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

To: stockman_scott who wrote (51239)	7/18/2004 1:29:51 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Mr. Bush has failed to have an open mind and seek wisdom and insight from multiple perspectives...Top leaders ask tough questions and actively seek out input from various sources...Pulitzer Prize Winner Bob Woodward claims Bush did not consult with Secretary of State Colin Powell when making his decision to pre-emptively strike Iraq...It's sort of amazing...Bush was relying on a small group of ideologically coherent, tightly-knit people who are not interested in alternative views...this may be the worst way to make a decision that would have an impact on so many American lives. Why did GW Bush fail to consider the views of dozens of top Foreign Affairs scholars...? Message 18314175 ___________________ Is Bush Deaf to Church Doubts on Iraq War? by Jim Wallis The Boston Globe Published on Monday, December 9, 2002 commondreams.org __________________ Mr. Bush failed to listen to some of the top "Realists" in the Foreign Policy world...University of Chicago's John J. Mearsheimer and Harvard's Stephen M. Walt were never actively consulted as the Bush/Cheney regime marched into Iraq... mtholyoke.edu Why did The Bush Administration never seriously consider "Vigilant Containment"...? I made a number of posts about this on this thread and on The Foreign Affairs Discussion Group thread. What would I do...? Be a MUCH BETTER listener than GW Bush...I would seek out input and advice from a variety of sources and I would actively question the assumptions that my top advisors and the CIA may have...Better listening leads to better recollection of important facts and issues later on, resulting in fewer miscommunications and fewer mistakes. Attention to good listening is even more important when complex issues are involved (I would say making a decision like going to war is as complex as it gets)...Our leaders in The White House never really listened to anyone but The NeoCONservatives...they did not listen to those in CONgress with other viewpoints...they did not listen to foreign policy experts that warned that a pre-emptive strike on Iraq would stir up a hornets nest and fuel MORE terrorism around the world...they did not listen to our Allies that were against going to war...Leaders that fail to listen and build effective coalitions are very dangerous. We now know that the Administration pressured The CIA to generate intelligence that might help justify a war in Iraq that we did not have to fight. In my opinion our current Leadership team has lost the respect of the world community...they can not get us out of Iraq with honor and integrity...I feel that the Kerry/Edwards team has a much better opportunity to rebuild The United States' credibility around the world...I also think a real war hero as a President would think long and hard before he would commit our troops overseas. -s2@RegimeChangeStartsAtHome.com

To: stockman_scott who wrote (51239)	7/18/2004 2:55:29 PM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 89467

now HERE is a BOOK...yes book! that BUSH WILL READ....and GOD HELP US! this is the real reason for this entire war and episode of the Christian LED CRUSADE that is destabilizing the entire world.... Jesus and Jihad By Nicholas D. Kristoff New York Times Saturday 17 July 2004 If the latest in the "Left Behind" series of evangelical thrillers is to be believed, Jesus will return to Earth, gather non-Christians to his left and toss them into everlasting fire: "Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent when the earth closed itself again." These are the best-selling novels for adults in the United States, and they have sold more than 60 million copies worldwide. The latest is "Glorious Appearing," which has Jesus returning to Earth to wipe all non-Christians from the planet. It's disconcerting to find ethnic cleansing celebrated as the height of piety. If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of "Glorious Appearing" and publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly describing a massacre of millions of non-Muslims by God, we would have a fit. We have quite properly linked the fundamentalist religious tracts of Islam with the intolerance they nurture, and it's time to remove the motes from our own eyes. In "Glorious Appearing," Jesus merely speaks and the bodies of the enemy are ripped open. Christians have to drive carefully to avoid "hitting splayed and filleted bodies of men and women and horses." "The riders not thrown," the novel continues, "leaped from their horses and tried to control them with the reins, but even as they struggled, their own flesh dissolved, their eyes melted and their tongues disintegrated. . . . Seconds later the same plague afflicted the horses, their flesh and eyes and tongues melting away, leaving grotesque skeletons standing, before they, too, rattled to the pavement." One might have thought that Jesus would be more of an animal lover. These scenes also raise an eschatological problem: Could devout fundamentalists really enjoy paradise as their friends, relatives and neighbors were heaved into hell? As my Times colleague David Kirkpatrick noted in an article, this portrayal of a bloody Second Coming reflects a shift in American portrayals of Jesus, from a gentle Mister Rogers figure to a martial messiah presiding over a sea of blood. Militant Christianity rises to confront Militant Islam. This matters in the real world, in the same way that fundamentalist Islamic tracts in Saudi Arabia do. Each form of fundamentalism creates a stark moral division between decent, pious types like oneself - and infidels headed for hell. No, I don't think the readers of "Glorious Appearing" will ram planes into buildings. But we did imprison thousands of Muslims here and abroad after 9/11, and ordinary Americans joined in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in part because of a lack of empathy for the prisoners. It's harder to feel empathy for such people if we regard them as infidels and expect Jesus to dissolve their tongues and eyes any day now. I had reservations about writing this column because I don't want to mock anyone's religious beliefs, and millions of Americans think "Glorious Appearing" describes God's will. Yet ultimately I think it's a mistake to treat religion as a taboo, either in this country or in Saudi Arabia. I often write about religion precisely because faith has a vast impact on society. Since I've praised the work that evangelicals do in the third world (Christian aid groups are being particularly helpful in Sudan, at a time when most of the world has done nothing about the genocide there), I also feel a responsibility to protest intolerance at home. Should we really give intolerance a pass if it is rooted in religious faith? Many American Christians once read the Bible to mean that African-Americans were cursed as descendants of Noah's son Ham, and were intended by God to be enslaved. In the 19th century, millions of Americans sincerely accepted this Biblical justification for slavery as God's word - but surely it would have been wrong to defer to such racist nonsense simply because speaking out could have been perceived as denigrating some people's religious faith. People have the right to believe in a racist God, or a God who throws millions of nonevangelicals into hell. I don't think we should ban books that say that. But we should be embarrassed when our best-selling books gleefully celebrate religious intolerance and violence against infidels. That's not what America stands for, and I doubt that it's what God stands for.