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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Keith Feral who wrote (202695)	9/12/2006 4:25:38 PM
From: geode00	Respond to of 281500

Nope, not WWIII in terms of % of GDP spent on the military, on the number of troops sent to the region, on the sacrifice requested of the American people (go shopping!) and the lack of a draft. Now if you really want to fight WWIII against a ragtag group of militants then you must: - immediately initiate a nationwide draft - immediately allocate 1/3rd or more of our GDP to the military - immediately reverse all tax cuts for the ultrawealthy so they can contribute to the cause See any such activity going on in the Republican camp? Bush took vacation again. Think he's fighting WWIII while biking in Crawford and fishing in Maine? Yeah, right.

To: Keith Feral who wrote (202695)	9/13/2006 1:59:19 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Feral, re your quote of the Bush speech and this statement: "I think the old school response to terrorism deserves some review from the President's speech. Let me take the quote you're so fond of and break it down. "We are now in the early hours of this struggle between tyranny and freedom. That's just plain silly. Mankind has been in a perpetual struggle between "tyranny and freedom." Not from external threats but from internal threats. The impulse to rule absolutely is somehow inbred into man so that the power of our government must be constantly checked. Read the constitution sometime and you may realize how much wisdom our forefathers gained from fleeing tyranny in the countries from which they emigrated. Then ask yourself why the protections they cemented into our founding document are being eroded and ridiculed as "shielding the guilty" by a new set of "leaders." For our own good...of course. "Amid the violence, some question whether the people of the Middle East want their freedom, and whether the forces of moderation can prevail." No one questions whether the people of the Middle East "want their freedom." All people want their freedom. The question is what do they want to be free to do. In the Mideast it appears that a majority of Iraqis want to be free to force their views on the minorities among them who believe differently, violently. They also appear to want to be free to oppose Israel, the US and western values. They seem to want to continue to oppress women and to enforce Islamic law. That's all fine but then why say, as Bush does, "the forces of moderation can prevail." In the Middle East democracy and the "forces of moderation" are opposing, not complimentary, concepts. By linking the two Bush creates a false underlying premise and you evidently are one of the ones struggling on the hook. And yes, it's sucker fish that he's hooking. " And then, on a bright September morning, it became clear that the calm we saw in the Middle East was only a mirage." Who saw calm in the Middle East on 9/10 2001? Bush had let go of the peace process in Israel, had cut loose Sharon's govt to do whatever it wanted and the region was a hotbed of anti-Israeli and anti-American seething hatred. All of the seeds of terrorism toward the US were clearly visible. We'd been hit before and all it took to ignite the confagration was another blow and our overreaction. Bush gave them that. "Years of pursuing stability to promote peace had left us with neither." That's revisionist history. What he means by years of pursuing stability" is that for decades we'd been propping up the most repressive regimes in the world. Regimes that were "tyrannical" as long as they kept control of the oil we used and gave us favored access. We got what we should have expected: the hatred of the populations and their attack on the military, economic and strategic superpower that historically propped those leaders up. "With our help, the people of the Middle East are now stepping forward to claim their freedom. From Kabul to Baghdad to Beirut, there are brave men and women risking their lives each day for the same freedoms that we enjoy." The "people of the Mideast are stepping forward all right. They stepped forward in Lebanon, in Palestine and all across the region. And they stepped forward and expressed their desire for what Bush calls Islamofascist leadership. The groups on our "sponsors of terror" list would win elections in most of the region. In fact, if an election could be held all across the region I'd imagine that Bin Laden would be elected to lead the entire Middle East. And most of the people in the region who are demonstrating "bravery" are not fighting on the side of what we call "good," or maybe you haven't noticed? You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. You can, of course, make a sow's ear purse out of a sow's ear. Unfortunately, in the Middle East pig is considered unclean but that doesn't stop the silly man that is our "leader" from convincing so many of you that they'll all be running around with sow's ear purses and thanking us for the silky, feel good handbags. Ed