Why vote for Bush?

[Desmostylus]

It’s the link to Saddam that’s the problem, FoamChomsky. They were operating in a part of Iraq that Saddam had no control over.

And your latest link shows that Al-Qaeda may be operating in Iraq now, in response to the invasion.

[London_Calling]

Just a reminder. Thread title: Why vote for Bush?

[Desmostylus]

*Originally posted by London_Calling *
**Just a reminder. Thread title: Why vote for Bush? **

And?

[Rashak_Mani]

Nobody has given good reasons to vote for him…

[E-Sabbath]

He’s president and we need continuity of power in a time like this.

I’m a registered republican and I always vote republican.

All the other candidates are worse than he is.

I can’t think of any other reasons to choose him. Anyone?

[Captain_Amazing]

Wll, maybe you think Bush’s vision is better than Clark’s. There’s the assumption in London Calling’s post, for example, that internationalism is a good thing. To play devil’s advocate, what if I don’t think it is?

[Monster104]

It’s pre-invasion speculative bullshit.

So, you’re allowed to say a cite is bullshit without a cite of your own? Tell me, where is your proof that it’s bullshit?

[FoamChomsky]

Yeah!

Back to Bush: He had the cugliones to flip the bird to quote-unquote world opinion (read: Saddam’s trading buddies Chirac and Schroder, and the Talkathon of Tyrants aka UN) and knock the butcher Saddam off his perch. He has in fact remade the face of the Middle East, and if Iraqis are demonstrating and engaging in internecine violence it is in general a hell of a lot better than what they were doing a year ago, which not infrequently involved getting fed feet-first into industrial shredders by agents of their own government.

The Dow is over 9600. Bin Laden, if alive, is putzing around in some ass-end-of-the-universe place called Waziristan, with Western aircraft flying over the place hunting him down. Number of attacks on US soil by foreign states and/or terrorist organizations since 9/11: Zero.

I didn’t vote for Bush, btw. I voted for the other guy. And I don’t think he’d have handled any of this remotely as well. His pal Clinton (whom I also had voted for) blew it all over the place on terrorism. Three new books (Posner’s Why America Slept, Miniter’s Losing bin Laden and Patterson’s Derelection of Duty ) set forth in detail how the Dems dropped the ball over and over again on terrorism and national security. One writer, Robert Harvey, in his new book Global Disorder, characterizes the years of the Clinton presidency as “the worst foreign policy era since that of Calvin Coolidge.” Ten lethal terrorist attacks were made on US soil or interests during Clinton’s tenure, and not a whole hell of a lot was done. To be fair, I can’t blame Clinton for the '93 WTC bombing, which took place 38 days into his presidency. And the Bushies themselves overlooked a lot of glaring evidence in the run-up to 9/11, including the Phoenix memo and “dry run” reported by the actor James Woods.

But overall I think Bush has done a remarkably good job. I think the Dems know that they are seen as weak on defense and national security. Clark will help them counter that perception. But he has already flip-flopped on the Iraq War and other issues even though his candidacy is but a few days old.

[Zoe]

Brutus: Clark… has some jacked notion that the Presidency should create jobs.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030107.html

At the above White House website, Bush’s January 7, 2003 plan for economic recovery presented his “jacked notions” for creating jobs.

adaher: Bush is willing to go after states that sponsor terrorism. Clark has specifically said he will not.

Cite?

Foam Chomsky: Because Bush is decisive.

From the first Presidential Debate in 2000:

MODERATOR: New question. How would you go about as president deciding when it was in the national interest to use U.S. force, generally?

BUSH: …I don’t think we can be all things to all people in the world. I think we’ve got to be very careful when we commit our troops. The vice president and I have a disagreement about the use of troops. He believes in nation building. I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders. **I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place. **

Huh?

[FoamChomsky]

So he should have said “to prevent further war from occurring”.

This is a reason to vote against him?

Please read Waco Wes’ flip-flop on the Iraq War and let me know who is more decisive.

[Tamerlane]

*Originally posted by FoamChomsky *
Saddam allowed Ansar al-Islam, an Al Qaeda proxy, to operate from bases within his own borders. And operate they did.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=5571

I’m afraid not even your own cite verifies that. It just notes that a respresentative was at one point in some sort of contact with the regime. Ansar al-Islam was almost definitely tied in with al-Qaeda in some respect and it appears al-Qaeda may well be operating against American interests in Iraq now. But neither of those imply a strong connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda ( I’m not saying there never was any, just that it remains unproven ). I’ll note that I wouldn’t be shocked if such a link were found - one of the current Kurdish groups allied with American interests was at one time allied with Saddam against a rival Kurdish group for instance ( also now allied with the Americans ) - local tribal/clan rivalries sometimes trump nationalism/ideology in Kurdistan. But I haven’t seen any concrete evidence yet, so I wouldn’t go so far as to declare it as fact.

• Tamerlane

[FoamChomsky]

Very fairly stated. Thank you.

[Alien]

No, its’ not back to Bush just yet. This is SDMB, no false claims should be allowed to stand unchallenged!

adaher:
Oslo is a dead deal in case you didn’t notice. The US has every right to disregard it, since it was broken almost as soon as it was signed.

The Oslo Accords is dead when it comes to the steps the parties should have taken to reach a final agreement, living peacefully with each other. The starting points of the agreement is not mute, for one the agreement established the the Palestinian Authority, the return of Arafat from Tunis, and democratic elections in the Palestinian Territories - and yes, that no member of the PLO will be arrested or brought to court for any action that happened prior to September 13, 1993.
And for those parts of the agreement that died, it did so in 1996-97, not “as soon as it was signed”, as claimed.

FoamChomsky:
The strongest anti-Khamenei riots yet ensued in Iran after the fall of Baghdad. I won’t paint the Shah as sweetness and light, but the Persians remember what it was like to live under an at least somewhat pluralistic and Westernized state, and have long since come to realize that rule by mullah was and is a recipe for disaster. The West can’t yank Khamenei as they did with Mossadegh, but they can certainly undermine him by planting a liberal constitutional state next door-- with Shi’a having a voice in the government, as they now do after so many years of despotic Baathist Sunni rule.

The fall of Saddam serves in part to defund Palestinian terrorists. It also removes a nearby threat to Israel and by many ways of thinking enabled Sharon to take more decisive steps toward an actual two-state solution than he ever had, though Hamas blew the efforts up with their ongoing homicide bombings.

1. The strongest protests in current Iran did not occur after the invasion of Iraq. The strongest media attention to this issue did.
2. The Shah regime was one of the worst of its time, the current regime is not near as bad. For one, Iranians now enjoy at least a tiny bit of freedom, including somewhat democratic elections, and they don’t have to fear being gunned down in the street in the middle of the day.
3. Palestinian terrorists are not “defunded”. Hizbolla is defunded, but the Palestinian organizations are getting their funding from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and wealthy individuals in other Arab nations.

FoamChomsky:
Saddam allowed Ansar al-Islam, an Al Qaeda proxy, to operate from bases within his own borders.

Ansar-al Islam operated within the Kurdish self-rule zone in Northern Iraq, outside Saddam’s reach, and protected by the United States and Britain.

[/end debunk]

[FoamChomsky]

Please read “Persian MIrrors” by Eliane Sciolino, or “Neither East Nor West” by Christiane Bird, and come back and tell me that you can still back up this statement:

The Shah regime was one of the worst of its time, the current regime is not near as bad.

Then read this article:

http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen070103.asp

… and tell me once again that

. The strongest protests in current Iran did not occur after the invasion of Iraq. The strongest media attention to this issue did.

As for the Palestinian terrorists, I specifically said that the fall of Saddam “served in part to defund them”, and I did so pointedly, because the Palestinian terrorists receive money not only from the Saudis, but from the EU. As I am sure you are aware the EU finally declared Hamas a terrorist group, an acknowledgement which I believe will have no small ramifications in the ME.

As for Saddam’s ties to the Ansar al-Islam terrorists in Iraqi Kurdistan, Schanzer has already made the link:

Bush administration and PUK officials have also speculated that Ansar may be working with Saddam through a man named Abu Wa’il, reportedly an al-Qaeda operative on Saddam’s payroll. Kurdish explosives experts also claim that TNT seized from Ansar was produced by the Iraqi military, and that arms are sent to the group from areas controlled by Saddam. Iraqi officials deny all such ties, yet Saddam clearly profits from Ansar’s activities, which keep Kurdish opposition forces tied up on the border and away from Saddam. Indeed, support for Ansar is not unlike the money Saddam gives to families of Palestinian suicide bombers; turning up the heat in Kurdistan and the Palestinian territories takes heat off Saddam as a crisis looms.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=5571

[Alien]

FoamChomsky

Find some decent cites instead of partisan left/right “shit” and I’ll debate you.

[Rashak_Mani]

*Originally posted by FoamChomsky *
**To Rashak:

Note that I did not say “democracy”, re Iraq-- I said “liberal constitutional state”, which is something different altogether. An interesting fellow named Fareed Zakaria has just written a book about the difference, which I recommend but will not attempt to capsulize. (The title is .The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy At Home and Abroad ) **

I have been following Fareed Zakarias articles since 2000 and from what I read on his Illiberal Democracy, didnt read the book itself, LIBERAL Democracies or other Liberal governments are way rarer than Democracies. I think Iraq will never be a Liberal Constitutional State... and that is way harder than a Democracy to acheive.  So good luck to Bush.... because miracles and luck are the only things that point to a liberal Iraq.

As for Japan... its a piss poor example of democracy... with all those power groups controlling everything... one of the reasons their economy is in shambles. An example the US will follow soon if elections get manipulated the way they were last time...

Germany was democratic before Hitler... so just going back to old ways. Even then WWII is hardly a good example of Nation building by the US... considering the damage done during the Cold War.

[adaher]

Germany wasn’t exactly much of a democracy. The people didn’t have much more liberty than they did under the Kaiser and the parties didn’t even believe in the process. They spent more time beating each other up in the streets than actually debating in the Reichstag. Massive fraud in elections.

It was essentially a banana republic, and there are banana republics that were more liberal and democratic than the Weimar Republic.

The democracy imposed by the Allies was much more effective.

[errata]

Why vote for Bush?

You have stock in Haliburton.

A high rate of joblessness allows you to lower payroll costs.

You’re convinced “nukular” is the correct pronunciation and you’re glad a president finally got it right.

You enjoy being lied to because it makes the world simpler to understand.

You think wars are fun and patriotic.

When you see how poorly he speaks, you don’t feel so stupid anymore.

You have trouble differentiating shades of gray.

[SnoopyFan]

CNN, August 1st 2003:

“In general, I’m pro-life–excuse me, I’m pro-abortion rights.” --Wesley Clark

Thus why he will not be getting my vote.

[FoamChomsky]

Alien:

Sciolino writes for the NYT and is not by any means right-wing. Bird if anything seems to be left of center.

Attacking the logic or factual basis of a commentator is more than fair game… as is pointing out evidence of bias. But saying “I’m not going to discuss any article by a partisan commentator”… I hesitate to even attempt to characterize that sort of thinking.

Rashak:

Have a look at Zogby’s poll of Iraqi public opinion. I think some of the Iraqis disagree with you:

http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/979368/posts