Re: Anybody else listening to W?
"What the heck is W's "permanent war method" anyway? I will say that if we must permanently police people that want to destroy my family and yours then I do support that permanence."<br /><br />I've outlined this pretty clearly a couple of times here, but will go another round. What I'm talking about is defining victory in undefinable, vague, generalized terms, or huge unattainable goals like "stamping out evil from the face of the earth", thus ensuring that "victory" by that definition can never be acheived, thus the war is never concluded, and all special war powers that are claimed by the executive branch are de facto permanent changes in our system of governance. What about that? <br /><br />What I'm hearing from the pro W folks is that that is AOK by them, and that they implicitly trust this administration to do the right thing for the right reasons, without oversight. I and a few others here, evidently, disagree with that proposal.<br /><br />"And you think that my references to the Wall Street Journal, the US Army, and a recognized on-line financial magazine siting sources to the Dow Jones Newswire are questionable"<br /><br />You offered no hard number at all to back up your claims of : "Successes? How about a constitution, elections, pumping oil, more schools today than before the war, treating the water, instituting democratic policies, establishment of a free market." Where are the primary sources? Where are the hard numbers? Come on, give us SOMETHING to back this up! I'll even accept a Wiki entry, but please, no Rush. You wouldn't want any of us quoting Al Franken for hard data would you?
<br /><br />"One simple question for any of you detractors. Please answer yes or no. Are the people that we are currently fighting in Iraq evil? Ya know, those ones that strap bombs to themselves or use other particularly nasty ways of killing innocents. Yeah, those guys."<br /><br />Suicide bombers? I don't know about evil, probably the ones who are doing the recruiting for that task are more inclined towards evil than the poor misguided schmucks who actually detonate themselves. Regular milita, shooting at our soldiers? I don't think that alone qualifies someone as evil. From their perspective, the US soldiers are the evil ones, who have invaded and occupied their country and imprisoned and tortured their neighbors and realtives. If fighting an occupying force by guerilla methods does qualify as evil, then how much evil has the US govt supported in Central America over the years? There we were supporting guerilla fighters who were attacking an elected government. One could argue that Saddam was pretty evil, but we supported or at least condoned his evil for decades. Like so many other areas of life, this question is not one that can be simply answered, because it is too sweeping and makes too many unfounded assumptions. I do think that what was protrayed in those pictures from Abu Ghraib was actually evil. But that particular evil isn't one that apparently concerns too many W supporters.
