Cummings, re: "Ok, fine, if I'm setting up a strawman, then please explain to me and this board how your foreign policy decisions related to war would work Ed?. And try and give me something concrete to go on instead of fuzzy words like "lack of support". In other words, tell me how it would work? At what point do we as a nation move our troops out and declare we no longer support the mission? Tell me who will be the harbinger of this decision? And how? Because, from what I've witnessed, we just had a Presidential election and BOTH candidates ran on finishing the job in Iraq. The only candidates who ran on pulling our troops out didn't even make it through the primaries from BOT parties!. In other words, your candidates lost and lost BIG.
You evidently can't help mixing apples and oranges.
I've already explained that the public has the last word. They have the last word in electing, or not electing, those representatives who reflect their views, in refusing to serve in an all-volunteer service and in exercising their rights of free speech and assembly to voice their opinions on the war. That's the power of the public.
The public does not set policy and the public does not implement it. Our elected officials run the country. That's the power of the elected officials.
Now can you figure out "how your foreign policy decisions related to war would work?"
What do polls have to do with the power of the elected officials? Nothing, at least not until election day. On election day good polls mean they get reelected, bad polls mean that new guys get to set the policies and implement them.
Don't confuse the question of whether the public recognizes poor leadership on election day, however, with the question of whether the leadership is poor.
Our elected leaders have the obligation to make wise choices regardless of whether the polls say that the public wants to move in that direction or in some other direction. Good and wise leaders make their best decision, not the decision of the majority. That's true leadership and true courage.
What isn't true leadership and true courage is using the full power of the federal government to create blatant misinformation, deception and fears to keep the voting public fearful, misinformed and deceived for the purpose of winning elections. Valerie Plame ring any bells? Wmds in Iraq win any bells? Highest terrorist alert ring any bells? Iraq a terrorist haven ring any bells? Unmanned drones chemically attacking American cities ring any bells? Mushroom cloud ring any bells? Yellowcake from Niger ring any bells? Kerry's a weak kneed, lying traitor ring any bells? McCain's broke under pressure, is mentally unstable and has a black child ring any bells? Terrorists will take over Iraq if we leave ring any bells? Flowers and open arms ring any bells? No insurgency, just a few foreign fighters ring any bells? No systematic abuse of the Geneva conventions, just a few bad apples ring any bells? I'm sure there's much more; just make a list of all the things you "know" and you'll have a pretty good starting point.
But, as history has shown and as the current polls seem to indicate, you can fool the public for a while but even us dumb shits will finally see that spin is spin and reality is reality.
In case you can't figure out what that means, it means that those of you who still buy the spin and the spinners are soon going to find yourselves wandering aimlessly through a morass of fractured thinking an your way toward a trailer park on the edge of town. Ed |
