Hey, dude, guess which candidate wants to go after the people who actually attacked us and which candidate thinks it had something to do with Iraq.
We’re not at war with Islam. Obama mentioned bin Laden in his speech.
Personally, I feel entirely qualified to decide how much reminding I need or don’t need on issues like this. Video tributes and similar stuff from politicians falls directly under the heading of “shit I don’t need.” Despite the unsuitability of Olbermann’s comments, I think very few people have ever needed to be reminded of what happened. Much more often, it’s been used as a cudgel by politicians.
Heh. Phrased this way, it almost sounds like you forgot for a second.
You said some need to be reminded more than others. Who did you mean?
No, it wasn’t; it was a Republican event. It was their attempt to promote their agenda and candidates to the detriment of the Democrats’ agenda and candidates.
It’s true that the nominating process will have great impact on the future of the country. The conventions have ceased to have any role in the decision-making process, and are essentially boosterism for one party or the other. And neither party has such a lock on the truth that their ideals can be said to represent the country as a whole.
Thanks. I’ll stand by most of my grammar and spelling, but I never remember the rules on this.
Is it similarly off-limits for the Democrats to show Katrina footage? Be honest now.
Personally, I’m of the opinion that both can and should be shown, and the issues raised by them can then be debated out in the open.
Who? And just to remind you, George Bush isn’t running. But feel free to tell me who and supply quotes that prove your assertion is correct. This may take you twice as long as you think because you’ll probably have to look at McCain and Biden, as they both voted to authorize action in Iraq.
And there’s the rub. We are at war with RADICAL Islam. (Funny how you left out that one word and attempted to mischaracterize what I said.) Why are we at war with them? Because they are at war with us. If you need pictorial proof I’d be happy to provide it for you. Your omission of “radical” when describing the part of Islam I said we are at war with sums up the left’s problem perfectly. And that is one reason why you and your ilk are going to lose the election. The good news is that you and your families will be safer, whether you like it or not.
I’m not so sure about that. I think it’s easy for the horror and enormity of the event to leave us. That’s good for us as a rule, as human beings. It also tends to foster letting the guard down.
Touche. Well played.
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On 9/11 itself, and the ensuing week, I never watched TV. I got home in late afternoon, and knew by then that all the TV stations would be doing was saying the same things over and over, and interviewing a victim’s third cousin’s dentist for his thoughts on the tragedy.
So last night, I watched 3 hours of stuff on Discover Channel on 9/11. It was the first time I ever saw the footage of the plane flying into the tower, or the towers collapsing. Not because I needed reminding that it happened or why, but because I felt that now we were far enough removed that I could be told what happened in a fair depth of detail without a bunch of “news” people essentially masturbating on TV.
This wasn’t politicians making hay of a tragedy; it was reporting the actual events. With that I had no trouble at all, even when Donald Rumsfeld showed up. He seems, btw, to have handled himself pretty well that day - better than Cheney. And Bush appears to have been out of the picture altogether until the evening.
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Word.
Huh? That all of us should always remember. Those who might forget are those who need reminding. What’s so hard about this?
A Republican event IS a national event. You know one of the country’s two dominant parties. And if the issues of realizing that people are trying to kill us and defending the U.S. against radical Islam work to the detriment of the Democratic party, that’s not my problem. Unless they win, of course.
Agreed.
Glad to help.
I wonder if you feel the same way about Brit Hume, the fox news anchor who hosts Fox News’ Special Report–advertised as a roundup of daily news. He describes himself as a conservative Republican, yet that didn’t stop Fox from having himhost a debate among 2004 Democratic candidates.
Funny how it’s only complaints about “liberals” that the supposed-liberal news-media takes seriously. I’m still waiting for someone to name the left wing equivalents to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilley, Brit Hume, Michael Tucker, and Glen Beck–i.e. liberals who are allotted a similar media megaphone to pontificate with. The right makes one complaint about Olberman and Matthews and their demoted, but lowly-rated loudmouths like Glen Beck and Michael Tucker continue to get paid by this supposed liberal media, and Brit Hume is hailed as a neutral anchor.
Yes, because living in constant fear sucks and as a rule people don’t like doing it. It’s also generally unnecessary. A few legit security measures would probably do much more to prevent terrorist attacks than any kind of constant reminders ever could, but there’s little interest in those - perhaps because nobody sees much political benefit in them. And the few constant reminders that do exist, like airport security, are roundly despised and also widely mocked for being useless.
And I’ll add another vote in the “not at war with Islam, radical or otherwise” category.
Do Republicans need reminding? They were the ones in the hall, watching the presentation, after all.
By a “national event”, I meant one that represents the entire nation, not just one party out of two. And I specifically exclude those occasions when the two parties are in contest, and one promotes itself at the expense of the other.
And The Daily Show / Colbert Report. It’s a sad, sad, day when the best analysis comes from a comedy show.
Or perhaps it’s just a meta-commentary on the current state of politics. Your choice.
magellan, I think the difference between you folks and the liberals is that you view terrorism as a war, while we view it more as a law enforcement issue. And I’ve tried Googling this, but am not finding it, so maybe someone can help me out, but I seem to remember some time within the past half year or so, there were findings that better results had been obtained in those parts of the world where a law enforcement approach had been taken to anti-terrorism activities.
You give these people too much credit, and you think they are more numerous than they are. Yes, a lot of people over there now hate us, but a lot of that has been the direct result of our own actions in Iraq, and even so, they’re no more likely to act on it than you are to fly over there and bomb Riyadh or Tehran. There are lots of haters, but not nearly so many terrorists, and few of them have the means to commit acts like those of 9/11. Pipe bombs and car bombs are more their speed, and while they are horrible, they’re not something to go to war over, any more than we would declare war on Detroit if someone set off a pipe bomb there.
Personally, I’m of the mind that relying solely on either approach is unnecessarily limiting, and indeed many notable successes in the last few years have come from efforts from the LEC and entities like the Treasury Department. So I’m not sure that many conservatives will fault law enforcement.
They will, though, point out its limitations. Law enforcement can’t penetrate a country where the state apparatus has been taken over by forces in active cooperation with terrorists - like Afghanistan. Nor is it helpful in places like Somalia where the centralized government and associated law enforcement functions do not exist in any meaningful way. I don’t think very many people here will dispute these points or the necessity of military force sometimes - Afghanistan remains an action with broad political support.
So we’re just arguing over the scale of operations at that point, aren’t we?
You know, I hadn’t thought of that. It’s an interesting question that I’m not sure I can answer offhand. Do you feel that the two situations are comparable?
The Democrats showed people dying? I think they only showed the aftermath.
Why not show the beheading videos too, then?
Yep. You’re stating that there is an issue that you’ll either handle better or that the other guys will screw up - and illustrating the fact by displaying death and destruction.
Now, whether the charges are fair or not doesn’t change the fact that I think that it’s absolutely fine that they be raised and then discussed.
Obama wants to stop wasting resources n Iraq and send them to Afhganistan where the “enemy” (what there is of it) actually lives. McCain wants to dawdle in Iraq for 100 years sucking up resources.
We’re not at war with any kind of Islam. As a matter of fact, we’re not at war at all. At most, we’re trying to track down some criminals. Islam, “radical” or otherwise, is neither here nor there.