the oil and half the food we were sending them. He is also demanding a 6-way Summit with North Korea, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea included (how multi-lateral of him!) versus Kerry’s Bilateral DRNK-US status quo (how conservative!).
Guys like Kim are exactly the reason we need a ballistic missle defense and bunker buster nukes. Which, I believe, Kerry opposes as well.
5. Iran has a nuclear program in spite of all the international attention by the UN, Britain, France and Germany. And believe it or not, no one actually believes that they are doing this to get electrical power. Kerry’ offer to do that by giving them reactor fuel was already rejected by Tehran. Merely offering it makes him weak in the eyes of the Mullahs.
6. The main reasons for invading Iraq were in my opinion:
a. A demonstration of force, we could conquer and depose the leader of a Middle Eastern county in a very short time with relatively few casualties. Afganistan wasn’t enough.
b. Iraq is a keystone in the Middle East, it is geographically well situated as a base to launch attacks on most of the terror sponsors in the region. We now have air, land and sea superiority right next to Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria. We are based in Kuwait and Quatar as well, so there is no need to have our military in Saudi, nor do we need their help/permission.
This fact is not lost on the authoritarians next door, Libya has already folded its cards, Syria is starting to get nervous, Iran is facing another student rebellion (it is quiet now but picking up).
c. The aformentioned WMD and oil issues.
d. Democratization and nation building as a weapon against the pervasive failure of the Arab regimes. Military force can only accomplish so much, the end game has to be that Arab society must police itself and fight against terrorism. This is why Bush is training their military and police. This is why we are helping them rebuild their oil industry and civil infrastructure. If it is successful there it can be succesful elsewhere.
Glen Wishard: _The UCS exists only to exploit science (and junk science) in the service of left-head politics. They were shameless flacks for Nuclear Winter, the Nuclear Freeze, and unilateral disarmament._
I’ll take your word for it for now, since it seems like you know more about the UCS than I do, and I’ll remove them as an example.
Brian: _Fling relys to heavily on the testimony of Clark and others who are currently making mony bashing Bush._
I actually make my claim primarily on Bush’s actual policy decisions, like his tax cut and his steel tariffs. I use testimony afterwards to reinforce my claim.
Brian: _For many of his points, he generally assumes the war in Iraq is going poorly, and that is entirely Bush’s fault._
No, I make no claim about whether Iraq is going well or not. My specific points in regards to Iraq was the administration’s ignoring of Shinseki and the reconstruction working groups and acting like there was no debate about the aluminum tubes. And that this is in contrast to their willingness to pay more attention to dubious sources, like the Niger forgeries and Chalabi.
“gerrymander”:http://windsofchange.net/archives/005751.php#33074: _all save the first rely on one claim, cognitive bias, which is simply an assertion by the writer._
I think you have it backwards. I put forward a theory on Bush’s decision-making process (that it cares more about politics than facts or pragmatic results), and then I spend the rest of the post supplying evidence and testimony in support of that theory.
Yes, the theory is about the goings-on inside Bush’s head, and if you want to label that philosophical, I don’t mind. Philosophy is certainly an area of interest for me. However, it is no more philosophical than the argument that Kerry is a flip-flopper or doesn’t take the War on Terror seriously, because that is also a claim about what’s going on in Kerry’s head.
“gerrymander”:http://windsofchange.net/archives/005751.php#33074: _A number of people (Armed Liberal here, Steven den Beste and Bill Whittle elsewhere, among other) have constructed detailed analyses and philosophical arguments which lead to the exact same courses of action Bush had chosen, yet still consider others in detail._
As I understand it, those arguments attempt to explain Bush’s foreign policy, namely why he invaded Iraq while not doing that much about Iran and North Korea. I believe that my theory is a better way to explain Bush’s behavior because it _also_ explains a wide variety of seemingly disparate policies, like his tax cut, steel tariffs, Medicare reform, lack of postwar planning, and that space program.
I think if someone really wants to address my argument without just being dismissive, they would be best served citing examples which contradict this theory, and then put forth a theory that explains both mine as well as the new ones. And I will be perfectly willing to consider it. I’m a libertarian who hates the two-party system, so I don’t really have a dog in this fight. I merely reached this conclusion based on the analysis of the evidence and testimony that I’ve laid out. So I’m perfectly willing to consider alternate theories that better explain what I see is going on.
I do, however, have a full-time job that I’m neglecting right now, so bear with me.
Eric has just expanded what I was pretty much saying in shorthand.
I would only add that I don’t believe Kerry will maintain or follow up on the advantages to invading Iraq that Eric lists, and that serious disadvantages would follow the abandonment of Iraq.
This is why you should vote for Bush!
http://www.hughhewitt.com/#postid1026
“Brian: For many of his points, he generally assumes the war in Iraq is going poorly, and that is entirely Bush’s fault.”
“No, I make no claim about whether Iraq is going well or not. My specific points in regards to Iraq was the administration’s ignoring of Shinseki and the reconstruction working groups and acting like there was no debate about the aluminum tubes. And that this is in contrast to their willingness to pay more attention to dubious sources, like the Niger forgeries and Chalabi.”
I thought that the Niger Yellowcake claim had been confirmed by the British, after the BBC’s lead source committed suicide and sparked an investigation.
Fred
Not having been in Iraq and having only the MSM to go on, I’m going to refrain from argument about how well or badly things are going in Iraq, although, from what I’ve read there are some encouraging signs (Samarra, rifts between Baathists and Foreigners etc).
Look, I understand that railing against the liberal media is a longstanding trope of the right, but it’s becoming less and less credible, frankly. Around fifty journalists have been killed in the past year, which is more than any of the coalition members except the US and the Brits. The Green Zone was penetrated last week. Journalists are being spied on by their hotel staff. If you don’t believe the “MSM,” maybe you’ll believe the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Just go here and click around. As for rifts between the “Ba’athists” and the foreigners, so what? They’re still fighting us either way. In any case, the Ba’ath are more or less a spent force. Most of the resistance has a decidedly Islamist slant to it. Top Ba’ath officials such as the al Douri boys have pledged their allegiance to Zarqawi. Secondly, there were rifts between Mullah Omar and Osama Bin Laden, too. The Afghans didn’t always get along with the Arabs. September 11th still happened.
Eric lists the “real” reasons for invading Iraq, none of which were given before the invasion.
Given that democracy is a system based on the consent of the governed, do conservatives not believe that “leaders” have a responsibility to communicate honestly with citizens.
Is hoodwinking the citizenry A-OK in conservativeland?
Clearly, Bush and his administration cherry-picked, spun, and twisted the available intelligence to support their predetermined course of action. Many members of the intelligence community complained about this practice before and after the invasion.
Anyone who believes otherwise is ideologically blinded, as is anyone who believes the members of Congress have access to the same intelligence resources as the President.
Armed Liberal: “Well, first, don’t assume I’ve made up my mind.”
I’ll try to be careful on that. I know “telepathy” is often wrong and invariably rude and annoying. I don’t want to do that to you.
Maybe it will be better if I give an example with someone else.
Here is another example of what I mean. David Adesnik is a sophisticated fellow.
‘I told a couple of my liberal friends from UVA Law that there was a 60% chance I’d vote for Kerry. Concerned, one of them said to me, “Don’t think, man, just vote for Kerry.”
I responded: “Don’t think? I thought that was your problem with Bush.”
When I got home from the theater, I began to ask myself what could persuade me to vote for Bush if I’m already leaning toward Kerry and there are only twelve or so days left before the election. I still don’t have an answer to that question, which means that the probability I will vote for Kerry is actually much higher than 60%.’
Um, yes. The chances that this guy will not vote for John F. Kerry are mainly composed of heart failure, getting run over by a truck on the way to a polling station and so on. It could be a 50.01% for Kerry, and if only an event could change it and there’s no such event, that’s that. Yet the inner struggles and arguments of a still-undecided soul roll on anyway.
In cases roughly similar to this, it would make more sense to me, instead of waiting like a priest for an oracle (having decided in advance there’s nothing in particular that would ever count as a sign), to say: this was my choice, I’m voting for X, which I think stands for Y, which I’m for. I hope we win.
And AMac: thanks. 🙂
Nice piece on the subject in the canadian press at
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Eric_Margolis/2004/10/17/672730.html
Just a few quotes…
How can Republicans remain so blinkered? Part of the fault lies with the sycophantic national media, which collaborated with the Bush administration in whipping up war fever. The media still are not telling people the truth about Iraq, Afghanistan, or the so-called war on terrorism.
The media utterly failed to remind Americans that Bush, who loves to play war leader, actually claimed Iraqi drone aircraft were poised to fly off ships in the North Atlantic and bombard America with germs. Bush should have been laughed out of office for believing and promoting this comic-book nonsense.
Buchanan identifies the real secret of the Republican Party’s current success: “Cut taxes and don’t let the Democrats outspend us.”
No matter that Bush’s policies have created millions of jobs in China instead of the U.S., or that he turned a $236-billion US surplus into a $521-billion deficit. His tax cuts and spending win elections.
As the real president, v-p Dick Cheney, observed to a horrified U.S. Treasurer Paul O’Neill, “deficits don’t matter.” This kind of liberal-left Democrat economic voodoo used to be anathema to Republicans.
Today, there’s no real conservative party left in Washington, says Buchanan. Only in tax-cutting do Republicans still hew to their principles. Otherwise, they are just like the wildest-spending liberal Democrats.
“Historically, Republicans have been the party of conservative virtues — balanced budgets, healthy skepticism towards foreign wars, fierce resistance to the growth of government power.
“No more,” Buchanan says. “To win and hold office, many have sold their souls to the very devil they were baptized to do battle with.”
As for Bush’s vow to wage unceasing war on America’s enemies around the globe, Buchanan quotes President James Madison: “Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it compromises and develops the germ of every other. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
David Blue,
I agree. At this point, there is enough information on each candidate to make a decision. The one thing it DOES do to remain “undecided” is to give cause to lots of debate on blogs – and probably this is a good thing. Certainly Dan Drezner has utilized this to good effect.
A little off-topic, but “Healing Iraq”:http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/ posted a few days ago – very few people in Iraq were happier with the deposing of Saddam Hussein as he was – had the following depressing things to say:
“Apologies for the long hiatus. I haven’t been online lately for several reasons. One, I have been busy completing my transfer procedures which are taking too long. I am supposed to have finished my residency in Basrah, and will now move to work in Baghdad. Two, the daily situation in Baghdad is sadly too depressing to live through, let alone write about. And three, I have been busy with some personal stuff.
A close friend of mine was seriously injured but thankfully he survived. He works at an Internet cafe (I have posted about him before in a blog entitled ‘funny Internet stories’), and was shot in the abdomen when an armed gang sprayed a car belonging to a lawyer they were threatening to abandon a case with bullets. The incident took place in front of a courtroom. IP were close by but they did nothing to interfere.
Another acquaintance, a doctor called Zeyad Walid, was found decapitated in Yusifiya, southwest of Baghdad. He worked with a pharmacist, Zena Al-Qashtini, who was also found shot in the head. They were both kidnapped from a pharmacy in Harthiya by 10 armed assailants a few weeks ago at mid-day in front of a large crowd of customers. His brother abroad collected a ransom thinking he was kidnapped by petty criminals. Turns out that the pharmacy had previously sold some pharmaceuticals to the US army and this was their punishment for ‘collaboration’. I remember it was reported that two bodies ‘with western features’ were located in the area, that was because the girl was blond. They have only been identified a few days ago.
One should wonder how kidnappers or terrorists are able to move so freely in and out of Baghdad with their victims unnoticed.”
Also, check out “Back to Iraq 3.0”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/.
The guy has had to leave.
Combine these two incidents with the recent penetrations of the Green Zone.
I keep harping on this – but the TRENDS keep going the wrong way.
Praktike,
As I said, I don’t know enough to comment intelligently on the situation in Iraq. What I do know is that the left and the media have been seeing the sky falling in Iraq since the duststorm during the original invasion. (Remember a few months ago when the simultaneous violence in Fallujah, Sadr City, and Najaf meant a nationwide uprising that would quickly drive us out of Iraq?) When I look up, I still see a sky. But when Kerry talks about timetables for withdrawal without saying anything about how circumstances on the ground would affect that timetable and getting nonexistent allied help–he’s going to get the French, Germans or Russians to send troops or money? Please.–I reach for my umbrella because failure in Iraq is going to follow our troops home in a big way.
fling93, trust me when I say I understand the time contraint.
I appreciate the effort you’ve made in your analysis, but remain unmoved by it. I’m well aware of Bush’s limitations as president, yet see the alternate as ranging from “no better than” to “much worse”, depending on the issue. And really, only one issue ultimately matters to me. In my view, this election is a simple referrendum: do we confront terrorism as a we do enemies during a war, or criminals during peacetime?
I have seen little evidence that the terrorists themselves are at all deterred by the latter, and little evidence that John Kerry will choose the former. I am unwilling to grant the next term’s president a second chance to learn what he already should have three years ago.
For all his flaws (and they are numerous), George Bush has made what I see as the correct choice, and has shown the determination to carry through a vision of how to end that war. Moreover, where threats remain from prior years mishandling (North Korea, Iran, Palestine), I believe the combination of diplomacy and steadfastness will gain more — and has already gained more (Libya, Pakistan) — than the emphasis on process of his opponent. For these reasons, I will be voting for Bush come November.
“Eric Parsons”:http://windsofchange.net/archives/005751.php#33131: _[The Real Reasons for the War] section was a weak part of your arguments against Bush._
Yes, I know. My thinking was that I’d already laid out the case by then, and this section served only to address the obvious point that Iraq hasn’t seemed to help Bush politically.
“Eric Parsons”:http://windsofchange.net/archives/005751.php#33131: _Economic reasons were a factor, but not the deciding one._
I agree with that entirely. Indeed, it sounds like you paraphrased me: “I’m not one of those conspiracy-minded liberals who think it’s all about oil. I imagine economic reasons did play a role, just like they did for the first Gulf War, but I’m not convinced it was the primary reason.”
Parsons: _The WMD issue makes a lot of sense when you weigh the relative dangers of false negatives versus false positives. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine a scenario in which a WMD attack in the US will take more lives than were lost in the war. … Our intelligence services had just failed us on 9/11 and in that context it would be criminally stupid to give Saddam the benefit of the doubt._
That again argues towards our primary threats being North Korea and Iran, both of which had their own operational nuclear programs, and neither of which deserved the benefit of the doubt either.
Parsons: _[Bush] is also demanding a 6-way Summit with North Korea, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea included (how multi-lateral of him!) versus Kerry’s Bilateral DRNK-US status quo (how conservative!)._
The problem here is that waiting for everybody to agree to the 6-way summit has turned out to be little more than a stalling tactic — which plays right into North Korea’s hands, and they happily went off to build nukes.
_Iran has a nuclear program in spite of all the international attention by the UN, Britain, France and Germany._
But especially because Bush prioritized them below Iraq.
_Kerry’ offer to do that by giving them reactor fuel was already rejected by Tehran. Merely offering it makes him weak in the eyes of the Mullahs._
Kerry’s hand is as weak as Bush’s because Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq has taken our military leverage off the table.
_6. The main reasons for invading Iraq were in my opinion: a. A demonstration of force, we could conquer and depose the leader of a Middle Eastern county in a very short time with relatively few casualties. Afganistan wasn’t enough._
The problem with that is that it does not take the occupation into account.
_Iraq is a keystone in the Middle East, it is geographically well situated as a base to launch attacks on most of the terror sponsors in the region. We now have air, land and sea superiority right next to Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria._
Yes, but we no longer have available military resources to take advantage of this anytime soon, and by then Iran will have nukes to go along with the ballistic missile technology that North Korea sold them.
_This fact is not lost on the authoritarians next door, Libya has already folded its cards, Syria is starting to get nervous, Iran is facing another student rebellion (it is quiet now but picking up)._
I’m not convinced that Iran is softening, and since I believe they have always been a bigger threat than Iraq and Libya and Syria, I don’t count that as a worthwhile tradeoff.
_Democratization and nation building as a weapon against the pervasive failure of the Arab regimes._
Yes, the Neocons make a good argument which I won’t attempt to address here, but I don’t buy for a second that this is Bush’s top priority. As I said:
bq. And although Neoconservatives were clearly key supporters of the war movement, I’m not at all convinced that Bush is a Neocon who believes Iraq is the first step in democracy promotion throughout the Middle East. First of all, from what I can tell, the Neocons have been thoroughly discredited due to their unrealistic post-war expectations, and thus are unlikely to retain the same level of influence. Secondly, after it was becoming clear that there were no WMDs, Bush had an obvious opportunity to “come clean” and admit the war was really about democracy promotion. Instead he made unconvincing noises about human rights. Thirdly, given the moving up of the timetable to hand over power and the administration’s seeming desire to have on-time elections even if whole cities are not represented, this sure sounds a lot like an administration looking for an exit strategy instead of a way to use it as a stepping stone towards other endeavors.
And again, I also think my theory better explains Bush’s economic policy in addition to his foreign policy. And I will admit that I am much more comfortable discussing economics, although I’m not nearly an expert in either area.
AL
I’ll answer the first issue clearly I hope.
Flip flop on $87 billion – bottom line regardless of spend as you go. With a no vote Kerry would have left our troops hanging in the wind. Our troops would have been nothing more than target practice and cannon fodder. Did Kerry actually think about that? To me it certainly seems not. Talk about stubbornness and cutting your nose off to spite your own face. The price of our troops lives seemed fairly cheap to him at the time I guess. Or was Kerry banking on someone else to bail him out to serve his political needs? The pay as you go really rings hollow when you consider any parent would gladly incur a deficit to save their child’s’ life. Cost or how to pay for it wouldn’t be an issue. If everyone had voted no where would we be? All this from an intellectual who can’t see the end result. Give me a break.
USMC,
This is a Republican talking point, and it isn’t quite true. Remember, the Bush administration THREATENED TO VETO the 87 Billion, if they did not get the bill that THEY wanted.
Basically, this was a fight over HOW to fund the 87 billion – whether to do it while remaining (somewhat) fiscally responsible (by rolling back some of the tax cuts to cover) or to fund the 87 billion by simply adding this 87 as part of the expanding hole of the fiscal deficit.
But it was too important for the Bush administration to actually PAY for the 87 billion. Instead they borrowed it, leaving for future generations to pay.
BTW, thanks for the compliments, AMac and David Blue.
“roublen vesseau”:http://windsofchange.net/archives/005751.php#32913: _I’m not a moderate libertarian, so his case against Bush is obviously not mine._
I actually didn’t argue from a libertarian perspective, and tried to keep the post free from partisanship and ideology, arguing purely from a pragmatic perspective. I mentioned that I was a libertarian to head off any knee-jerk reactions that I must be a shrill Bush-hating liberal. Your comment actually makes a pretty similar case to my post.
“Yehudit”:http://windsofchange.net/archives/005751.php#32914: _I’m not going to read the arguments because what is the alternative?_
This is exactly why I’m a strong proponent of electoral reform, and replacing plurality with Condorcet for the President (although I’d be amenable to IRV or Approval) and Proportional Representation for Congress. This way, candidates would no longer be dissuaded from running for fear of splitting the vote, and we would no longer be stuck with two bad choices.
“Brian”:http://windsofchange.net/archives/005751.php#33141: _I thought that the Niger Yellowcake claim had been confirmed by the British, after the BBC’s lead source committed suicide and sparked an investigation._
I’m not arguing about the story itself. I merely cited the forgeries as an example of a dubious source that they were a little too eager to listen to. Whether or not the story is true, the Bush administration should NOT have submitted the forgeries as evidence to the UN. That’s an obvious sign of a serious problem in your information gathering.
“Demosophist”:http://windsofchange.net/archives/005751.php#32907: _What’s the most important set of facts revealed in the Duelfer report, for instance?_
It doesn’t sound like you read the post. In my opinion, _all_ the facts are important, and whether one set of facts is more important than another is a judgment call.
“Demosophist”:http://windsofchange.net/archives/005751.php#32907: _Could you actually vote for someone who simply ignores the findings about Saddam’s intent to rebuild a WMD arsenal, and how his corruption of the humanitarian Oil-for-Food played into that? Do you really consider someone who holds the view that these are unimportant facts compared with whether or not Saddam actually had WMD arsenals?_
In my opinion, Saddam’s intent to rebuild his arsenal is no more and no less important than what he intended to do with it, which, as I mentioned in the post, was another important revelation of the Duelfer report that you shouldn’t ignore.
Indeed, it highlights the distinction between most nuclear countries and North Korea. Most countries want the nuke for deterrence purposes. After all, nobody wants to be invaded. North Korea, on the other hand, _already had_ one or two nukes. That they want seven or eight kinda indicates that their intentions are not defensive.
“Matt Feliksa”:http://windsofchange.net/archives/005751.php#33061: _Can lefties give explainations OUTSIDE of their talking points? Please. The “No connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda” is a real laugher._
Well, I’m not a lefty, and yes, I’m aware of Dan Darling’s arguments for a connection. The main point I was making is that there is definitely much less of a connection than between Al Qaeda and Iran, which Darling agrees with. But that’s too clunky for a heading, Besides, the Bush administration isn’t even bothering to contest that there was ever a link anymore.
I was very unimpressed with _Fahrenheit 9/11_, by the way.
“gerrymander”:http://windsofchange.net/archives/005751.php#33151: _I appreciate the effort you’ve made in your analysis, but remain unmoved by it._
Thanks. That’s fine. As long as you understand where I stand and why, that’s all I’m hoping for.
JC
I know the history of the bill and I know the arguments on both sides. The spin goes both ways. That’s the wheel as we know it. The one that got passed is the one that was put before the floor (which Kerry voted no) after all the debating. Had the bill Kerry wanted put before the floor come to a vote would he have voted yes? I don’t know because that’s the woulda coulda shoulda game. The reality is he voted no on the bill put in front of him.
As I said talk about stubbornness to the tune of the cost of military lives is beyond pale. In a world of diplomacy you pick your battles carefully and Kerry screwed himself on this one.
Eric lists the “real” reasons for invading Iraq, none of which were given before the invasion.
The WMD reason was the most heavily promoted, probably because it is the clearest reason, and one that fits well into the “If it bleeds it leads” philosophy of the mainstream media.
As far as the other objectives, they were the right reasons, but would hard to explain and defend. Hard because there is enormous ignorance of strategic concepts in both the media and the American public. Hard because fighting a war on terror requires a different set of tools, both overt and covert. Hard because too many people use the Vietnam War as an excuse to flagellate ourselves forever. Hard because no “plan” ever survives contact with the enemy.
The essence of strategy is indirection. To meet the strategic goals we have to sometimes use deception, bribery, covert ops, propaganda, nasty interrogation techniques and assasination.
This doesn’t play well on CNN, but it saves lives.
Given that democracy is a system based on the consent of the governed, do conservatives not believe that “leaders” have a responsibility to communicate honestly with citizens.
Is hoodwinking the citizenry A-OK in conservativeland?
We have a republic and a constitution. The military is controlled by a civilian commander in chief. It is up to the civilian government to decide when, where and if to fight. Civilians can protest or vote out the government if they wish, but the back-seat driving and constant second guessing by Kerry & Co. is repugnant to me.
I want a president who will lie to the enemy. I want a president capable of making a secret deals with unpleasant folks to get information. I want him to be all smiles when he plays one faction against another. I want him to jaw everyone to death about democracy even if it is the last reason on the list to go to war.
Yehudit, on a factual basis, your assessment of Kerry is lacking. He was Lt. Governor of Massachussets, he was a district attorney, and I believe he owned a small business (donut shop? bakery? something like that) for a few years. His leadership in the Senate — he has not been a tremendously active voice, as far as I can tell, but he has done some very critical things, one of the most important being helping to set up the Iran-Contra investigations, even as whitewashed away as those eventually became.
I agree with that entirely. Indeed, it sounds like you paraphrased me: “I’m not one of those conspiracy-minded liberals who think it’s all about oil. I imagine economic reasons did play a role, just like they did for the first Gulf War, but I’m not convinced it was the primary reason.”
Yes, I understood that. My point is we need as many alternatives to Saudi oil as possible to get leverage. The Saudis have the cheapest oil and are the swing producer, so they think they can fund Al Qaeda *and* get western oil money. For the most part they were right. But Saudi Arabia’s royal family needs the oil money to survive, and when another producer could ramp up production, goodbye oil card. Saudi Arabia is the endgame for the war on Al-Qaeda, but there are difficulties in taking them on directly.
Parsons: The WMD issue makes a lot of sense when you weigh the relative dangers of false negatives versus false positives. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine a scenario in which a WMD attack in the US will take more lives than were lost in the war. … Our intelligence services had just failed us on 9/11 and in that context it would be criminally stupid to give Saddam the benefit of the doubt.
That again argues towards our primary threats being North Korea and Iran, both of which had their own operational nuclear programs, and neither of which deserved the benefit of the doubt either.
I would argue that we couldn’t take Iran as easily as Iraq. I would also argue that we couldn’t take Iran without taking Iraq first. If Iraq took Kuwait while we were in Iran what then?
It might not even be necessary to take Iran down, they might do it themselves. I would argue that it would be harder for the Mullahs to keep hold of Iran when a. Iraq is not a threat, and b. The Shiites are able to make pilgrimages to a democratic Iraq. I wouldn’t underestimate the student democracy movement as well.
North Korea is a more containable threat, being as isolated as it is.
One war at a time.
Parsons: [Bush] is also demanding a 6-way Summit with North Korea, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea included (how multi-lateral of him!) versus Kerry’s Bilateral DRNK-US status quo (how conservative!).
The problem here is that waiting for everybody to agree to the 6-way summit has turned out to be little more than a stalling tactic — which plays right into North Korea’s hands, and they happily went off to build nukes.
The problem is that Kim is nuts. A delaying tactic while we get our troops out of artillery range and develop sea-based BMD?
We have found a whole ditch chock full of todders
shot in the head, some of them still clutching
their toys, look at the weak reaction by the left.
Totaly morally obtuse they are, and so brazen,
used to, they at least maintained a cover, a
pretension at least, not anymore, now they parade
their moral vacuum out front, naked.
The left show their fangs, at those who dare
to oppose the killers.
None of this is really new, the National Socialist
movment began in the Universities, presented as
a milder more reasonable form of marxism than
the russian bolshiviks who at the time had already
filled mass graves of murder, more people in mass
graves than Hitler ever would.
12 Million where already dead before Stalin took
power, and Stalin himself would eventually butcher
30 Million people, and the USSR overall 61 million
Murders it would write into history.
Hitler won 3 elections, the first two with a less
than 50 percent plurality.
The last he got over 90% of the vote to elect him
dictator.
Mao murdered 35 Million people putting him in
competition with Stalin.
The killing fields of Cambodia represent the mass
murder of one third of the population.
When the idologes of the blood stained left
was able win a cuttoff of support for
south vietnam, the mass murder of more
millions at the hands of the communists resulted
and John Kerry was a large force to abandon
them to the leftist egalitarian religion that
gave us the Purge the Gulag and the Progrom.
The left have almost completed their conditioning
here in the USA.
The gunshots into offices and the nazi logos in
yards and the fake accusations about the vote
even as they do everything they can to fraud
their way to victory is nothing compared to
whats comming.
They have no soul, only their rabid hate matters
the death at their hand behind them is nothing
compared to the death they intend to inflict
on their enemies if they ever get the total
power they seek.
They will gun down your familly and sit on the
back of your wife to eat a sandwich afterwards.
So dont be surprized that a mass grave full
of children has no affect on them, that it does
not cause any re-evaluation of their opposition
to take down Baath Socialist Saddam.
Saddam was just the latest example of a Socialist
dictator and the killing fields that always
accompany the heros of the left.
And they have the same planned for “enemies of the
people” like me.
Today they act like rabid dogs, they follow the
secular religion that has bitrchered 100 Million
people for utopia and they toss it off with a
shrug.
Should you actually be surprised that they show
as little concern for todays killing fields as
any others they have left behind them ?
The left is utterly morally obtuse, their design
on anyone that stands in the way of their leftist
utopia is death, for the more controlled among
them the glimmer of humanity is fake, its a
political calulation.
The United States is today the most just and free
nation remaining and to the left it is the only
remaining evil in the world.
A strong free state that stands in the way of
their dream of the next holy killing field in
quest of their egalitarian utopia.
They have their revealed text, their high prests
and interpeters and they have their crusade
against non-believers that are standing in the way
of the entrance of their leftist heavenly utopia.
Leftism is a fanatical secular religion even
more malignant than the islamic butchers they
find common cause with today.
They Hate the Jews they Hate freedom and if
your not a holy warrior of communist jihad
they hate you.
All manner of civility was only a pretense
and today we see them abandoning the pretense.
Raymond
I have two procedural suggestions. In case I am wrong, I also invite correction from Joe.
(1) To add a live URL, use “Text to display”, a colon and a link, the way it’s shown at the top of the comments. Use this for links, otherwise you will make the column wider than it is supposed to be.
Alternately, learn to link normally. It’s not hard. Even I learned to do it. 🙂
Tom Volckhausen: you posted a long link in post #33147. Could you not do that? Try the Winds of Change way.
(2) When someone has posted a long link, widening the page, consider posting with short lines of your own, if this is convenient for you.
Paymond did this, making it easy for me to read his post, which I did. Thank you for the line endings, Paymond, I liked them.
Armed Liberal: ” Well, guys…since Kerry isn’t going to lose by a landslide (defined as 60/40 or better), perhaps you’d best think about why …”
Absolutely. This is very important.
But that would take another thread.
Also, it might be best to discuss this after the election, when passions are cooler and we can discuss why the Democrats (and the Republicans?) got the numbers they did get, rather than why they will/might get the numbers we are speculating that they might get.
Sorry for the delay. Had to catch up on baseball and the Farscape miniseries. 🙂
By the way, let me reiterate that an argument in favor of the Iraq war is not necessarily an argument in favor of Bush. Even if you think invading Iraq was the right thing to do, a politician doing the right thing for the wrong reason should not be very comforting. For example, if you are a free trader, you probably shouldn’t vote for a politician who cuts steel tariffs because he hates steel workers and wants to kill them all (not trying to smear Bush here, who, remember actually imposed steel tariffs). Such a politician is not likely to make good decisions in other areas of policy.
This was the whole point of my tax cut example. Let’s say you are a Keynesian (which I am not), in which case, you believe that the government should try and mitigate the business cycle by cutting taxes and increasing spending during recessions to fight unemployment, and raising taxes and cutting spending during expansions to fight inflation. Should you take comfort in Bush’s cutting taxes during a recession? No. Why? Because he gave every indication that he’d have cut taxes even during an expansion.
What you have is not a Keynesian, but a President who switched from supply-side language to Keynesian language merely because circumstances changed, making it more politically convenient for him to switch. Not surprisingly, the policy itself bears little resemblance to a tax cut designed to spur demand, which is not surprising given the tax cut’s origins and intent. Indeed, Bush also talked about cutting taxes on dividends and capital gains. While this is all and well when you are trying to stimulate investment and savings on the supply side, it works _against_ you if you are trying to stimulate spending and demand (especially in a recession that was caused by excess inventory, or supply).
Now, doesn’t this sound very familiar in regards to Bush’s shifting choice of arguments and language for the Iraq war?
“Eric Parsons”:http://windsofchange.net/archives/005751.php#33170: _My point is we need as many alternatives to Saudi oil as possible to get leverage._
Whether or not you support the war, my point is that it’s highly unlikely that Bush arrived at the decision for the same reasons. Note here, did Bush actually do anything to help lessen our dependence on Saudi oil beyond invading Iraq? Does he ever talk about supporting a gas tax or an oil import fee (the latter is actually better because it doesn’t serve as a disincentive for domestic oil producers)? No, he argues against it. Ditto for getting rid of the SUV’s exemption to CAFE fuel efficiency standards. Now sure, there are vested interests against these policies, but if he could get the PATRIOT Act passed after 9/11, he surely could have drummed up enough nationalism behind him to at least raise these issues in the national debate, painting the vested interests as being unpatriotic and all that. (And yes, all of those go against libertarian ideals, but I also agree that our dependence on foreign oil is a national security issue, and would be willing to tolerate such government interference in the free market.)
_I would argue that we couldn’t take Iran as easily as Iraq. I would also argue that we couldn’t take Iran without taking Iraq first. If Iraq took Kuwait while we were in Iran what then?_
And if Iran developes nukes while we’re bogged down in Iraq, what then?
I don’t doubt that Iran is a very tough nut. Invasion may not be feasible — but you don’t want the Iranians to know that you’ve taken that option off the table. Now it’s too late. They won’t have to fear invasion from us for years.
_It might not even be necessary to take Iran down, they might do it themselves. I would argue that it would be harder for the Mullahs to keep hold of Iran when a. Iraq is not a threat, and b. The Shiites are able to make pilgrimages to a democratic Iraq. I wouldn’t underestimate the student democracy movement as well._
Similarly, it might not have been necessary to take out Saddam. His primary concern was Iran, not us. The main difference I perceive is in degree of threat. Iran has the capability to enrich uranium. Iraq did not. Plus Iran has closer ties to terrorism, including Al Qaeda. It seems to me that, for Iran, the risks of waiting are much higher.
_North Korea is a more containable threat, being as isolated as it is._
I think you are writing them off too easily. With ballistic missile technology capable of hitting our west coast (not with reliable accuracy, which might explain why they want 6 or 7 shots at it instead of 1 or 2), and being able to make money by selling that technology to countries like Iran (and perhaps terrorists as well), I don’t think you can call that situation contained by any means.
_The problem is that Kim is nuts._
A containment strategy tends not to work too well on people who are nuts.
_One war at a time._
Yes. This goes back to the issue of opportunity cost, which is why prioritization of threats is _very_ important.