War On Iraq @ MindSay 
iraq war
This is an op-ed piece that I had some issues with. If I could only say one thing about the article, I would have to say that it is by a Republican who says that says he'll probably vote for McCain in November, even though he claims that Hillary is the best choice. That was the big flashing warning sign saying that this person was going to be misleading.
Another one of those misleading statements was his conflicting view of Clinton compared to Obama. He said:
On domestic policy he comes down as hard liberal, advocating things like nationalized health care, major social programs, expansion of federal role in education and so on.I'm not going to debate whether or not the statement itself is true. That isn't the most misleading thing... it is his failure to mention that these are also things you could say about Clinton, except many would say that Clinton's Health Care plan is more "liberal" than Obama's.
So Obama's opposition to the war is a good thing. His discussion of a gradual process of withdrawal is a good idea. How did the author get from discussing a gradual withdrawal to withdrawing the troops immediately with no consideration? Did he suddenly confuse Obama and Richardson?"On national security I am also concerned by Senator Obama. His opposition to the war in Iraq and discussion of a gradual process of withdrawal is a good idea, but he simply wants to pull out right away without any consideration of the long term impact."
All that aside, there were more alarming things:
"The next four years are not going to be pleasant for whoever takes over the White House. On the domestic scene we have the falling dollar, the mortgage crisis, a slumping economy and a number of other brewing problems.
Internationally we have Iraq, the war on Terror, growing threats from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Other issues like trade and immigration combine the worst of both arenas."
I have to agree that the job of the next president is not going to be pleasant. I just think that these "growing threats" from our infamous go-to bad guys is a little overblown. I have a feeling that a more diplomatic presence in the seat of power in our country will relax a lot of tension in the world. A question I have to ask is: Do we really have growing threats from these countries, or is our relationship with them damaged by a president who doesn't play nice with others? President Bush, although some would say it is his strongest point, has not been that great for US foreign policy.
As for Iraq, you have to wonder just how dire the circumstances are there. I'm very happy with Obama's questions to Gen. Petraeus. It really reflected how I've been feeling lately about Iraq. We should have went in with an idea of what success in Iraq was. Instead, the terms of success were never clearly stated to the general public going into Iraq, and any measure of success that we could see (WMDs, Saddam, Iraq freedom...) were always replaced with something else. The only thing we can hope for now is relative success... and we may be closing in on a point where our continued presence only hinders the chances for that relative success.
I have to wonder... is our involvement persisting in Iraq because our president views the avenues for relative success in Iraq as failure? Any time that someone mentioned a plan to get out of Iraq, it was denounced as "cut and run.". The next president might have a much easier time dealing with Iraq than we think if it turns out that the only reason we are still there is that they think leaving will be seen as weak. I think we've got to decide where our priorities are. The men that President Bush was supposed to be after with the War on Terror, Bin Laden and his fellow terrorist leaders, are still out there. No amount of fighting in Iraq will change that. At this point, our priorities are either here or there. The sooner we can focus our attention on the home front, the better it is for everyone.
"From my point of view, there is little chance that the next President will have much success in solving these problems, largely because they are far too complex to resolve and well beyond the control of any person or any country.
My main problem with this is its misleading nature. Sometimes there is unwarranted blame placed on the predecessor. This isn't one of those cases. If we can't look back at the Bush Presidency and see how he exacerbated all of the above issues, both domestic and foreign, then we must be blind. We know who is to blame for Iraq, because it was unprompted. We invaded them for no substantial reason and, even if there was reason to invade, it certainly didn't have to happen like this. But that is a big IF.I think this is true largely because I do not think that the problems were created by any one administration or country. It is of course all too common in modern politics for one side to blame the other for the bad things or to try and take credit for the good, and often it works."
Without getting out of Iraq, I don't see the next President being able to turn the other issues around either. That is why not being there should be the highest priority.
He goes on to say....
"History has shown us that when one party gets too much power it is a very bad thing for the country. We can see this in many parts of the country today where one party has been in complete control and the result is corruption and stagnation.
Many people were concerned when Bush and the GOP held the White House and Congress, but even then the numbers in Congress were close enough for the Democrats to provide something of a check.
Imagine how bad things could be with no check at all, such as occurred during periods under FDR or LBJ. The results then were abuses of power that make the Bush period look mild (for those who wonder, I used these two Democratic examples because the GOP has not recently had those kinds of super majorities)."
I find it VERY odd that suddenly FDR and LBJ are the subject of so much ire. FDR is undenibly one the the best presidents we've ever had. This is why he consistently ranks with Presidents like Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson. LBJ's biggest flub was not domestic, but foreign. I took a pretty good look at the effects of the Great Society programs, and I can honestly say that they were not ineffective. They worked, but not as good as Johnson predicted. These programs were long term solutions that could not get the focus they deserved because of the Vietnam war and were dismantled and/or cut before the long term effects were realized. LBJ's opposition brilliantly latched on to the perceived weakness with the War on Poverty and his actual weakness as a "war president", and tore it and him apart.
Oddly enough, it was Nixon who supported Universal Health Care and implemented SSI. In the end, all of these presidents did less harm to the US economy than Reagan, whose spending and economic changes allowed for a presidency like GWB's to occur.
You can read the article for yourself here.
Its that time again. Time for good sense and reason to go out the door in favor of political games.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13338901/
To date there have been over 2500 US Military Personel deaths since the start of this "war." (Note: quotetations are used here because this is not a war but rather a forceful military occupation that was initiated on false intel and no follow up.)
You would think that with less than 1/3 of the United States population in favor of the war and the president that started it on his own crazy backwater agenda, that the House would be inclined to listen to the people and get our troops home. This is not the case. I will not go into too much detail, since everyone can read the article linked above and form their own opinion but I will show some excerpts.
“Two things that don’t exist in Iraq and have not, weapons of mass destruction, and cutting and running.” - Reid, D-Nev
How true. Some people say "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence." This is also true, but with US troops being stations there for almost 3 years and scouring most of the country, thats quite a bit of evidence of absence to me, enough to really step back and say "Hmm, maybe we dropped the ball on this one Dick, let's get our people home and just call this one a mulligan."
I don't like debating politics because its a losing battle no matter what side you are on. But in cases like this I think people really should think about 2 things. 1) What is good for the country? 2) Should we ever have gone there in the first place?
I want everyone to think about the events way back in the day, in 2003. All of a sudden the search for Osama bin Laden stopped being the news and Operation Shock and Awe was EVERYWHERE. It was worse than the Schiavo case. We were told that intel reports showed Saddam Hussein has Weapons of Mass Destruction, mobile chemical weapons labs, and a nuclear program that threatened the entire war.
"Holy Shit!!" We thought, we really need to take this guy down. 18 months later we are told, "Wait, our bad. No WMD, no chemical weapons, no nukes, sorry our intel was bad." Then we are told, "Actually we knew those reports were bad but meh..."
That brings us to the present, 2500 dead, no one taking responsibility, they dont want to bring our people home, and they are taking no steps into having the new Iraqi govt. take control of the country on their own. Remember they dont have to pay for anything as long as we are still there. They even want US troops to run their prisons.
Midterm elections are coming up. I know I will be working to have the Dems take control. At least they will bring people home and hopefully stop this load of shit.
The republicans say that by pulling from Iraq we will promote the spread of terrorism around the world and into the United States. Let me say one thing about this.
WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING?! Terrorism is not some plague or some hard drug, it is a fucking idea. It is the use of fear to obtain political goals! Terrorism has been around the world since the dawn of time and is extremely well rooted in the US already. Who remembers SARS? That lung infection with a 9% fatality rate (and that was only if you already have immune system issues) that everyone was freaking out about that wasnt an issue? Or that fact that US media uses nothing but scare tactics to make their stories...
Or what about Oklahoma City, that was terrorism. The series of high school shootings, that was terrorism, any robbery, thats terrorism. Anything that is done to incite fear to achieve a goal is terrorism. Buy a fucking dictionary.
What the fuck is wrong with people?!
The newspapers ar strangely quiet about this debt-ceiling thing. I didn't know that the House no longer votes on these things, but just automated the process of raising it when needed. Too much to be bothered with, I suppose, controlling the national debt. The Senate hasn't automated this yet, so they have to vote.
I knew the debt was close to $6 trillion when Bush took office, but I didn't know that he'd been back to the till quietly 3 times to raise it another $3 trillion. And $2 trillion of that is for Iraq. How d'you feel about that, then? $2 trillion for this war? Every man, woman, and child in the US now owes something like $30,000 for their share of the US debt, and your individual bill for Iraq is $6,600. Got a spouse? That'll be $13,200 for the both of you. No family discounts on debt, please.
Get your head around that number for a second. $6,600. That's more than the state of California budgets to educate my child each year. That's the upper limit on my platinum card. Hey, that'll just be many years of payments of $100 per month for the war, please.
And this brings me to a decidedly uncomfortable place. Just what is my position on this war?
Well, obviously, I am against it. Everybody before me has made better arguments as to why this should be the case. I won't repeat them.
But here's a place where I hit discomfort.
Do I support the troops?
Most people I know are against the war, but feel hey, we gotta' support the troops. It's not their fault they're serving our country at precisely the moment it decided to engage in political insanity. It's not their fault they're pawns of the bureaucratic machine. It's not their fault they're doing something good, i.e., serving us, protecting and defending freedom, but just got sent to the wrong place.
Hmmmm..
If it were 1966 and we were having this talk, I'd be tempted to nod my head and agree. Yeah, it's not their fault. It's the government.
But it's 2006, and we had Vietnam, and we now all know that the US government doesn't think twice about sending poor and stupid boys off to die for unworthy causes. Before you explode with anger over that choice of adjectives, let me explain. My ex-husband served in Vietnam, as a soldier in the army. It took him all of five minutes to figure out that the vast majority of the army was made up of underclass and under-educated boys. He was in college, but had missed out on a class and that made him eligible for the draft, to his complete horror. He could go to OCS, but declined because he wanted to be out ASAP, and being a foot soldier got you out faster than being an officer. Once he was dropped into the war, he saw that there weren't any well-educated upper class soldiers running around out there in the jungle. He knew it was a poor boy's war, and since he was a poor boy from Macon, Ga., that made him quietly seethe inside.
This government has been carefully and quietly targeting black, Latin, and poor white youths who probably don't have much of a future without armed service. There are gorgeously shot ads on TV and in magazines depicting very handsome, martial young men talking to their mothers, making them proud of having a son who serves. This is a very manipulative machine we are working with, and who can blame these youths for signing up?
I can. Wow, this is going to be a very hard position to hold. But let me try it.
I can look troops in the eye, who've signed up since we began this war, and honestly ask them what they think they are doing. Don't they know they will be killing people, pulling people who may have done nothing out of their homes for interrogation? Don't they know they will be violating the rights of a people who are in so much dissaray that it's hardly likely they can organize anything at the moment, save a steady stream of hatred for their 'liberators'? Do they honestly believe they are being dispatched to do anything more than secure oil so that the US can continue to generate the vast majority of the world's pollution, and feed its taste for giant gas guzzling vehicles? Can you in any way translate this to making the world a better place for all people? Are you aware that there is no 'liberation' going on, and that this is an excuse to frankly colonialize another country outright?
Yeah, I think they do know that. The finer points may elude them. Philosophy may elude them. But I think at the end of the day they know they are going to shoot people, hurt people, and carry out an operation that has very little to do with giving a nation freedom. So if they sign up to go, it's not because they are protecting this country, defending our freedom, and all that. They know they are going over there to hurt people whose crime is having been born in the wrong spot in the world at this particular time. There aren't any illusions left about that now.
My friend is dating a soldier, a special forces guy, who just went. He enlisted last year. He could read the papers. He could figure out what was up. He's 30, hardly a kid. He enlisted. She's against the war. She feels conflicted. She supports him because he feels he's doing something great for his country.
What is that, exactly?
For those who enlisted, and then got stuck in this war before it was known that there was going to be a war, this is a terrible conundrum, and I wish we could send you home tomorrow. For the rest of the troops, eager to sign up and serve, eager to go overseas, I submit that you will hold guns and you will pull triggers. You are accountable for your actions, as I am, as everyone is. You should take a good look at the powers you serve, and question what they are up to. This requires you become conscious. In the end, I think we are all accountable to be conscious of what we are doing, what it creates, and what it does to us and others.
This thought brings me to an even uglier thought. The willing troops who go over there, conscious or not, are the only shield keeping the government from forcing the rest of us to go. See, if everyone objected to what we are doing in Iraq, and no one signed up, well, it would be hard to fight a war short of importing 'expendable' people from another nation, or something equally horrendous. So what would the government do?
Force the rest of us to serve. It's happened, maybe not here, but in enough other places touting democracy and freedom and great destiny. I am thinking particularly here of Nazi Germany, which eventually started sending 14 year-olds to the front lines in Europe and Asia, in the name of spreading a great society infused with democracy and freedom.
Yeah, it sounds just as hollow on this page as it did to some suspecting Germans back then.
Those troops who march off to war with bright-eyed enthusiasm and zeal are keeping the government from instituting mandated conscription. Now hopefully, if they mandated us into service, we'd fight that like mad, and push back hard, and maybe even force those bastards in DC out into the streets and start over, get some people running this country who are actually conscious and humanitarian. So mull that one over. Forced conscription might lead to revolution, and maybe that's what is needed instead of this rampant apathy we all feel that keeps us from thinking, saying, and doing anything against this madness our country is engaged in.
But I still don't support the troops. I'm sorry, but there it is. We each of us have to own what we do, and why we do it, no matter where we are on the societal ladder. Sometimes, pushing back from the bottom forces required changes all the way to the top, and I think that's what's bloody-well needed now.
Man, I am a super clutz! on friday, i spilled my pop all over myself...TWICE! and then last night, i was sitting on the floor, and pinched my pinky under the rocking chair, and now it's all bruised and so unbelievably sore! then, this morning at the college, I opened a 7up, and it exploded all over my pants. i'm clutzy...lol...my mom was right...maybe my nickname should be Dopey (ie-Snow White). And my coldsore is still here...it isn't sore anymore, just...scabby....gross.
Well...today is the federal election here in Canada. I voted last week during the early polls. I'm worried. If the rest of Canada votes Stephen Harper in, it's like a death wish for the majority of Canada, and no one sees it. they are so blinded by his promise of tax rebates, and tax cuts....but what they don't see is that he's going to take away our universal health care system, raise tuition fees, cut minimum wage, banish the universal childcare, stop gay marriage (which isn't that big of a deal, i don't care about people being straight or not, as long as they are happy.), ban abortion, which would suck for a lot of women, ending their rights of free choice....and basically turn us into a mini-United States (don't get me wrong, the US has some good features, but I like my Canada!). Stephen Harper is anti-Kyoto...if you haven't noticed, our winter this year, has been pretty much non-existant here, obviously there is something wrong with our atmosphere, and our leaders should be trying to figure it out.
and, Harper is pro-Iraq war...for those of you that support George Bush and his "war on terror" I'm sorry, but that is one thing I have been against the entire time. I do not want those that I love and care about fighting a war that we shouldn't even be fighting. We need to start respecting others and their cultures, not fighting them about something we have no control over. It is ridiculous that just because someone is Muslim, or comes from Iraq or Afganistan they are accused of being a terrorist, we should respect them and their beliefs. Maybe its naive of me to think this way, and maybe i have a very simple, childhood view of the world, but I know that the world could do with a little bit more compassion and understanding, and a lot less bombs and wars.
If you live in Canada, and are 18 years old or older, and have not voted yet, please, do not condemn our Canada to the Conservatives. There are other options. If you do not like Paul Martin and the Liberals, consider the NDP and Jack Layton. He is a very respectable man, and has not screwed up in the publics eye yet. Basically everything that Stephen Harper is against, Jack Layton will help reinforce. When Harper would get rid of health care, Layton will strengthen it. If you cannot vote for the NDP, consider the Green Party. They are very much like the NDP, but take a more "clean the earth" view. Very much of their campaign is about cleaning the economy, and fixing things that have been destroyed that we need.
If anything, VOTE! Don't sit there and let someone else decide the Canada that we will be "stuck" with, and don't bitch about it if you don't get out and vote. VOTE!!!!
PLEASE READ THIS LETTER FROM SERJ TANKIAN (LEAD SINGER OF SYSTEM OF A DOWN) AND GET INVOLVED
Dear Friends,
It's an honor to communicate with you, not just about things having to do with Serjical Strike, but also about things that have a deep importance to humanity and the reason for our existence.
Whether it’s the Holocaust in Germany, the Killing Fields in Cambodia or the Armenian Genocide, one thing that all crimes against humanity have in common is the abuse of religion, race, or cultural differences as an excuse to exterminate a whole group or nation of people.
We are at a time in history when we can no longer afford to deny the occurrence of such atrocities or be passive about allowing such crimes to take place again. We need to mobilize our hearts.
Please join us in sending these postcards to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert to encourage them both to take a firm stand against the unspeakable horrors of Genocide.
Please take a moment to download, print and mail these postcards to congress.
Please click here www.anca.org/anca/SOAD
With Respect,
Serj Tankian
((The link doesn't work right now, but it will soon...I contacted them about it...please help out and support passing the law about stopping/preventing Genocides around the world! <3333 for more info go to www.serjicalstrike.com)) ((By the way, all the tags are just so this topic gets more views..don't pay attention to them))
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