Hillary? Not Gonna Happen!

Sloth · January 14, 2008, 11:39pm

[quote]JeffR wrote:

Friend,

First of all, I can understand being weary and saddened by losing American lives. I can understand feeling the tax pinch to support the effort.
[/quote]
It’s not a tax pinch that bothering me, actually. It’s the spending. We can’t afford to keep entagling ourselves further and further into the mess that is the mid-east. Or the throughout the world, for that matter. We borrow from China, for godssake to help fund our actions. We are piling an enormous amount of debt onto the next generation.
It’s time to come home and handle our business.

Not advocating hiding behind our borders. Trade is a good thing.

What you’re saying is that we have to intimidate (give the impression of willingness to use force) to particpate in fair trade. That’s not fair trade, or free trade. I’m not oppossed to us being in international waters by the way. But we should rely (and expect) on foreign governments to police waters off their coasts.

A people with a healthy respect for civil liberties do end up sacrificing security to some degree. So of course we were vulnerable, and still are. Then again, we don’t have to part of the mid-east conflict at all.

I would suggest that extending ourselves into foreign conflicts and power struggles, outside of a direct and imminent threat to our Nation has already brought about the very things you’re warning me against.

JeffR
Confront aggression against us? Sure. But, attempting to police, referee, and barricade against aggression around the world is nothing but a crusade we can’t afford.

I’m going to piss off some folks around here who’ve I’ve agreed with, in the past. Here it goes. Saddam was never a mortal threat to the US. WMD, or not. The former Soviet Union and Chinese would be better examples of actual mortal threats to us. And that’s still stretching it.

Saddam was a two bit, though bloody, dictator. With or without WMD’s, Saddam would have gladly agreed to a mutual going of seperate ways. Saddam was about as much threat to us as a mouse fart in high winds. He was a regional thug, and nothing more.

This is what we should be worried about.
http://www.gao.gov/cghome.htm

The American people weren’t meant to carry such a high burden while trying to make the world safe for democracy. At the very least, if the world wants us to spread democracy through wealth transfers, or even force, they should be paying us for it. We borrow, pay off dictators, and then fight for democracy in Iraq. Huh?

We had better gain control of our own borders and worry more about what’s happening to us, inside them. It’s absolutely criminal what we’re saddling the next generation with. We should all be ashamed of ourselves.

Lorisco · January 15, 2008, 5:15pm

[quote]Sloth wrote:
JeffR wrote:

Friend,

First of all, I can understand being weary and saddened by losing American lives. I can understand feeling the tax pinch to support the effort.

It’s not a tax pinch that bothering me, actually. It’s the spending. We can’t afford to keep entagling ourselves further and further into the mess that is the mid-east. Or the throughout the world, for that matter. We borrow from China, for godssake to help fund our actions. We are piling an enormous amount of debt onto the next generation.
It’s time to come home and handle our business.

However, all the “hide behind our borders” ended in about 1800.

Not advocating hiding behind our borders. Trade is a good thing.

We can’t maintain trade without policing the trade routes. We can’t compel others to trade fairly without the threat of the stick. We can’t keep prices down without a credible threat of force.

What you’re saying is that we have to intimidate (give the impression of willingness to use force) to particpate in fair trade. That’s not fair trade, or free trade. I’m not oppossed to us being in international waters by the way. But we should rely (and expect) on foreign governments to police waters off their coasts.

Finally, 2001 SHOULD have shown you how vulnerable we are. It SHOULD have shown you how small the world has become.

A people with a healthy respect for civil liberties do end up sacrificing security to some degree. So of course we were vulnerable, and still are. Then again, we don’t have to part of the mid-east conflict at all.

While it might feel liberating to suggest we withdraw to within our borders, the results on our economy and our physical well-being would be disastrous.

I would suggest that extending ourselves into foreign conflicts and power struggles, outside of a direct and imminent threat to our Nation has already brought about the very things you’re warning me against.

Until human nature rejects the notion of aggression, we’ll be forced to confront it.

JeffR
Confront aggression against us? Sure. But, attempting to police, referee, and barricade against aggression around the world is nothing but a crusade we can’t afford.

P.S. saddam would have viewed that overture as weakness. He didn’t and wouldn’t have forgiven his humbling during Gulf War I. If he wasn’t a “mortal” threat in 2003, he would have become one.

I’m going to piss off some folks around here who’ve I’ve agreed with, in the past. Here it goes. Saddam was never a mortal threat to the US. WMD, or not. The former Soviet Union and Chinese would be better examples of actual mortal threats to us. And that’s still stretching it.

Saddam was a two bit, though bloody, dictator. With or without WMD’s, Saddam would have gladly agreed to a mutual going of seperate ways. Saddam was about as much threat to us as a mouse fart in high winds. He was a regional thug, and nothing more.

This is what we should be worried about.
http://www.gao.gov/cghome.htm

The American people weren’t meant to carry such a high burden while trying to make the world safe for democracy. At the very least, if the world wants us to spread democracy through wealth transfers, or even force, they should be paying us for it. We borrow, pay off dictators, and then fight for democracy in Iraq. Huh?

We had better gain control of our own borders and worry more about what’s happening to us, inside them. It’s absolutely criminal what we’re saddling the next generation with. We should all be ashamed of ourselves.[/quote]

Sloth,

The idea is to be proactive instead of reactive. The reason we should be involved in other countries is to stop threats to the US before they become threats. So if some middle east idiot is no threat and we never think he will be a threat we should let him be. But any person or nation that we feel is or will be a threat should be dealt with quickly and the sooner the better.

So have we done that? It is very hard to say. How do you really know the future and if some nobody will become a threat to the US? It is a very tough call.

So are we involved in things that we didn’t need to be? Yes, for sure. And are we not involved in things that we should be? Probably.

This is why either a strict isolationist or a global policeman position miss the mark. We need a little of both to ensure the interests of the US are maintained.

JeffR · January 15, 2008, 11:31pm

[quote]Lorisco wrote:

Sloth,

The idea is to be proactive instead of reactive. The reason we should be involved in other countries is to stop threats to the US before they become threats. So if some middle east idiot is no threat and we never think he will be a threat we should let him be. But any person or nation that we feel is or will be a threat should be dealt with quickly and the sooner the better.

So have we done that? It is very hard to say. How do you really know the future and if some nobody will become a threat to the US? It is a very tough call.

So are we involved in things that we didn’t need to be? Yes, for sure. And are we not involved in things that we should be? Probably.

This is why either a strict isolationist or a global policeman position miss the mark. We need a little of both to ensure the interests of the US are maintained.

[/quote]

Lorisco, I agree.

Sloth, I just don’t think you understand the mindset of a brutal dictator. They don’t like to be humbled.

They resort to firing on your planes and allying with unsavory characters. They try to assassinate the guys that humbled you.

They certainly try to make life hard for guys with the exact same name (GEORGE BUSH).

Being a mortal threat is becoming easier as WMD tech “improves.”

Or, it gets easier to get your hands on the materials.

Did you guys catch that load of enriched uranium that was confiscated in Slovakia in Nov 2007?

That was enough for a dirty bomb. It was weapons grade.
Dirty bombs are scary enough.

These guys were going to sell it on the black market.

However, you buy enough weapons grade uranium, and you’ve got a SERIOUS problem.

It doesn’t take too much imagination to envision rogue regimes buying “enough” of it.

JeffR

Sloth · January 15, 2008, 6:55pm

[quote]JeffR wrote:
Sloth, I just don’t think you understand the mindset of a brutal dictator. They don’t like to be humbled.

[/quote]

Brutal dictators like to keep around a population to brutalize and feed off of. Had he produced a WMD and passed it off to a terrorist group, who then used it in our country, he would’ve been left with rubble to rule over. Assuming he was far enough from ground zero and the proceeding fallout, thus surviving, his lifestyle would have been hampered.

And, what ever remained of his country would be left wide open for Iran to plunder. Had we gone our seperate ways, the last thing, the very last thing Saddam would’ve done, is provide the US with a reason to use Iraq as target practice for our own WMD’s.

JeffR · January 16, 2008, 1:04am

[quote]Sloth wrote:
JeffR wrote:
Sloth, I just don’t think you understand the mindset of a brutal dictator. They don’t like to be humbled.

Brutal dictators like to keep around a population to brutalize and feed off of. Had he produced a WMD and passed it off to a terrorist group, who then used it in our country, he would’ve been left with rubble to rule over. Assuming he was far enough from ground zero and the proceeding fallout, thus surviving, his lifestyle would have been hampered.

And, what ever remained of his country would be left wide open for Iran to plunder. Had we gone our seperate ways, the last thing, the very last thing Saddam would’ve done, is provide the US with a reason to use Iraq as target practice for our own WMD’s.

[/quote]

Sloth,

What if he figured the U.S. wouldn’t blame him? As in he gave it to al qaeda to use. Maybe he figured we wouldn’t look beyond the immediate group involved.

Sound far-fetched.

Not really. There are still people who think the only “good” war was Afghanistan. As if global terrorism begins and ends in one country.

See worldwide terrorist organizations during the 1990’s and beyond.

Remember that there are people to this day that swear that saddam would "NEVER’ have allied with al qaeda due to “religious differences.”

This is in spite of saddam harboring al zarqawi, refusing to extradite him to his ally, the King of Jordan, and doing P.R. work directly for bin laden.

It is quite easy to imagine saddam convincing himself that the U.S. wouldn’t be able to prove his involvement.

You take his hatred of the U.S. coupled with his support of terrorism (including al qaeda) and it doesn’t take much imagination to realize that we’d be looking down a WMD barrel at some point in the future.

Imagine saddam sitting around in 2005 after continuing to tweak his nose at the hapless u.n. inspectors. Most probably, after throwing them out again because our threat of force had lost it’s effectiveness.

I’ll bet he would have been thinking that he could finally get his payback.

Thankfully, Bush called him on it before that materialized.

JeffR

Sloth · January 16, 2008, 2:15am

[quote]JeffR wrote:
Sloth wrote:
JeffR wrote:
Sloth, I just don’t think you understand the mindset of a brutal dictator. They don’t like to be humbled.