On reparations, Obama has talked out of both sides of his mouth, depending on his audience. He has clearly pulled the race card in this campaign, pre-emptively accusing the opposition of making racist appeals at some point in the future. He sought out and belonged to a church devoted to racial resentment for two decades. I consider that telling.
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#8, I don't know if I can imagine Obama pressing the button to annihilate a country.
You cited fear of annihilation as a reason no country would attack the US. If you can't imagine Obama delivering on that, then citing it is meaningless.
Should it come to that, I can see him judging the issue, and I think he'd have the strength of character to do so - as Democrats have done before.
Now in the next sentence you claim he could do it. Because Harry Truman used the bomb and he was a Democrat. I submit Obama and Truman are as different as night and day. At any rate, the point about the bomb is, we really need to prevent us from ever having to do that again. And we aren't going to do that by being weak and appeasing to enemies.
I can certainly see McCain or Palin pushing the button. The point is I can't see either of them thinking about it first.
I can also see Obama not being forced into that situation, whereas McCain apparently desires just such an outcome (e.g. would he have started WWIII over Georgia?).
Ah yes, conservatives are bloodthirsty folks who want war.
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Incidentally, Chamberlain almost certainly knew that the 'peace' he was buying wouldn't last. He sacrificed the Czechs and that is to his eternal shame. But he did so because he knew that at the time the European armies opposed to Hitler stood absolutely zero chance of stopping Germany-Austria - remember, Hitler had already spent 4 years militarising his country. Chamberlain bought 18 months during which Britain frantically re-armed. If he'd gone to war instead, Britain and France would almost certainly have been quickly defeated: and Hitler would not have needed to face Russia then (having Poland still as a buffer), so might well have won WWII...
What Chamberlain did was despicable. But smart, and possibly necessary.
That is a fanciful interpretation. I don't know of any reason to doubt Chamberlain meant it when he said he'd brought "peace for our time". As for the timeline, the "Peace For Our Time" agreement was on 9/30/38. In February 1939, Britain began conscription and a military buildup. England went to war with Germany 9/1/39. So he didn't buy much time for a military buildup by my calculation.
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He has said the surge succeeded "beyond our wildest dreams" but insists he wouldn't have pursued that strategy if he'd been President.
Because the troops would be doing the real work in Afghanistan
The fact is he opposed the surge at a point in time when it was too late to decide not to go to war in Iraq. We were already involved there. Obama would have preferred to have lost Iraq in a disastrous manner to succeeding "beyond our wildest dreams" in his own words. Thats damning in regard to his military judgment. That he would still have chose to have have made a bad decision after events had shown a better way was available is inexcusable.
, not splurging money on neocon wet dreams of world domination through invasion.
What horseshit. How does this sound? Liberals have wet dreams of peace through disarmament and talking about our differences which will work wonderfully since all of our enemies are really good people who just want peace and justice - its only western conservatives who are bad people who want war.
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i.e. he wouldn't have invaded Iraq
He can't go back in time and run for President in 2000. So he doesn't get the chance to decide not to have invaded Iraq. You think Obama has some magic wand and could make the bad war you didn't want not have happened? This suggests the left is engaging in fantasy thinking instead of being realistic.
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He is indifferent at best to victory or defeat.
What do you call 'victory' or 'defeat' in Iraq? I don't see how either term can apply now. Oh, yay, Saddam is gone. Let's cheer because now we've got a split country with the largest part basically obeying Iran and the other bit with oil likely to destabilise Turkey, plus a load of angry Sunni in the middle.
We have nothing of the sort. In fact, Iraq is likely to be a be a model for Iran's disgruntled population.
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On #6, I was sufficiently curious to go to that site, because I've never even heard of that group. Here's what they say in their most recent newsletter (there is more, I've shortened more rebuttal).
chicagodsa.org
The New Party was not established by DSA, nor was it established to be a vehicle for socialism in America. In Chicago, the New Party was largely started by ACORN. While the New Party welcomed support from groups like DSA, the New Party's concern was politics, the political economy of working people and the poor, not ideology and for this, bringing home the bacon is what counts.
It doesn't surprise me that now in the fall of 2008, the DSA would publish something helpful for Obama. Everyone knows that socialism is unpopular in America so they need to disassociate Obama from socialism. The New Party was begun by ACORN and the DSA - an openly socialist organization. They both were and are strong supporters and endorsers of Obama and certainly consider him one of their own, regardless of whether he's paying dues to them currently.
So is Obama a socialist? First you'd better tell me what you mean by "socialist". I'm not being cute. There are people who would hysterically laugh at DSA being legitimately considered a "socialist" organization, never mind Obama. So what is socialism to you? Judging by the comments posted on some of these blogs, socialism is anything involving the government that the commentator doesn't like. By this standard, I suppose he is.
Another way to consider it would be if Obama self-identifies as a "socialist" or "social democrat", just as DSA members do. Well, go ahead. Ask him. And if he says, "Yes," please let me know. Because in that case, he owes us for dues.
And of course, if you think that democracy, civil rights and civil liberties trump property rights; if you think that fair trade is a better deal for most of us than free trade; if you think that in a country as rich as ours education and medical care should be available regardless of one's ability to pay; if you think that workers should have the right to organize and bargain collectively well, then, it doesn't matter what you call yourself. You'll be called a socialist, too.
chicagodsa.org
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Have you ever admitted you were wrong to support Bush? (or do you believe he's been a good President with a successful period of conservative rule in office?)
No, for me to think I was wrong to support Bush, I'd have to believe Gore or Kerry would have been better than Bush. I certainly don't believe that.
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Palin. We won't agree. I've seen reports that show and link to multiple abuses of power, including the contract for that pipeline you mention.
One of her best accomplishments - one has to bend way over backwards to call that an abuse of power.
She's unfit for office from her views and style and unready for office from her ignorance and attitude.
Thats a decision for us American voters. If she ever seeks British citizenship and goes into politics there, your opinion on this will matter.
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#2, Obama-Pelosi-Reid will have the power to make irreversible changes. Putting lots of young extremly liberal judges on the federal courts.
A nice thought. I'd doubt it, look at Obama's record of working bipartisan style - as even you admit he did in his HLR days.
And which he hasn't done any of since. He's voted hard left in office, more so than Bernie Sanders, our one openly Socialist Congressman.
BTW Obama went to Vermont to endorse and campaign for Sanders:
nalert.blogspot.com
What I don't think he'll do is appoint extremists, of either stripe.
Of course he will. He'll be true to his longtime convictions, which are hard core leftwing. The Democratic Underground, a leftwing site, agrees Obama is the most liberal Senator:
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., was the most liberal senator in 2007, according to National Journal's 27th annual vote ratings.
......
Overall in NJ's 2007 ratings, Obama voted the liberal position on 65 of the 66 key votes on which he voted;
....
democraticunderground.com
So much bipartisanship or centrism.
Of course, if you're taking Palin as marking the centre, then probably you would see most people to the left of Ghengiz Khan as LWE. You may have noticed even a lot of Republicans can't stomach her as being too extreme.
No, a handful of Republicans who live in hard blue areas feel that way. Likely because they've absorbed the outlook of the people they associate with everyday. Palin is actually a lot closer to the core of this country than any politician I've seen. Most Americans see her as an ordinary American ... someone like us.
I could add that if one thinks a lifelong leftwinger who has spent his life associating chiefly with radicals of one sort or another and who has the most leftwing voting record in the Senate, is a centrist, then you're a long way from the center of the US.
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#1, But the larger point is Iraq acted as an attractant for jihadi elements all over the Arab world. People who would have been fighting us elsewhere if not for Iraq.
I disagree. I think the invasion of Iraq greatly increased the number of fanatics willing to fight - and also gave them a much easier venue to reach than Afghanistan. Certainly it attracted jihadis, but I don't think they would have existed at all had we been only in Afghanistan.
You don't realize how popular AQ was immediately after 911. Most Arabs thought the 911 attack was a great thing then.
And most of the other attacks elsewhere followed the invasion of Iraq, not Afghanistan.
What attacks elsewhere. There haven't been many attacks on America targets since. There were plenty before 911 though - take the first attempt to bring down the WTC in 1993, the USS Cole bombing, the several bombings in SA, the two African embassy bombings - off the top of my head.
Meanwhile the policies of the Bush government have unarguably made places like Somalia worse - they still haven't learnt that backing local warlords and foreign armies (Ethiopian in this case) is not a sound way to build a nation, especially if you use these elements to overthrow a popular local government because it's partly composed of Islamic fundamentalists.
Somalia is no worse or better than it was in the early 1990's. Why is a leftwinger who despises "neocons" talking about nation building anyway? |
