Saw Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes. He said he wished we hadn't gotten into this war, but now that we are, he wants to win it.
My feelings exactly. And yours from what you said.
It's barely removed from simply giving up and tuning out -- which is what more people in America than in any other Western democracy choose to do
Think so? Try this:
Message 18771280
Until two weeks ago, there was a clear alternative to war: the inspection process
Hmmmmm. I considered the inspections a bad joke. Saddam had literally YEARS to prepare for them. He had MONTHS of advance notice that they were coming. And he controlled the timetable as to when they would begin.
Is anyone surprised nothing was found?
Religious figures, until proven otherwise, command the same respect for much the same reason.
Do we mean Jimmy Swaggart or Jimmy Bakker here?
In the public's eyes, the average demonstrator, and the theoretically moral movement he or she represents, has done nothing within light-years of that level of moral legitimacy.
I'd just say they no moral legitimacy period. They're against war? Killing innocents? War waged without UN sanctions?
Funny. I don't remember mass demonstrations during Rwanda or Kosovo. Where were they then? They were certainly military actions, innocents were killed, and the UN never sanctioned them.
Pardon me for believing their position is strictly partisan and has nothing to do with moral principles.
For me, in many ways, the U.S. street demonstrations of the last week have been nearly as depressing as the invasion itself. They have been primal screams, by definition unsustainable, when what is desperately needed is sustainable responses. They have been expressions of what protesters have felt they need to say, rather that what protesters felt other Americans needed to see or hear. They have been reactions to what has been done, rather than demands for what should be done now.
If that doesn't mean the intent of those protestors and the antiwar movement is to stop the war, what does it means?
You're kidding yourself, Karen.
They have used the shopworn tactics, iconography, and slogans of 40 years of left street protest, which by definition are going to seem knee-jerk and irrelevant
I really did wonder if anyone on the left would ever notice.
You're an anarchist and hate electoral politics?
A perfect example. Anarchism is simple idiocy. Men cannot live in societies without government. I defy anyone to produce a counterexample. The gov't may be a primitive theocracy on that has a priest living in a thatch hut, but it's there. And the more complex and advanced the society becomes, the more the necessity of gov't.
Don't just sit down in front of cars because we're waging a war to feed our SUVs and everyone should abandon theirs, and then wonder why people who could be on your side but need to get to work are angry at you and vote for Bush next year.
Did you say I was naive for believing these street-clogging and violent protests would do a better job of making converts for the right than anything we could do?
America has no such claim; 9/11 was not the Holocaust
Please try harder to sell that claim to the public. Please.
and this country, far from being threatened, has lived an existence of remarkable isolation and ease. Before the Cold War, it hadn't faced any meaningful external threat in over a century
I beg to differ. The Japanese intended to and tried to take Hawaii. Only the fact that the US was (partially) reading their naval code and knew they were going to attack Midway saved it and Hawaii. Attacking California was discussed as a possibility by the Japanese had that plan succeeded. Add had it succeeded, the US Pacific Fleet would have been destroyed, so the next battle would have been on California's beaches.
Hitler considered Americans mongrels. Had he had the brains to leave the Russians alone and finish off Britain, WW2 could have gone quite differently.
even after a planet's worth of abuses inflicted in the name of that Cold War,
Gimme a break. The Communists were clearly imperialistic and aggressive. Should we have just surrendered to them? And don't accuse me of B/W logic here. The other side would have been to attack them. Instead, we took the middle ground: containment.
The author may wish deeply that Communism had won; I'd say that the average American has a significantly different opinion.
it took another half-century before anyone caused harm on U.S. soil, and even then, it was a single act (so far) by an illegal private organization
So should we have simply ignored it? It was done with the knowledge and complicity of the Taliban, which effectively was the gov't of Afghanistan.
the "might makes right" attitude of a bully.
Fair shot there.
But it raises again the question: What is a UN resolution worth?
Apparently nothing. It was the failure and cowardice of the UN that led to this. |
