Someone explain to me why people call Bush a mass murderer for having a war to get someone who personally killed more than this war has.
If he is killed, I’m guessing his family’s reaction would probably the same as most of the families from Vietnam - that the war should be won and he shouldn’t have died in vain.
Precisely because it’s just as wrong for Bush to kill people as it is for Saddam Hussein. And the draconian sanctions combined with the two Gulf Wars killed just as many people as Saddam Hussein did, not to mention the fact that the West shares culpability for the murders committed by Saddam Hussein because it actively helped him obtain power.
Iraqis were suffering before the war started, and they’re suffering during the war, and they’ll suffer after we leave (you think all the killing will just magically stop when Americans leave?).
Cid didn’t say “it’s not that big a deal”. You’re putting words in his mouth again. What he’s saying is that life goes on. Mankind will persevere. The world’s not going to end. He explicitely said that he wasn’t saying it’s not a big deal, and he also explicitely said that all he was saying is that it’s not the end of the world. Is Cid so untrustworthy that you’re just flat-out refusing to believe him?
So, are you suggesting that nobody can ever try to do the right thing in a situation if they had some blame in it? America will never ADMIT it helped Saddam obtain power, but does that mean that America is wrong in wanting to remove Saddam from power (I’m not saying that the best way to acheive this was followed, but just because America helped Saddam originally doesn’t mean that America should never try to “right the wrong”.)
I’ve been asking what I’m missing from the Bush supporters around my school(which are few and far between) and so far there is good reason why 17-18 year olds shouldn’t vote. Quote from the top debater in the class “You people need to wake up and smell the ashes of the two towers. Our country was plagued by terrorism and our economy was in shambles. Bush rebuilt it, he can be compared to FDR.” The cheerleader “Kerry’s a flip-flopper.” Friend #1 “He has good morals and he prays.” Friend of a friend-something about the war on terror and how Iraq attacked us first, corrected her “Iraq, Afghanistan same difference.” Friend #1 again-“Soldiers are supposed to die for the country, that’s why you join the army.” Friend #2 “Kerry’s Proabortion.” Art teacher “Kerry wouldn’t send funds to the soldiers.”
Overall, I still don’t understand why they support him so much.
My friend’s brother-in-law is serving in Iraq. His family whole-heartedly supports the war.
People have always been far too eager to shovel their offspring into the furnace of war. As for those who return from it alive, the shock is often too great to be able to admit that it was all for nothing or for the wrong reasons. Look at Vietnam vets against Kerry, atleast ones who accuse him of betraying them by returning to the US and telling Congress about what was going on there.
Of course, this is all coming from an 18 year old whos never seen so much as a dead chipmunk, but I think if you were to talk to someone like Erich Maria Remarque, he would tell you that he wrote about the horrors of war so that future generations wouldn’t need to experience them themselves to know that they were terrible.
i find it somewhat amusing that your favorite book is by cicero, by the way thread starter guy.
That people suffer is a reality. However, that doesn’t remove responsibility from those inflicting suffering on others at any given time. Its not because one person would do bad things that its ok for someone else to do bad things.
(you think all the killing will just magically stop when Americans leave?).
No, but why accelerate the process by keeping Americans there?
If this isn’t meant to imply that the suffering of Iraqis at our hands doesn’t matter as much because they always suffer anyway, it’s irrelevant, and in no way diminishes Bush’s culpability for starting the war. Yes, the killing will continue once we leave, but we personally won’t be continuing it.
I was paraphrasing him. Hades didn’t say that Bush’s election would result in the literal end of the world, he said (again, paraphrasing) that Bush shouldn’t have been elected because Bush started a pointless war, and starting pointless wars is appalling. Cid disagreed with this on the grounds that “pointless wars happen all the time” and it’s “not the end of the world” if Bush starts one. The only way to interpret this is that Bush starting a pointless war isn’t a big enough deal to reflect on whether or not Bush should be elected. If that observation about pointless wars happening all the time wasn’t meant to diminish the war’s importance, it would be totally irrelevant to what Hades said.
No, I’m suggesting that “the right thing” is to stop starting unnecessary wars and meddling in other nations’ affairs. The “wrong” wasn’t just that we put Saddam Hussein in power as opposed to some other guy, it was that we manipulated a country’s internal affairs in order to get someone who would follow our orders in power. That, by the way, was also designed to “right” some other “wrong,” and likewise failed because we don’t have any legitimate authority over a country that is nowhere near ours and poses no threat to us whatsoever.
The thread was started based on comments made by many people, not Hades in particular, to the tune of the fact that now that Bush is back in power, we’re on track to World War III. Hades was commenting in such a thread, hence I figured he was referring to the same sort of thing. My comment about wars was exactly what it said; I didn’t mention anything about reasons to vote for the guy. Frankly, there are plenty of reasons not to vote for Bush, but there are also reasons to vote for him - and there are also reasons to vote against Kerry, in fact. All I was trying to say is that nothing is ever one-sided.
The deal with putting people in power in other countries is also nothing new. It’s been happening for decades, and not just by America. Let’s say we voted Bush out – there’s absolutely no indication that Kerry wouldn’t do the exact same thing in the same circumstance (he’s said several times that he’d have done the same thing as Bush in Iraq, even though he kept contradicting himself). For that matter, there’s no indication that Bush himself will repeat his actions in the future, given the backlash against them.
As for no longer meddling on others’ affairs, what exactly would you like America to do? Keep only to itself and ignore the rest of the world? That’ll invite anti-Americanism just as much as meddling too much will. Like it or not, America is currently the world’s sole superpower, which does give it some imperative to help out. America was criticized for not helping in Rwanda, for instance - even though it would have put some of its own soldiers in peril.
The nature of the world: We do too much or do too little. Noone is satisfied, least of all the Americans.
I love how you defend Bush by explaining how he “might not” repeat what he did, and that Kerry just “might” do exactly the same thing. Do you seriously believe that justifies voting Bush back in after we’ve seen what ugly deeds he’s capable of? It’s like you see 100 000+ deaths as a mere smudge on his record while ignoring the reality that there are ten people dead, times ten, times ten, times ten, times ten. And America voted him back in on a risk that he “just might not” do it again. Disgusting.
As for the whole “criticized for not helping” dealio, America didn’t help in Iraq. They went in, wiped out a tenth of a million people, and stayed there to burden the survivors. Sure, they got rid of Saddam, but in doing so they killed more people than he even could’ve before he died of old age, and leveled several cities. On top of that, we now have the Americans and several different “terrorist” clans (with Lords and everything! It’s like the feudal system all over again) running around blindly killing each other.
And what has Iraq gained? This illusory freedom and a bunch of pre-feminists who think they’ve been liberated merely because they can buy pop CDs and Hillary Duff movies. Oh wait, I appear to have confused Iraq with Afganistan, which bush was also responsible for.
You forgot about the rising trend in islamic fundamentalism and the risk of getting another Iran.
Hades: I didn’t vote for the guy, so this is all just intellectual posturing. But if I had, it wouldn’t be because of his past deeds, but what I think he could do in the future. And frankly, I can’t see Kerry as someone with any kind of vision who could fix the problems Bush caused, or to stand up against Islamicism with any modicum of strength. I don’t really believe in “punishing” people for their actions at the polls; if I think one person is a better alternative in the future than someone else, then that’s who I’ll vote for.
if you do things righht no one will be sure you did them at all…
and also.
kerry strikes me as a person competeing just for the sake of competeing in somethng. and bush strikes as the person who wasnt ready for the position he obtained.i thought kerry was gonna win and i think it would have been good to have a change of leaders, but bush is just as good as kerry if not better… now since im not old enough to vote idk who i’d have voted for but i do know this that we americans will be just fine either way…
one more thing
the monroe doctirne states that no one is to meddle in american affairs…now we followed this for a long time and up until WW2 we avoided meddling in other countries affair and it worked just fine, but now we think so highly of ourselves that we think the world cant work things out by itself…sure in a couple special cases its good to meddle but we do it far mor than we should…we should just find a middle ground and stay there…nothing says trust me like consistency, which we dont have alot of.
No-one, and I mean this exactly as it’s said, no-one could fix Iraq as it is now. You can’t pull out, because then you’d just have a civil war that would rage and another dictator would arise who’d probably be pro-violence, anti-America and willing to sacrafice his own people to get at you. So you have to stay.
You can’t stay in, because each day you stay there you deepen the hate against you, but you also prevent the dictator taking over. But as long as the hate exists, you’ll be attacked by guerrillas and the country will be unstable. You have to leave.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
So what? It’s been just as ruinous for the other countries that did it as it will inevitably be for us. The different empires that existed throughout history met with failure when they tried to impose themselves on the world, and perished largely due to involvement in aggressive wars. That they did this is all the more reason why America should <i>not</i> do this. That they did this is not an excuse or justification for what we do, because our society is based not on how we compare to them, but on following democratic principles.
He said several times that he voted for the authority to go to war as a last resort, which Bush didn’t do; he also said that Bush’s dishonesty completely undermined the legitimacy of the war. Furthermore, unlike the neoconservatives, Kerry hasn’t spent the last decade agonizing for a war with Iraq.
There is every indication that Bush will repeat his actions in the future. He doesn’t believe he made any mistakes in Iraq whatsoever; he’s said that he will keep doing things exactly the way he’s been doing them, and that he wouldn’t hesitate to do everything the same way again. This has been the centrepiece of his campaign. He’s planning to ramp up military operations in Iraq and has refused to estimate the costs. The neoconservatives in his administration, the same people who lied us into war with Iraq, have explicitly stated a desire to start more wars, using Iraq as a foothold. At the same time, the old-school Republican “realists” that were in the administration have increasingly been marginalized over the past four years, to the point where there’s talk of Colin Powell leaving. Bush’s victory means that most people didn’t care sufficiently about the Iraq war to vote him out, and he doesn’t have to worry about re-election anymore. There is no reason for him to repudiate the neoconservatives, no sign that he might do so, and the increasing lack of moderate Republicans in his administration indicates that the exact opposite will happen.
What I want America to do is exactly what I said - to stop imposing its governments and its mandates and its military bases on sovereign countries, thus creating problems for both itself and those countries, and to defend its own borders.
Not at all. No one has attacked America, and no one will ever attack America, on the grounds that we didn’t send troops to Rwanda. People are, however, going to attack America on the grounds that we started a bloody, unnecessary war in Iraq; in the words of CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, they are over here because we are over there.
They’re good points you’re bringing up. You obviously know more about American history than I do, so I’m not going to get into a huge argument here. All I’m going to say is that it’s not set in stone that Bush will continue doing what he’s doing, nor is it set in stone that Kerry would stop it. In any case, the war in Iraq is not the only issue in voting for a new President. There are people who can legitimately disagree with you – this is something that many people on this board don’t seem to understand.
No, but it’s an issue of paramount importance: first, because the damage done by a bad foreign policy is almost irreversible; second, because the war directly ties in to some of the other major issues, like national security and the economy; third, because starting a war that killed 100,000 people for no reason constitutes an enormous abuse of power.
Well thank you all for turning this thread into another everything is fucked thread. While people were squabbling about abuses of power and whats righteous and whats wrong I took this same question to other sources (remember the question about how I can reconcile myself to my nation?) and this is where I am at now:
People did not vote for Bush because he is an imperialist, people did not vote for Bush because he is intolerent and eroding civil rights. People voted for Bush because more than anything else, he gave us ground to stand on as a nation. In recent times, the national identity has taken many losses. Our world is becoming a more global community every day, and as a result of that, our policy and our decisions have been more and more influenced by other nations. The United Nations, a myriad of international treaties, the formation of the European Union, all of these things are threats to our national individuality.
On our own soil, the WASP image of our nation has taken a huge hit from the most noticable wave of educated immigrants, the Middle Easterners and Indians. It is very unnerving for MANY Americans to have a foreigner in a position of power or respect, like doctors and other well trained professionals, and it is very difficult to not think that someone speaking with an Indian accent is a foreigner. Many Americans see this as a treat to their authority within thier own country.
Bush defies the global community, and Americans see it as strength. Though not everyone always agrees with him, enough people agree with the principal that we are not just another passive nation being controlled by a greater power. Bush’s arrogant cowboy mentality that pisses me off so much is the very reason people love him so.
As for the anti-gay and pro-life views, those are questions of morality, no room for argument (if you are anti-gay, don’t even try to pretend that there is any substantial reason, or I will smite you). By establishing a moral line, Bush shows that he is not willing for our nation to descend into a moral vacuum. Even some people who don’t agree with where the line is drawn, would rather see any line drawn than a continued spiral downward without limit. If we don’t but a limit our our immoralities now, will we be able to later?
I suppose Cid was right in his first reply to me, I just wish he had given me something more to work with then. Thanks though Cid, I needed to make that first step toawrds understanding. I still don’t agree with much or any of this, so please, don’t agrue things unless you are arguing MY logic, and not the logic of others that I found. I can defend the reactionaries, but I don’t want to. What it really ends up being is that our nation took a vote on the second to either assert our national image, or to attempt to move further into the global community, and we chose identity over community. Though I disagree with this at the core of my being, I can understand.
So can we got off the issue of what we have and haven’t done right or wrong as a nation, and who fucked what up when and where and try to tihnk about what it means to assert identity rather than yeild to a greater community? And please, lets avoid the whole “I’m not going to think about the other opinion, just bash it” mindset, its gets most of us nowhere, and aggrevates the people who are stuck defending an argument that they don’t like, but at least can respect and understand.
No matter how much you want to make yourself feel better about the current situation, all it is is a coping mechanism on your part to deal with the fucked upness of the situation and be in denial. Things are fucked up and will be fucked up for a while. Get used to it.