A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives ...by Michael Moore

Hi schrafinator.I haven't forgotten the Soviet Union; just that the Soviet Union is irrelevant to my point. The foreign and military policy of the Soviet Union was devoted to prevent encirclement and isolation by the West. Despite some official sloganeering to rally the masses to the cause, the Soviet Union was neither capable of nor really interested in destroying the United States (although I'm sure they would have been very happy if it had been the US that collapsed instead of them in 1991). To this end, the Soviets interest in its client states were to have military bases and friendly votes in the UN; Soviet client states were much freer in regards to their internal policies than the US client states. The main danger to the US was that the people in its client states realizing that they had alternatives to having their resources sucked out by Western businesses, with only the ruling elites benefiting from it.Since the fall of the Soviet Union, records made public pretty much show that, rather than being bent on "global domination", the Soviet leadership really was paranoid about the West and the West's intentions; the Soviet military really was more about defense than that of the West. The main threat the Soviet missiles posed was that an overly aggressive maneuver in the West would provoke a paranoid Soviet Union into launching a preemptive strike.

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Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793. But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all. It never occurred to them that the throne could remain empty forever. -- Albert Camus

I agree with you here although I suspect the run of the mill conservative's draw might drop. The Russians were just doing what Russians do and our own provincial outlook almost took it to WWIII. That same attitude is still quite evident in our dealings with other countries. It doesn't help that heavy-handed rhetoric gets better ratings than reasoned diplomacy either.Damn...it feels good to agree with somebody about something in this thread.

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When science and the Bible differ, science has obviously misinterpreted its data.
- Henry Morris, Head of Institute for Creation Research

Heh. And I had you pegged for a.... Never mind. My apologies. I'll try to be a bit more respectful from here on out. Just don't use the word "Islamofascist" with a straight face.

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Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793. But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all. It never occurred to them that the throne could remain empty forever. -- Albert Camus

In my opinion this exact situation (Kabul itself being a little better) is a condition that may allow for peaceful recovery in time. If the government can maintain local security long enough to begin addressing the concerns of the people then peace might start spreading. In a post above I mentioned how insurrections are lost by foreign powers...insurrections are won by governments that can build appeal among the people. Karzai has a good start in Kabul...all he has to do is build faith with the people And push that out to new people at every opportunity.If people feel just a tiny bit safer in Kabul then they'll go to Kabul and eventually they'll have enough people there to spread out even farther. South Vietnam's incompetent leadership placed their faith in the army and in their foreign allies...not in the people. The people were alienated from the government and the VietCong and NVA did a superlative job of convincing South Vietnamese where their true interests lie. South Vietnam didn't fall so much as implode from it's own incompetence. Interesting to note though dubya's recent speech praising Vietnam. One of these days we'll start getting more books that tell the story of that war from their side...I can't wait. But that's not really so in the case of Islamic terrorism and middle eastern unrest is it? Anybody with a couple synapses to rub together should be able to figure out that something can and should be done...we should strive to improve economic and social conditions that result in terrorism. We should track down and destroy the terrorists where and how we can and we should carry on our own lives as if there were no threat at all to the best of our abilities. So you think UbL and his buddies are just joking when they plot to murder us by the thousands? How about Iran's sexy new president leading millions in chantin "Death to America"? Yes Chiroptera...there are people who would destroy us if they could. There are people who believe it is their sacred duty to kill Americans...not just American politician and soldiers, but civilians, non-combatants, children...everybody.I agree with you a lot more than I disagree. Dubya thought he could roll into another country and make them furriners do what he said. It was and is idiotic reasoning and shouldn't be glorified with the term plan. I saw Afghanistan and Iraq coming (I don't see Iran coming...if we wind up shooting first there I'll be highly surprised) and I encouraged my representatives to oppose them both. The plan of going into another country...destroying its government and setting up a new one favorable to yourself is just out and out doomed.

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When science and the Bible differ, science has obviously misinterpreted its data.
- Henry Morris, Head of Institute for Creation Research

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I agree with you a lot more than I disagree. Dubya thought he could roll into another country and make them furriners do what he said. It was and is idiotic reasoning and shouldn't be glorified with the term plan. I saw Afghanistan and Iraq coming (I don't see Iran coming...if we wind up shooting first there I'll be highly surprised) and I encouraged my representatives to oppose them both. The plan of going into another country...destroying its government and setting up a new one favorable to yourself is just out and out doomed.

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And that's why anyone who voted for Bush in '04 was a fool.

I'm not a big Chomsky fan but I love Vidal. Did you see his article comparing Bush to Jonah from the Bible?Perhaps his comparison is right, and this last election was the crew of the SS U.S. giving Bush and Co the big toss.

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holmes
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

Ahem... gov't spending was in control under Clinton. As schraf pointed out Bush received a budget surplus. That makes any loss of that money HIS spending issues, not anyone else's.It is true that Congress must approve. That was owned by Bush's party. They have just been thrown out of power (in both houses). I mean unless you believe throwing more dems out was going to change anything regarding spending, I'm not sure what your point is with the above. This is an exaggeration. Nothing said before Bush came to power argued for an invasion of the kind Bush threw us into. Further at the very beginning of his presidency the Bush administration explained that Iraq was NOT a threat to the region and that he had been successfully boxed in.Bush supporters have consistently thrown up the smokescreen of antiHussein comments by some dems, but I have yet to see any of them deal with Bush and Co's own admissions of his nonthreat status. This is another exaggeration. You can read the Senate report on Iraq Intel failures. The CIA overrode other intel agencies in order to advance a cherry-picked interpretation. Thus even US intel agencies did not agree based on "best" information.Further, the CIA itself suggested that Hussein had no connections to AQ or 911 (which people like Bush n Cheney continued to imply or make directly), they reported that invasion was most likely to result in the issues we theoretically wanted to avoid, and that the claim regarding nuclear weapon issues (yellow cake sale) should not be made.I might add that OUTSIDE the US, there was much clamoring against the claims the US was making, unless you are refering to Brit assessments, which were a circular proposition. And one thing that was pretty obvious is that our "best" information was NO GOOD. There was a definitive LACK of information. Still he went forward. He did. What kind of revisionist spin is this? The inspectors by the time they were being withdrawn because of the US, said they were getting fair access? As they later pointed out the US was claiming that it KNEW that there were weapons and implied they knew where but REFUSED to divulge the information to inspectors who could check it out.If anyone was NOT doing what they were obligated to do, it was the US.One could even point out that Hussein essentially did show us what he had. He said he had nothing and as it turns out... he was right. We could have insisted he was still hiding something forever. You can't prove a negative. That's why the standard for invasion can't be maybe someone has hidden weapons (or weapons programs), it has to be a credible threat of using them.

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holmes
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

I completely disagree with you on this point (what a rarity!).As a statement of my own position... Afghanis as a whole never accepted Taliban rule. It was a temporary military take over of Kabul, funded essentially by Pakistan, in the vacuum of power left after the soviets departed. They were not even formally recognized as a gov't except by their main sponsor.The current administration represents a broader coalition of the people that is at least TRYING to advance the interests of the nation to form a coherent state, which deals with the int'l community on an equal level. That was not the case with the Taliban at all.I also disagree with your claim that only Kabul enjoys anything from the change. Yeah, women's rights have not flourished everywhere, and neither has interwarlord rivalry. It was a pipedream to expect that to happen, particularly in short order. Heck, I don't even think it should be our goal to promote women's rights or end warlord rivalry.The question in Afghanistan was removing a dictatorial pseudo-gov't attempting to spread and enforce religious extremism/militancy in the region at the expense of others, and which provided cover for an organization that directly attacked us on several occassions.During their "reign" they had been misusing int'l humanitarian funds to further their power, and engaged in blatant extortion (threatening to blow up historical artifacts) to squeeze more money from int'l coffers.To me it was like a band of thugs managed to rest control of the capital of a nation in turmoil, and SPECTRE took up mutual residence with them so as to set a base for further criminal enterprises (creating a sort of symbiotic relationship).As of now, no matter anything else going on, all of THAT has been ended, and so continues to be a worthwhile effort. I think if our goal was to nationbuild Afghanistan into something that resembles the west, with no remaining issues of poverty etc, then we were not going to win THAT fight.This is pretty OT, so I suppose it can be saved for a much larger thread. Edited by holmes, : clarityEdited by holmes, : more clarity

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holmes
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

Bush falsely claimed that Iraq posed an imminent threat.

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Just say no to McCain 2008; he abandoned principle when he caved on habeus corpus

Why?
Why is that a right?

Oh good, so we agree.

Why wouldn't it be?

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Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793. But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all. It never occurred to them that the throne could remain empty forever. -- Albert Camus

I proposed another topic, so we don't turn this into the abortion thread.

As has been pointed out, this has gotten off topic. I will, though point out another placed where we agree:

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Dubya thought he could roll into another country and make them furriners do what he said.

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Although we may still disagree over the Administration's motives.-One other thing I agree with you: I didn't think Moore's piece was all that funny. A few of the points were a bit humorous in their wording, but overall it was pretty much a gloat-fest (and somewhat premature, too).

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Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793. But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all. It never occurred to them that the throne could remain empty forever. -- Albert Camus

There's no such thing as an "unborn child." And no human being has the right to demand free tenancy inside another, unwilling human being.But you still haven't answered the question. You seem to think that your "unborn child" is at risk from... what, exactly? Some attacker lunging at it with a knife? How would that not be a crime against the mother, too? Unless you think liberals aren't interested in prosecuting assault against women? (That would be the position of conservatives, BTW, as evidenced by the conservative punditry's reaction to the Duke rape case.)No, of course not. What you want is the government to come down on the side of forced birth; you believe that your lack of a uterus is a disability that the government has an obligation to overcome by forcing a woman to bear your child. That's pretty gross.