>>"I do know that I don't like W"
>If he has good ideas, do you discount them becuase of your dislike for him?
Nope, that's the problem. I used to like him but keep finding that I don't like the ideas that come out of his administration. I wanted to think I was a Republican for so long, but that fizzled.
>The war on Iraq is the FRONT in the war on terror. Do the anti-Bushies think that the entire terrorist situation was in Afghanistan, and that if we got Osama that all danger would be gone? Laughably naive if so.
Of course not. But Saddam had nothing to do with the immediate terror threats against the U.S.. Israel, yes, but us, no. I'd have had much less of a problem if Israel had taken out Saddam; he financed suicide bombers in Israel. We should've dedicated our resources to taking out Al-Qaida and other related terrorist groups that are trying to attack the U.S., like Hizbollah.
>Iraq will emerge as a succesful democracy in the heart of terrorist country, and that will do more than just about anything else. Those who cannot see this and want to maintain the status quo in the middle east are either really stupid or want the terrorists to prosper.
Well, I was all for "neo-con" doctrine for quite some time, and still am. I'm all for taking out dictatorships and replacing them with democracies. But, and there's a big but, I've always thought that we'd need to spend at least 15-20 years and hundreds of billions in each country to accomplish that, and that we'd need to be prepared to be in it for the long haul.
I was for the war initially. About two months before the war, I started hearing constant talk from the administration about us only needing to be in Iraq for a few months, at most a couple of years, and about the cost being pretty low. It began to seem to me like the administration was committed to the war, and not the aftermath, and that lack of committment turned me against the war.
The last few months have shown us that the administration may in fact be committed for the long haul, but that it needed to deceive our citizens to keep the support up. Think that if Bush had gone on TV and told the country before the war that it'd cost $100 billion and that we'd be there for twenty years, that the country would've overwhelmingly supported him? The administration's estimates of costs and time increase every month or two now. The administration either initially lied or was very unprepared. We're going to get a similar rude awakening as we approach the June 30th deadline of handing over power to the Iraqis. They're not ready, and we're talking at least a few years until they are.
We'll be there for a long time. We'd better be anyway. If we're not, Iraq turns into Lebanon, maybe worse.
I'm also not all that happy about hundreds of billions of dollars going to Iraq when all is not quiet on the home front, but que sera, sera. I would have much rather this war waged during the '90s boom when we weren't running deficits, than now. This war and the rebuilding are a luxury. We've seriously got to get our own house in order.
>But I do appreciate the responses, and hope you have a nice weekend.
Ditto.
-Z |
