Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Let's Start The War And Get It Over With -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (800)	3/26/2003 6:20:27 PM
From: PROLIFE	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 808

Carping pessimism of TV anchors and interviewers fails to give Americans a sense of defeatism newsandopinion.com \| Right before the Midterm elections, the conventional wisdom, driven by the liberal media which shapes it, was that Americans had moved past terrorism, the area of Bush's strength and were more worried about economic issues, the Democrats' turf. The media proved to be wrong. The election results showed that Americans were still focused on 9-11and the war on terror and still wanted Bush to lead us through the crisis, this time with a compliant Congress at his back. Now, negativism hits us again - through the same agency: overwrought and liberal news anchors. Anyone watching television coverage of the war cannot but be astonished at the carping pessimism of many of the anchors and interviewers on all the networks and cable stations. Astounded that we are taking casualties, horrified that we have lost prisoners, amazed that we face ground fire, they radiate what used to be called defeatism. But it is not a defeatism or even an impatience shared by the American people. Mourning each casualty, they realize that our military will have to lose valiant men and courageous women. Regretting each POW, they understand that Americans will be captured. Praying for our soldiers' lives, they grasp that some will die. But Americans are also relieved that the horror stories painted by the liberal media in the days before the war have not come to pass. Iraq's oil fields are overwhelmingly not ablaze. Nor are millions of barrels of oil spilling into the Gulf creating a global ecological disaster. Our troops have, thus far, not faced chemical or biological weapons. We have found a massive 100 acre chemical weapons plant. We have shot down the SCUD missiles. And, above all, we have not been hit with the domestic acts of terrorism of which the more hysterical critics - and, indeed, our own government - warned us. We are advancing on Baghdad and reducing the circle of land Saddam controls to a tiny portion of his country, a portion without oil, without resources, and with only mouths to feed. In the remainder of the war, our biggest adversary is likely to be our own humanitarianism and the political atmosphere that surrounds the war. Saddam's troops are obviously planning to withdraw into Baghdad and use the population there as human shields for their dying grasp on power. We cannot permit our concern with Iraqi civilian casualties to lead to American combat deaths. Unless and until we convince the Iraqi military that they cannot hide behind women and children, we will needlessly expose our own soldiers to risk and casualties. The American people must be prepared to let our military call Saddam's bluff and do what is necessary to take Baghdad without having to engage in the hand-to-hand, street-by-street fighting that will grind up American lives. If civilian casualties occur, it is to be regretted. But war is messy and the actions of the Iraqi military in taking shelter behind the innocents leaves us with no choice. Will American casualties and POWs erode public support for the war? Not in this life they won't. The reports of torture and interrogation of US POWs in violation of international agreements, the sale of military equipment to Iraq by Russia, the discovery of chemical weapons plants, and the trickery of Iraqi units pretending to surrender taking advantage of American good will all simply serve to enrage our people and redouble their determination. The more we see of the Iraqi tactics the more we realize how brutal and inhuman are their leaders and the more focused we are on destroying this corrupt regime. The American people will not soon tire of this war. Just as they remained focused on the war on terror in the Midterm elections, they will remain with our efforts now. Americans are in this for the long, long haul. They made that commitment on 9-11 and they are not backing down now. Dick Morris

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (800)	3/30/2003 8:35:50 AM
From: GROUND ZERO™	Respond to of 808

Anti-war nuts suffer from the usual mixture of egotism and self-loathing that often characterizes recreational depression - an unholy alliance of Oprahism and Meldrewism in which you think you're scum, but also that you're terribly important, too. For instance, what about the loony who offered to be crucified on live TV if George Bush promised not to invade Iraq? "Send your troops home and take me," she wrote to the White House, adding later, "I don't want to appear as some nut case." Similarly, there are the human shields - now limping homewards after being shocked to discover, bless 'em, that Saddam wanted to stick them in front of military installations as opposed to the hospitals and petting zoos that they'd fondly imagined they were going to defend. I've just heard a snippet of the most disgustingly me-me-me anti-war advert by Susan Sarandon, in which she intones, "Before our kids start coming home from Iraq in body bags, and women and children start dying in Baghdad, I need to know - what did Iraq do to us?" Well, if you mean what did Saddam do to America The Beautiful, not an awful lot, not yet - but to millions of his own people, torture and murder for a start. Don't they count? Surely this is the most self-obsessed anti-war protest ever. NOT IN MY NAME! That's the giveaway. Who gives a shit about their wet, white, western names? Look how they write them so solemnly in a list on the bottom of the letters they send to the papers. And the ones that add their brats' names are the worst - a grotesque spin on Baby On Board, except they think that this gives them extra humanity points not just on the road, but in the whole wide world. We don't know the precious names of the countless numbers Saddam has killed. We're talking about a people - lots of them parents - subjected to an endless vista of death and torture, a country in which freedom can never be won without help from outside. Contrasting servicemen and the protesters, it is hard not to laugh. Are these two sides even the same species, let alone the same nationality? On one hand the selflessness and internationalism of the soldiers; on the other the national isolationism of the protesters. Excuse me, who are the idealists here? And is it a total coincidence that those stars most prominent in the anti-war movement are the most notoriously "difficult" and vain - Streisand, Albarn, Michael, Madonna, Sean Penn? And Robin Cook! Why might anyone believe world peace can be secured by this motley bunch? What these supreme egotists achieve by putting themselves at the centre of every crisis is to make the Iraqi people effectively disappear. NOT IN MY NAME! is western imperialism of the sneakiest sort, putting our clean hands before the freedom of an enslaved people. But even those whose anti-war protests started in good faith now know that when Saddam's regime comes tumbling down, thousands of Iraqis will dance and sing with joy before the TV cameras, and thank our armed forces for giving them back their lives. guardian.co.uk GZ