“The President is not a fact-checker”
- Condoleeza Rice
I agree completely. But I think what John Mace said @28 applies here too: that contempt has been so thoroughly demonstrated in his policies, in his actions, that a remark like this, while providing additional supporting evidence, isn’t particularly critical in making the case.
Exactly. Were there options other than war? Certainly… but that doesn’t automatically mean that they were better options that would have produced less bloodshed.
We could debate whether they would have or not, but the point remains. In W’s estimation, going to war was ultimately the lesser of all possible evils, so there’s no inherent hypocrisy in his statement.
Well, they can always write for the Captain Red Elephant comic book.
Sample Line: Unhand those god-created zygotes, Blue Donkey, or I shall be forced to collateral damagize your home country’s neighbors!
-Joe
I have never once gotten the impression that going to war was the “lesser” of any kind of evil for W. He has always spun it as a fight of good vs. evil! He may give lip service to “regrettable casualties” (almost always talking about US troops rather than Iraqi civilians) but his stubborn unwillingness to admit mistakes, bungles, mismanagement, and incompetence in the handling of the war is part of the larger picture that he’s doing something Noble and Right and nothing less. He’s always been itching for this fight, and you suggest a reluctant reticence about his decision that is completely counter to W’s actions from the outset of this engagement.
I don’t think he counts anyone that is not a white Christian as a person, anyway.
Not fair! For quite a while he held Ahmed Chalabi, The Man Who Will Never, Ever Be King, in the highest regard and esteem.
Well, for some of the more extreme Protestant denominations (like the psychotic Phelps folks), the worst sin of all is simply not being their specific kind of Christian. If you’re a Jew or Muslim or Buddhist, (or, actually, most Christians), then it doesn’t matter what good or bad things you do otherwise, you’re going to burn forever.
This includes babies born into the wrong religion, so I guess it would include the teeny-tiny souls of all those frozen blastocytes that get thrown away every year – and also the hundreds of millions of naturally-occurring zygotes that fail to implant and never get to be fetuses. In fact, for the true nutbags, logically, most of the damned souls in Hell should be those of embryos. Uncounted billions, all being tortured until the stars burn out. (As I heard Fred Phelps’ daughter explain, “God hates almost everybody”.)
I’m pretty sure Bush would say they’re innocent, though.
But I think the basic rationalization that allows him to reconcile his sanctity-of-life faith with being a warmonger is that, even though he’s the Decider, and has stated his view that being a leader means you don’t have to explain your decisions, he’s somehow not responsible for the direct consequences of those decisions.
Let me try a larger font size. Maybe you’ll start to pay attention to what I’m actually arguing instead of the arguments floating around in your head.
I have never denied that Bush believes that embryos are human beings. I have made no arguments about the validity of the belief that embryos are human beings.
Why is that so hard to understand?
Finally, you get to half of the real issue. I wish you would spend more than one sentence on it (you might’ve found the other half), but I guess this’ll do for now.
The point that I’m making here is that Bush is more than willing (he seems almost eager) to deliberately sacrifice innocent human lives to save other lives in war, but he is not willing to do this for medical research. The point that I’m making is that this is, at best, a profound contradiction. It could really be worse, a belief that real living human beings who live in different countries are more worthy of being sacrificed than embryonic life, and at worst, that those real human beings in other countries aren’t human beings at all, that they in fact enjoy less of a human status than embryonic human life. Notice again that I have not once argued with Bush’s premises; I’m just pointing out his willingness to sacrifice some forms of human life, and his simultaneous unwillingness to sacrifice others.
Why is that so hard to understand?
If we were actually acting like middle-schoolers, then yes, this would be the right place to point it out.
This would also be the right place for me to point out that you’re attributing to me the attitude of a middle-schooler when you haven’t taken even the smallest modicum of effort to figure out what I’m trying to say. My guess is that a real jr. high-schooler would call you a poo-head (or maybe something a bit stronger), but thankfully I’ve grown emotionally past that point. Now I have the maturity of at least a freshman in high school, thankyouverymuch, so I will tell you instead that I don’t appreciate your hasty characterizations of my emotional state when you’ve already so ably demonstrated that you’re not paying even the slightest bit of attention to me.
John, you are not the impartial, disinterested, reasonable, unbiased person here. I am not the cocky left-winger trying to shoot Bush down for every little thing he does. I don’t want the “last word”. If I truly thought you were stupid, I wouldn’t waste my time with another post. I’m not Miller, okay? I don’t have the patience of the gods when dealing with those who suffer from severe comprehension problems.
It’s true that I’ve never liked your writing style, but in the past, I have given you credit (mentally, not in a post) for trying to see both sides of an issue, and I’m trying to extend that credit to you now. I don’t mind your disagreement, I welcome it, but if you want to disagree with me, then I want you to disagree with what I’m actually saying.
Kendall Jackson, you need to post more often. Thanks for an eloquent statement of the key problem.
John Mace, please take the time to read through Kendall Jackson’s posts. He’s not knee-jerking, he’s actually arguing a point. You’re doing both him and yourself a disservice by dismissing him the way you are.
Come back John Mace! You really should address Kendall Jackson’s latest post.
But, but, Bush only believes that the human being embryos created after some particular date are worthy of saving. It seems to me to be the epitome of hypocritical pandering to a sanctimonious segment of the population for political gain.
I can’t be so open minded as to overlook such unscrupulous actions.
I plead guilty to despising GW Bush and with ample justification I think.
Sure he is. He always is. A John Mace post is by definition the most impartial, disinterested, reasonable, unbiased post in a thread.
Just ask him.
Any negative post about GWB (including things as important as, “I didn’t like his tie”) is by definition a knee-jerk Dubya hating liberal post. Sure is. Always is.
Just ask him.
This isn’t exactly new around here.
-Joe
That’s not the issue here. He did not say that there was a better alternative to medical research than embryonic stem cells, he said that sacrificing them, even to save other lives, was inherently unethical. If he ever said that going to war was unethical, but he had to do it anyway, then he’d not be hypocritical. None of the discussion so far has assumed that he didn’t think going to war was the best choice, or even that it was a difficult choice. On one side he has an absolute position, on the other, not so much.
I think even if he said that going to war was unethical, but he had to do it anyway, that would still be hypocritical. Why would he have to go to war? To save lives. But he already established that even saving lives isn’t enough of a justification to sacrifice innocent lives.
I see only three possibilities of those who are opposed to stem cell research because they feel innocent lives are not worth sacrificing even to save lives, yet support the war in Iraq:
- They are ignorant of the known inevitability of innocent Iraqi civilian deaths
- they value innocent Iraqi civilian life less than embryos
- They feel that because the civilians are not directly targeted that somehow makes it OK
I feel that point 3 is invalid, because if it’s a known inevitability that innocents will die because of an action, taking that action is as unethical as directly targeting the innocents. To feel otherwise is like saying that shooting into a crowd is less unethical than aiming for a particular person.