Uh huh, and long odds as well on you making such a judgment call against me, I suppose. Should the precedent of your agreement with me on any matter ever arise, the world will take a holiday, searching the skies for signs from the Book of Revelation.
I can only speculate on your professed ignorance. Perhaps you had thought the thread could take only a route that you had preconceived. Let us just say that when the alternate points of view made themselves manifest, you were taken by surprise, and were thinking along the lines of, “Why, these lads are off-course. It is my duty to steer them where I wish them to go.”
And equally as clearly a high percentage of merely war supporters of every sort of wing. Few of the eighteen-year-olds I have seen either personally or on television have ever seemed either left-wing or right-wing in their gung-honess. But maybe I just haven’t seen the number you have seen.
Clinton hypothesized a “wider war” fueled by an increase in terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction. He posited the need for immediate unilateral US intervention. Whether he was right or wrong in your opinion about his assessment of danger requiring such a drastic reaction is moot with respect to the analogy. Just because you say, ten years later, that there was not the same kind of danger that Bush sees in Iraq bears neither on what Clinton thought at that time nor on the comparison being made to Bush’s own hypothesis. You have a conspicuously weak grasp of analogic reasoning.
You quoted a two-paragraph section of my post. If you’d quoted one sentence, then perhaps - you would have had to have meant that sentence somehow. (Although the ‘how’ part even then would have needed some explication, unless it was obvious. Which it was only to you.)
I can only assume that your obtuseness is deliberate.
I have explained that “those who can draw that connection”, not Bush, presumably would make the observations and reach these conclusions in that paragraph.
What part of that do you not understand?
All of it, evidently.
Are you stupid, or an asshole? I’m going with both.
Well, I’ll not criticize Howard Dean for this. When my grandfather was deferred because of his heart murmur, nobody told him he should go home to bed. He spent the rest of his life as a laborer in a steel mill, doing farm work on his land in his spare time, and hunting and fishing and camping with his family. He wasn’t a skier, but if he was, he damn well would have skied.
Military medical exams are weird things. Otherwise healthy people can be deferred if they have a condition the military just doesn’t want to take the trouble to treat, or might pose the remotest risk on the battlefield.
Howard Dean became a doctor, which counts as public service in my mind. Our country needs them, just as it needs shipbuilders and steelworkers.
As I said, “your claim that I have taken a stand on the ‘chickenhawk argument’ based on my position about posting here is only true as it applies to posting on this board. If that’s all you’re claiming I’m taking a position on, that’s fine.”
“Your claim…is only true as it applies to posting on this board.”
Not that your claim is derived from posting on this board. Only applies to posting on this board. (Or else it is false.) ‘To’ v. ‘from.’ Seems simple enough.
The claim in question being “that I have taken a stand on the ‘chickenhawk argument’.”
I have taken a stand on the chickenhawk argument (not specifically on the chickenhawk argument, but on a much broader principle that encompasses the chickenhawk argument that way the beach includes a particular grain of sand), but that stand is limited to posts on this board. I take no position on whether that argument is valid when non-posters speak, or when SDMB posters speak elsewhere.
I think there are strong reasons for there to be no moral requirements for posting on any issue in an informal, anonymous debating society that does little, if anything, to shape opinions in the wider world. That’s all.
And Joe Namath was 4-F while he was starring in the NFL. Quite legitimately so, by the way.
The reality is that there are lots of physical problems that would be a severe impediment in battlefield conditions, but that don’t restrict vigorous civilian athletic activity, where you can stop what you’re doing the moment something goes wrong. Which is exactly what you can’t do on a battlefield.
I was (thankfully, in retrospect) turned down when I tried to join the Air Force. The reason was because I had suffered a childhood form of petit mal epilepsy that I outgrew at around puberty. Not one seizure or hallucination after twelve years old. Still, that simple “yes” answer about my history nullified my entire application process. I appealed to the Adjutant General, complete with a letter from my doctor stating that the illness no longer had any effect on my life and that I was, for all intents and purposes, cured. The response came back negative.
With respect to ‘a war,’ I have taken no position either way, beyond this board.
Why? Because I don’t feel like thinking about it enough to take a side. I don’t know which side is right or wrong there, because I just don’t care right now. And I do a lousy job of thinking about stuff if I can’t persuade myself to give a damn about it.
With respect to a war whose loss would be of apocalyptic consequences, I have taken a position. If we’re ever in one (a real one, as opposed to one that its proponents say that about), I’d probably apply that position to this board.
I read that book (at your recommendation I believe) and if you came away with the impression that a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq in the face of overwhelming international opposition was warranted then they must have published two different versions of the book.
However, I think the point that is being made is that none of the primary reasons that Americans were lead to believe was the reason for pre-emptive invasion turned out to be true (or even credible in many cases). In NYC I can’t tell you how many people thought that the government was telling them that Saddam Hussein was directly involved with 9/11. I was amazed at how easily people were willing to accpet alternative rationales for invasion when they realized that Saddam Hussein didn’t have anything to do with 9/11. When it turned out that Saddam Hussein wasn’t on the verge of nuking NYC, I was once again amazed at how tenaciously people held onto the “beacon of democracy” rationale as if it was the entire reason we invaded in the first place. Of course the counter used by all the people who still support Bush or the initial invasion is that the reason for invading has never changed and millions and millions of people had just magically been converging on the exact came conclusions at the exact same moments in time, there was no manipulation or deceit involved, it just spontaneously happened.
If we told America that the reason for invading Iraq were the reasons that you listed, how many people do you think would have wanted to put ground troops in Iraq? What if they knew we would have to take troops out of Afghanistan? Popular support for this war was fomented through deceit.
I’m not a really big fan of pulling out unless we have made best efforts to fix what we broke and the way I see it we can pull out or push through but 20K troops is like trying to tickle our way through.
I would also be a lot more receptive to new ideas if there was some accountability for the terrible ideas that got us into this mess in the first place, right now it seems like we are grasping at straws in an effort to delay the inevitable until someone else can inherit it.
The big difference is that Clinton didn’t keep doubling down every time he got a chance, he didn’t jeopardize national security and the national treasure by his actions
I could almost support 220K troops, but 22K troops is what I would call a holding action; buying time; waiting it out until he can drop the problem in someone else’s lap.