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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (23578)	7/27/2003 5:26:09 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

X, The liberal mind does face a conundrum. For the sake of a sense of fairness and tolerance, some really poor decisions are allowed to fester. I don't have an answer, and when I do sort of propose one in polite society I'm shouted down as more of a totalitarian than George Bush. But there does come a point where too much tolerance passes over into the realm of bad public policy and a lack of common sense. Here's an interesting case in point: nytimes.com What intrigues me about this story is the image of the four young men who all wear the same "Ghostbusters" tattoo. There is a young marine who is dead today because of his beliefs. He believed, if I'm reading the story correctly, that U.S. foreign policy and his role in it is more or less akin to silly Hollywood movie role he was trying to play out in real life. This Marine went to Iraq to bust ghosts, or phantoms of his own under-educated and deluded mind. Should we tolerate fantasy to become the guiding principle of human existence? I, for one, am appalled at the slight level of comprehension expressed by a large number of the men I've personally spoken to about their military service. From the ex-Marine I worked with in 1966 who couldn't find Viet Nam on a map, couldn't name the reason we were there but wanted to kill all the gooks, to the retired West Point graduate on our local OSU campus who justified our invasion of Iraq recently because of the litter problem he saw in Irbil in 1991 (I can't make this stuff up), we have a few million military types in this country who simply shouldn't be part of the U.S. foreign policy apparatus because they are too ill informed to participate. Like I say, tolerance has its limits. Tolerating stupidity to be the guiding principle of U.S. foreign policy is, as I've suggested, beyond the pale. -Ray