My least favorite thing John McCain has said in this campaign was that "no new taxes" nonsense. But one of the best things he’s said was the bit about our being in Iraq 100 years.
It was about time somebody said it. Sure, maybe it was a tad hyperbolic (Why’d you say 100, Luke? I thought it was a nice, round number), but the point needed to be made. This is a long-term commitment. We’re not getting out any time soon. Everybody knows that, including the Democratic candidates (although they have to tiptoe around it much of the time). They say no, we won’t be out in 2013, but fortunately no one asks them about beyond that. McCain, like grumpy old Dad, just told us kids to stop asking if we’re there yet — it’s a long trip, so settle back.
It has always seemed obvious to me, from the moment we went in, that our involvement with Iraq would be long, too long to predict the end, if there is an end. If you want to be mad at Bush for committing us this way, be mad. But there’s no changing the fact — we’re committed. No friend could ever again trust us, and no enemy ever be deterred, if we walked away from that.
I don’t know how long we’ll need to have troops there, and neither does McCain. Saying "100 years" moves us off the absurdity of talking about how fast we can skedaddle, and helps us focus on, "Well, we’re here — so what do we do next?" And, not least among the advantages, we no longer encourage terrorists to think, "Just one more car bomb, and they’ll leave!"
It’s also a gift to the antiwar folks. No longer need they moan vaguely about "unending war." Now, their grievance can be specific: "100 years of war!" It clarifies things for everybody.
So you can imagine how distressed I was to see this headline today: "McCain says 100-year remark distorted." No! I thought — don’t take it back!
But he wasn’t. He was just explaining that he meant what I’d always thought he’d meant — we’d have a presence there over the next century in the same way we’ve been in Korea and Germany for over half a century now. He wasn’t talking about fighting that long. In fact, he said, we "will win the war in Iraq and win it fairly soon."
That brings us to the semantic question of when a war ends, which is not as simple as it sounds in this post-Clausewitzian world. Conventional warfare ended a few weeks after we invaded in 2003. Although there have been some good-sized ground actions since then, they have not formed a coherent whole, in the sense that there’s no specific, unified enemy out there to surrender to us — which is how a war normally ends. So we get into movable measurements of relative peace. Is the war over when there are this many casualties in a month? No? How about this many?
Does the mere presence of troops on the ground constitute a state of war? Some would probably say "yes," but I certainly would not — and point, once again, to Germany. We kept our troops there as a stabilizing force, long decades after the shooting stopped. It’s worked beautifully. It’s worked, somewhat less easily, in Korea and Bosnia as well.
The thing is, 100 years from now, we will have troops in a lot of places around the globe. There are Bosnias not yet thought of. That’s assuming we’re still the unipolar power. There are reasons to think we won’t be, and plenty of Americans today think that would be fine. We won’t be if the Chinese have their way, and it’s certainly not the vision of the future that Putin’s peddling. This faces us with a question — is the world a better place with its first and greatest liberal democracy still dominant, or with a KGB or Tiananmen Square sort of regime?
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How many troops do we have in Vietnam?
The Bush/Cheney Iraq War is the biggest blunder in American history, and yet some kooks insist on staying for 100 years. Just incredible!!! Brad should transfer and serve as The State’s Bureau Chief in Fallujah or Tikrit.
If you believe the Republicans, we accomplished the mission in Iraq in 2003, and “THE SURGE” has been a huge success. So why stay any longer??? Let the Iraqis enjoy the marvelous democracy that Bush gave them.
Brad, we have limited numbers of military personnel available. Our military, thanks to Rumsfeld and Bush, is frazzled and in very bad shape. If we’re to win in Iraq, then we have to drop Afghanistan to even begin to provide enough troops to do so. Should we drop the war on the country that shielded bin Laden? Have you noticed that as we have reduced troops in Iraq the violence has begun escalating again? Who goes into the rotation next? The Afghan war could be argued as a ‘just war.’ Iraq cannot be considered a ‘just war’ by any amount of stretching. We attacked without cause; the stated reason for attack was false. How many more Iraqis are we going to kill? We’re about to make Saddam Hussein look like a champion of human rights compared to our track record in their country. How are we going to stay there? Where’s the money coming from? I just don’t see how this war can ultimately be continued.
Thanks, Brad. In as long as I’ve been hanging my hat here, this is probably the first post of yours I agreed with completely.
I agree, too, Brad. But when will he start talking about our other reasons for being there? To “democratize” the Mideast by seeding it with democratic governments, to establish long-term military bases to protect our interests in regional oil, to get close to Iran so we can intervene militarily when the time comes, to let the Saudis know we’re not dependent on their whims to hold and maintain a military presence in their backyard, to backstop Israel, to rotate and supply troops in Afghanistan, to guard against China’s need to secure Mideast oil reserves. … There’s a lot more strategic importance to this “war” than supporting our “friends” or deterring our enemies. When are we going to hear McCain talk openly about these issues? Or, for that matter, when will Hillary or Obama even acknowledge that American interests in Iraq are of critical long-term strategic importance, not just about getting our troops out?
Karen … One thought on Iraq as a just war, setting weapons of mass destruction aside completely. I’ve always thought the only justfication for invading Iraq was to depose (or assassinate) Sadam. The man was a psychopath engaged in genocide of his own people and of Iranian peoples. Millions died because of him. The most horrifying video I have ever seen was of Sadam announcing his enemies in the legislature. He was seated in a rocking chair on stage, smoking a cigar, the full assembly seated before him. Names of his enemies were read off one at a time. When a name was called, that person was escorted outside and shot in the head. You could hear the gunshots. Inside, remaining representatives cried, shook, and wet their pants, while Sadam smiled and smoked that cigar. While this was a most dramatic event, it doesn’t even come clost to the civilians he machine-gunned and bulldozed into mass graves, or the millions who died in the Iran-Iraq war, all at Sadam’s instigation. … In my mind, it is just to execute an inhuman despot who murders by the millions on a whim. … that job done, we should have left town. That we didn’t leave speaks more to the strategic objectives that remain.
Speaking of semantics, I’m sick of the assertion that we are “at war” in Iraq. We are not at war. We are the occupiers of the a country we invaded. The war rhetoric is used only to appeal to soft-minded sentiment with regard to our poor, brave troops who are coming back with their minds and bodies blown to shreds.
And there never was a “surge.” We merely increased our troop strength, mainly on the backs of good men and women who have had their tours extended, the egregious stop-loss policy, and so on. A surge would mean that we put in troops for a limited time and for a specific purpose, then pulled them back out again. Semantics indeed.
As for the surge “working”, our embassy complex was shelled just last week (in addition to the car bombs that still go off but are underreported–if at all).
Democracy? A million dead, 2.5 million displaced, many of them the professional and educated class that we would need in place for Iraq to be a successful “democracy.”
And as for Saddam, our military and intelligence complex has the tools to have taken him out without invading. But indeed, he was a useful tool to the American empire for a long time, and on a number of levels.
What if we’d put every dollar spent so far in Iraq into a Manhattan-project style effort to come up with post-petroleum energy solutions? I guess it’s more important for Unocal to have 25 year leases on the oil fields, for Exxon to post the biggest profits of any corporation in history (and not just by a comparative percentage).
Brad, you’ve said that the democrat candidates know just as well as republicans that we aren’t getting out of Iraq any time soon. While I agree that this is true for Clinton, I don’t see how it can be squared with campaign rhetoric and promises that have been made by BHO.
Hussein Obama has repeatedly and forcefully stated that as president he would have US troops largely out of Iraq and home by year-end 2009. This position is of course wildly popular with the far left, flower-power and tinfoil hat crowd in the democrat party, who all are the ardent and swooning supporters of BHO. Obamas’ position on surrender and withdrawal is red meat to the Daily KOS communistas in the democrat party, and I think it is a primary reason that they support him like they do, in spite of his spectacular lack of experience or substance.
I predict that if this charlatan gets elected, he will quickly abandon the surrender/withdraw position and that this reversal will cause a mighty wave of hatred for him among the communist faithful in the donkey party. This anger will result in his being a one term wonder. That will be a good thing. David
There is far too much nonsense in Brad’s post to properly address in one response. But let’s just talk for a moment about this “staying in Germany” comment. Brad, and others, think that’s ok. Well is it? After 60 years and countless billions of dollars does our presence in Germany STILL make any sense? The place seems pretty stable. Germany certainly has the economic muscle to defend itself. And frankly there isn’t any threat to defend it from. The Russians see our presence there as a threat. And why shouldn’t they? Perhaps that’s why Putin has become so assertive of late. It is nothing more than arrogance and a bit of inertia that keeps us there, not anything that is noble.
So we should reject the Germany model 100% as a reason to remain in Iraq. It’s very costly and serves to affirm our imperialist intentions to the radicals in the world. There really is no coherent reason to keep combat troops in Iraq any longer. I hope Brad is wrong about the Dem POTUS candidates. If he’s right then it’s pointless to vote in the next election. I’m betting that either Clinton or Obama will reject the McCain madness and bring our troops home quickly.
I think our entry into Iraq had something to do with compliance with UN resolutions and the treaty Saddam signed after the Gulf War. Here’s what Bush had to say in early 2003.
According to her column in yesterday’s Washington Post, Angelina Jolie thinks we ought to stick around a bit longer in Iraq. I cite her remarks not because she’s a foreign-policy whiz or security expert, but because she’s worked with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and has firsthand experience. Heck, we stuck around for a bit in some countries after WWII and are still in Germany and Japan. Still in Korea too. And Kuwait.
We don’t need no stinking Manhattan Project for energy. We simply need to permit energy companies to invest their profits in exploration and extraction on our continental shelf, as I’ve written before.
Questions for everyone who wants to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and stop pursuing Islamic terrorism:
What personal benefit do you expect to gain by abandoning this war?
How much loss of innocent life of others are you willing to tolerate?
How much risk of being killed yourself, are you willing to tolerate, as you travel abroad?
How much risk of being killed yourself, are you willing to tolerate, here in America?
We don’t need no stinking Manhattan Project for energy. We simply need to permit energy companies to invest their profits in exploration and extraction on our continental shelf, as I’ve written before.
-Mike
Mike you are dead wrong on that. We will never be energy independent simply by drilling more. It’s inevitable that our production of crude oil will continue to decline just as it has for the last 38 years. In spite of tremendous technological advances, hundreds of billions of dollars in oil exploration in places like the Gulf of Mexico and the North Slope of Alaska our oil production numbers have steadily declined. We have never produced as much oil as we did in 1970 and NEVER will again. It’s a geological certainty.
So what to do? Conservation is where we need to start. The high, and rising, price of gasoline ensures that people will drive fewer miles in smaller cars. A big tax on gasoline will help that process along. We need subsidies for wind, solar and other renewable resources. We need to quite fantacizing about huge oil fields under the Atlantic Ocean and start moving toward an electricity based society. Until we fully accept that the oil era is coming to a close we will forever be dependent on foreign oil. And given the geological realities of the world, even that will soon disappear.
Questions for everyone who wants to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and stop pursuing Islamic terrorism:
What personal benefit do you expect to gain by abandoning this war (occupation actually)?
A: None for me but my children’s taxes will go down.
How much loss of innocent life of others are you willing to tolerate?
A: Of course there will be far less loss of human life if we leave. That’s the point.
How much risk of being killed yourself, are you willing to tolerate, as you travel abroad?
A: Again, there will be less risk if we leave, not more. Either way I’m far more worried about drunk drivers than Islamic terrorists. That’s just a phantom problem.
How much risk of being killed yourself, are you willing to tolerate, here in America?
A: See answer to above. The odds of dying from ant bites is greater than dying from Islamic terrorists.
NO SURRENDER says it all!!
I like his GRIT!
I can not believe I agreed with Brad and Weldon on the same day. I was one of the 10% that didn’t want to go seven years ago. Now I’m one of the 10% that believe we are committed and must finish the job and assist in stablizing Iraq. McCain is just telling us what we need to hear. Obama is telling us what we want to hear. Funny that Obama’s campaign is touting him as the straight shooter. Again, McCain demonstrates it and Obama talks about it.
Just so Mike.
The stubborn and obstinate refusal of liberals to allow the US to develop its’ own vast petroleum supplies is among the top three things we’ll look back on in 30 years and wonder what we were thinking. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Liberal Refusniks act as if this were still the 1940s and that petroleum exploration and extraction are as environmentally invasive and damaging now as they were then. Of course they aren’t, but liberals apparently believe they are and have got a great many shallow thinkers believeing it too. I say apparently because I think many liberals believe this way, but I also think there are many who have an ulterior agenda that is furthered when people believe it.
In this sense, I believe that $4/gallon gasoline (or higher?) is a good thing: It may serve to wake people up to liberal chicanery and duplicity as said liberals hamstring the american economy and destroy the ability of individuals to pursue freedom by refusing to allow domestic oil development.
I don’t like paying it. There is no legitimate reason to have to pay it. But if it wakes people up…well, good. David
If the oil reserves Mike has cited do not exist, why have Argentina and China recently moved into very near-US territorial waters to drill for and extract oil? Of course the reserves exist, and of course we should be extracting their oil just as well as other interloping countries are. And we would be, but for the nut-job, dreamy-eyed, pimple-on-the-a$$-of-progress left in this country.
Conservation is a good thing. I’m all for it. But it simply cannot in any way support a growing US economy. The best conservation efforts that present technology can support amount to a drop in the bucket when compared to US consumption. And the consumption isn’t a bad thing, as it supports the most productive, civilized and freedom bearing nation ever in history.
David
Check out this web site.
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/mcrfpus1A.htm
I don’t argue against drilling in the Atlantic or the Anwar for that matter. Perhaps we should. It’s just that it won’t really help much. This is really not that hard to understand.
Please note the small spikes in the inevitable decline in oil production which occurred in the 1980s. That was when the huge north slope oil field came on line via the Alaska pipleline. At it’s peak the north slope was producing nearly 2 million barrels a day. In spite of that, oil production never approached the 1970 level. Again in the 1990s huge oil reserves were brought on line from the Gulf of Mexico. And we never saw the same production that we did in the 1980s. I’m not even going to argue whether there is significant amounts of oil in the Atlantic basin. There may very well be. It is just not going to make up for the loses from other areas. The resources needed to get the oil alone ensures that NET production will never replace the loses from Texas and Oklahoma even if the oil fields in the Atlantic are very large. The price of gas will sore to the point that $4/gallon will seem cheap. That will happen regardless of whether we drill in all the places the looney right says we should. Our use of oil will slow down, one way or another. It’s time to move in a different direction.
Bottom line here folks: We simply cannot drill our way out of this oil-dependency mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.
We can’t “do nothing” our way out of a supply problem.
* Luddites have blocked all new offshore and Alaska drilling. We haven’t had an offshore drilling spill since 1968, and only two tanker accidents since 1968.
* Luddites have prevented any new nuclear plants in the last 30 years.
* Luddites have prevented any new oil refinery construction for the last 30 years.
* Luddites have blocked offshore gas exploration in FL, SC, and NC, even far outside state and federal waters.
More evidence that McCain is nothing but an overly ambitious GOP shill who is willing to whore for votes wherever he can find them:
McCAIN EMBRACES BIGOT
February 28, 2008
Yesterday, Senator John McCain said he was “very honored by Pastor John Hagee’s endorsement.” The Republican presidential hopeful also called Hagee “the staunchest leader of our Christian evangelical movement,” citing the minister’s pro-Israel stance.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue addressed this today:
“There are plenty of staunch evangelical leaders who are pro-Israel, but are not anti-Catholic. John Hagee is not one of them. Indeed, for the past few decades, he has waged an unrelenting war against the Catholic Church. For example, he likes calling it ‘The Great Whore,’ an ‘apostate church,’ the ‘anti-Christ,’ and a ‘false cult system.’ Note: he isn’t talking about the Buddhists.
“In Hagee’s latest book, Jerusalem Countdown, he calls Hitler a Catholic who murdered Jews while the Catholic Church did nothing. ‘The sell-out of Catholicism to Hitler began not with the people but with the Vatican itself,’ he writes.
– catholicleague.org
Do you really care about Catholicism, but, or are you just desperate for anything to smear anyone who is not one of your Socialist Democrats?
I ask, because I see so many atheists and other haters of religion on the Left trying to use religion to divide their opposition.
I guess my last posting was too complicated for Lee to understand. In simplest terms, McCain embraced a bigot. In this case the bigot was an anti-Catholic bigot. He could have been a anti-Jewish bigot, an anti-Black bigot or some other kind of bigot. It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that John McCain embraced a bigot. That’s not a smear, that’s simply an observation that needs addressing.
More proof that “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here” is nonsensical conservative mantra without merit:
LAS VEGAS — A man hospitalized more than two weeks ago with respiratory problems was the occupant of the Las Vegas motel room where deadly ricin toxin was found Thursday, local police said Friday.
-USA Today
I sinserely hope this man recovers. No one deserves something like this. I’m sure he has a family that doesn’t want to lose him. Unfortunatelly, this same type of sad story is replayed in Iraq 20 or more times each and every day.
bud, why do you refuse to answer a direct question which might tell us what your post was really about?
If you care about the people being killed in Iraq every day, do you care about the civilians killed by Al Qaeda terrorists, or do you mourne the terrorists killed by US forces trying to stop the killing of civilians?
How do you think the US leaving is going to reduce the killings? Do you even care?
Check out the headline at the State’s website. Roark and Scwietzer have been canned at Public Safety. The interesting part about this story is the reason. Apparently a trooper misbehaved in 2004 and the top dogs at DPS didn’t respond strongly enough. Yet Boykin Rose did some simply incredibly corrupt stuff, lost his job, then was re-hired by Hodges. SC state government sure is a strange animal.
“This faces us with a question — is the world a better place with its first and greatest liberal democracy still dominant, or with a KGB or Tiananmen Square sort of regime?”
Gee Brad, I don’t know, but since you phrase the planet’s choice in those terms I guess that means thousands, millions more innocent poor schmoes in tiny countries around the world will die in the decades ahead, hapless victims of the struggle between titanic powers, just as innocent Vietnamese, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, who were just trying to get food on the table and not particularly caring about which superpower dominated their region of the world.
I wish you were able to imagine a different future for our world.
Phillip, as long as you put it in THOSE terms, that’s going to happen whatever we do. And it will happen to far more “poor schmoes” — and the social, political and economic conditions that follow the slaughter will be far worse — if our nation retires from the field.
“retires from the field…” Again Brad you’re casting it in black and white terms. We may indeed be the “greatest liberal democracy”, at least greatest in power (if not in the equitableness of the way we treat some in our society)…but we are certainly not the ONLY liberal democracy. Unfortunately, to much of the world, we have often acted as if we were, at great cost to our own nation, not to mention other nations.
If there’s to be any meaning in being the greatest liberal democracy, then it must derive from leading and helping to create a world where all the democracies of the world share (the responsibilities as well as the benefits) in the stewardship of freedom in the world. And when I say lead, it does not just mean militarily, but diplomatically, and by example, in the integrity of how we conduct ourselves as a nation.
The good news is that all three of the remaining Presidential candidates would get us closer to that ideal than the current occupant of the White House.
Lastly, it’s interesting, Brad, that after all is said and done you cite Russia and China as our two biggest geopolitical concerns. I wouldn’t argue at all with that, but it puts this whole “Islamofascism” thing in perspective, doesn’t it?
Bud, you say that we can’t drill ourselves out of this mess. While I believe your arguement that oil resources are on an inexorable decline is specious, I agree that the US will be a net importer of oil into the foreseeable future.
These things are tangential to my central point however: Whether we can drill ourselves into independence or not has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that we ought to be aggressively developing and exploiting our domestic supplies right now. We should have been doing this for the last two decades, and we should have been increasing refinery capacity apace as Lee so rightly points out.
There has been an ongoing, systematic and calculated resolve ~ largely on the left ~ to ensure that these things are not allowed to happen. The american public should be up in arms about this egregious betrayal of the public trust but they have not been. Again I say that if anything good can come of $5/gallon gasoline, it may be that it will finally wake people up and maybe some liberal blood (politically speaking of course) will be spilled at long last. David
Brad … how about a post on Hillary-Obama campaign fund-raising approaching the $400 million mark? Obama raising $50+ million in February, Clinton $35+ million … Looks like a warm-up for how they plan to spend our tax dollars.
I know one goog thing that would come of five-dollar gas, dave. I would walk a LOT more.
Good, not goog. Sheesh.
Brad is a typical chickenhawk who pushes his faux patriotism via macho/tough guy stances, while never having dirtied his hands in combat. How many Viet Cong followed us home after we left? Oh yeah, none.
We wiped out the Viet Cong in 1968, during the Tet Offensive.
The North Vietnamese took control of the war, as they has planned to when the VC were spent, and we killed 2,500,000 of them.
Red China and the USSR intended Vietnam and Cambodia to just be the first of many defeats in that part of the world, but internal squabbling and mass genocide in Vietnam and Cambodia killed 6,000,000 more, and stopped their expansion.
As with all communist regimes, grandiose plans of conquest fall apart when the reality sets in that communism cannot even provide three decent meals a day to its people.
Nice spin Lee. You never said how many Viet Cong followed us home to fight here, and you failed to tell us why we have no bases there. Typical.
There weren’t any VC to follow us home. We annihilated them in 1968.
There were 100,000,000 Chinese soldiers and 20,000,000 Soviet soldiers who got the message not to mess with us.
Besides, socialism can’t feed itself. All socialism can do is consume the wealth piled up by capitlism.
I don’t see any concern by the anti-war crowd for the millions of Asians, Africans, Central-American natives and Muslims murdered by socialists. Is that a racist thing, or do white liberals just not care about anyone but themselves and their coffeehouse buddies?
Lee Muller for President. I could vote for that.
I bet if Lee was made King for a day we wouldn’t have $4/gallon gasoline. David
I had signed off of this blog for good, but this just stuck in my throat so much that I couldn’t stay silent. Isn’t someone going to protest this kind of statement? Since when are Americans, who in the past have reluctantly gone to war in the defense of freedom, proud of the number of people killed?
Or are North Vietnamese some kind of vermin to be eradicated?
Leave the fact that Lee’s statistics are often made up or even delusional at best, this is positively evil. I’m surprised it is even tolerated here.
While not the most authoritative source, here’s Wikipedia’s take on the number of casualties in the Vietnam War:
“Documents declassified by the Vietnamese government in 1995 revealed that 5.1 million people died during Hanoi’s conflict with the United States. Four million civilians died in the North and South. Total military casualties were put at 1.1 million and 600,000 wounded. Hanoi concealed the figures during the war to avoid demoralizing the population.”
And from http://www.vietnam-war.info:
“The lowest casualty estimates, based on the now-renounced North Vietnamese statements, are around 1.5 million Vietnamese killed. Vietnam released figures on April 3, 1995 that a total of one million Vietnamese combatants and four million civilians were killed in the war. The accuracy of these figures has generally not been challenged. 58,226 American soldiers also died in the war or are missing in action.”
Doesn’t look like Lee is off in his numbers, Herb. If anything, he’s understated it.
War is Hell.
The only time I see socialistic liberals whining about people being killed is when the US military is killing bad guys.
They are stone silent on the genocide of 65,000,000 Asians by communist Asians, or the millions of Africans by other Africans, Muslims by Muslims. It seems that white socialistic liberals don’t expect any better out of communists, or they feel it is “racist” to criticize non-whites who commit genocide.
I think it might be more racist to sit silently and condone it.
Its a Christian thing to be concerned about any sick, suffering, or caught in the horrors of war. We (not necessarily you)are called to help the poor, the sick, all those who need our help. We are called by Someone who seldom asked why a person was in need, but simply helped that person. Some one who broke bread with whores, tax collectors, and even pharisees. Yes, we should care. One of the reasons WWII worked well is because we did not leave a beaten Germany, Italy, and Japan to fester into something (possibly) worse, but we spent years and money fixing their broken societies, and building countries that could become modern democracies. They are no longer our enemies. In this repressed, backward part of the world, we have, in the process of deposing a dictator (and doing what else, I’m not sure) killed many innocent lives, and destroyed much of their infrastructure. Some of these people are turning to radical, twisted religious belief for the same reason that people at the height of the bubonic plague epidemic in the 12th century did so–because they didn’t have anywhere else to turn. We cannot expect impoverished, uneducated people to trust us when we’ve killed their families and destroyed their water source. The only justification I can think of for staying in Iraq is that we broke it, and we need to fix it. It is only by helping these people rebuild that we can win in Iraq. Yes, we need to try to help these people.
A series of socialist dictators broke Iraq and most of the Middle East. Europe and England mostly exploited them, just as they exploited America.
We are fixing it. We are the only ones who know how to fix it.
Doug,
Brad has already stated the obvious, that Lee makes up facts when he needs them. That being the case, I don’t bother looking up Lee’s statistics, because I don’t trust them. They may be right sometimes. So is a broken clock–twice a day.
My point was his pride in the fact that the U.S. killed 2.5 million people. To my knowledge, Americans have never taken pride in the number of civilians killed. I don’t think we’ve ever taken pride in the number of enemies killed, for that matter. It is not something to take pride in.
In the socialist scheme of things, the republic of the United States of America must be turned into the Socialist Republic of United States of America.
When FDR and his socialist wife Eleanor took over our country the media hailed them as winning the war against fascism and imperialism.
The pendulum has now swung back to what do the people of the United States want for their children and future generations?
There are a few voices out there crying in the wilderness but few are listening. We are told by the powers in charge of information getting to the people, be it by newspaper, TV, radio etc, are telling us that Obama will be the salvation of this country. Nothing could be further from the truth. He and Hillary want to take from the working class (no matter how affluent) and give to those that want to have the car, house, job and raised standard of living which will include insurance to be paid for by all the people that earn a certain amount of money and they will decide at which level they confiscate all above that certain amount of earned income along with making corporate America pay increased income on the profits.
They want to provide an education for everyone including the illegal.
I could go on and on but the people that read the blog are well aware of what is going on because they post.
Those that close their eyes because they do not want to see and close their ears because they do not want to hear and close their minds because they will benefit from socialism need to understand that it will be a burden born by their children if they can afford to have children.
Yeah, providing an education to people is a bad thing.
Herb, please don’t sign off. You are a voice crying in the wilderness. Meanwhile both sides are crying for what isn’t, or should not be. If we don’t work to provide schooling/basic health care for all, then we’re leaving ourselves wide open to an epidemic source, and a set of radicals as bad as any we see in the mideast. Providing these basic needs is nothing more than basic social hygiene for our society. Helping others is doing no more than extending this to our larger society. The world is no longer separated by all that much; jets and communication (television, internet, et.al.) ensure that we must educate others or they will be disenfranchised and will certainly rebel (check our the French Revolution, or the Russian one, for that matter). But above all this, we need to help those who need help. Period. End of sentence.
> we need to help those who need help.
And by “we”, you mean “the government”, right? What is scary is when you equate government with society. The government is not society.
And which rebellions occured back before we had Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and all the other government aid programs? I don’t recall them. What’s different now other than the government creating second and third generations of people who are locked into the cycle of government dependence based on other people’s efforts?
Seems like “we” have already done a whole lot for those who need help. How much more do “we” need to do? Give me a number. What percentage increase in taxes do you think would cover all the basic needs for everyone? Is it 10% more than I pay now? 20%? My contribution to the “we” society already runs about 40% of my income. Just wondering what the optimum percentage is…
“We” should do whatever we can to help people in need ourselves, not pass the buck onto an inefficient government.
I’ll finish with an example — it was reported last week by the Office of Management and Budget that Medicare fraud
amounts to $10 Billion dollars a year. $27 million dollars a day. So the amount of money being stolen from the subsidized healthcare system is the equivalent of all the revenues for an entire year of a major insurance company. Think about that. That’s what “we” get when “we” let the government run things.
Herb, I am right all the time. All you do is bluff by accusing me of lying, of making up the facts, even when I post authoritative, original sources. Every time, you disappear for a few days. That is not very intellectual.
I don’t want to hear about the vague feelings of liberals who want me to spend more of my hard-earned money. I want a hard figure that will solve the problem, once and for all. If you cannot come up with tax policy and social policy, and foreign policy on PRINCIPLES, then you have no policies. You just want someone else to care for you.
Estimates on the number of Muslims in the United States run from .6 million (in a recent PEW study) to 8 million, depending on who is asked, and on what basis the information was gathered. The PEW study seems to be based on the number of land telephone lines, and does not take into account cell phone usage. The higher figure is probably the more accurate, though it is hard to tell.
All to point out that statistics are a mine field, at the very least. Quoting someone’s statistics is precarious at the very least. When we start using them to help spin the facts the way we want them, it becomes downright dangerous.
I lived for seventeen years across from the Swiss border. I know a lot of Swiss people. I ask them about gun laws in their country, and Lee accuses me of making up my information. I lived in Germany for 28 years, and have had to lean back on medical help for myself or family members in several countries, not only in Germany, the U.K., Switzerland, Sweden, but in India and other places as well. And I know from experience that people are not lying there “dying” because so-called socialized medicine won’t help them. True, I had to share a hospital room once with two other men, but I didn’t die from it. I have a lot of friends in different countries after living abroad so long. I have yet to hear from any of them that they would rather live under the U.S. medical system. None of them want it. I’m not saying that the others don’t have their problems, and the U.S. doesn’t have its plus side–for some people, that is. All I am saying is that generalizations don’t help, and statistics, especially in the hands of the wrong people, can be mightily manipulated.
So what basis of discussion exists there? Principles? The only principle I can see in Lee’s work is that: 1) Lee is right, and everybody who disagrees is wrong. 2) If Lee looks wrong, rule no. 1 is to be applied, and the argument spun so that the other person looks as stupid as possible.
Other principles I have brought out from time to time, including Biblical ones, which Lee ridicules. That’s fair enough, he’s entitled to do that. But to say I don’t have any is plain wrong. And I don’t have much time, so I try to point to works that detail those principles, such as Ron Sider’s Just Generosity. It seems to me that we have much to learn from the Mennonite community (Sider is Mennonite).
What I would like to know is, on what principle does one produce such hatred for illegal aliens in this country, and then be enthusiastic for producing them in others? The King of Jordan pleaded for the U.S. not to invade Iraq–and now Jordan–a country with six million population, is invaded with 1 million Iraqi refugees. As someone has written: “Americans wage the war, and the Jordanians have to live with the consequences.” How would we like to live with an invasion of 50 million refugees in this country (one sixth of our population)?
The more we practice this kind of foreign policy, the more terrorists we will produce.
Pardon my evangelical Christianity, but I happen to believe that Holy Scripture has divine authority–and one of its great principles is that, sooner or later, God repays nations for their pride and mistreatment of others. If we sow human misery, don’t be surprised if we reap it here at home.
Which is not to ignore the good our military has done and is doing at different times, and in different places. I have friends whose sons and daughters are in the military, and I regularly pray for them, aa we do at church. Several of my family served in Vietnam (but not all are as convinced as Lee is that it was the right thing–not by a long shot). But it is easier for some to use a big stick than it is to speak softly. We need to be careful with that stick.
And I have trouble speaking softly, especially when Lee gets my goat . . . .
Please note that the PEW report shows .6 million Muslims, that’s 600,000. A difference of 600,000 to 8 or 9 million is quite a range. Just one illustration among many that quoting statistics is not the same as producing facts.
And Lee, I need to disappear for a few days–or perhaps years, in order to cool off. Your stuff makes me plain mad. I don’t need to hear it, either, it’s bad for my blood pressure and for my sanctification. I wish I could just ignore it.
…let’s all ante up enough money to send lee muller to iraq and fix this problem his chicken hawks have started…or would muller use rush limbaughs excuse of a pimple on his arse or cheney’s “i had other priorities…” or just don’t show up like his hero george”awol” bush, remarkable how dumbya lost his pilot license when the military started testing for coke…evidently some bloggers have found his stash…lee?…would you go or would you perform as well as your chicken hawk hero’s…my guess is unfortunately he still will reside in columbia, after spending 12 years in the navy and becoming disabled in a submarine mishap, i know lee muller’s type…they are called cowards…
What McCain meant to say is that…The USA will be in Iraq as long as the oil last.
When will some of our…so call leaders undertand that the USA will never conquer the Middle East. We tried to conquer SE Asia and failed, and we will fail in the Middle East.
Herb, it doesn’t matter whether you disappear for a few days of a few months. I am still going to have the last word by posting facts (not statistics – there is a difference), as an antidote to every one of your baseless accusations and outright fabrications on gun control, in America, Switzerland, wherever.
Doug asked for hard numbers of what socialist liberals consider to be the right amount of taxes to be paid by Wealth Creators, and what what percentage the “liberals” think they should pay, and why. As always, it goes unanswered.
Lee is an interesting person. He claims to be highly credentialed and actually has a good handle on where to find information. But he is utterly incapable of interpreting it properly. He has actually made the claim that there were 3 recessions during the Clinton years, then posted a web-site that alledgedly supported the claim. But if you actually go to the site itself it completley repudiates Lee’s claim. I find it simply fascinating that someone wants to believe something so badly that they cannot even interpret basic statistical information properly. What could cause someone to be so hard-headed? It is simply amazing to watch and quite entertaining. To all you folks out there who read Lee’s posts keep this in mind, he seldom makes a claim that is actually true. It’s all a part of the delusional world that he lives in.
Lee.
Keep on pounding the non-believers. They only know what they read in the papers and see on TV or maybe hear on the radio.
Neal Boortz tells his listeners they should not believe everything he says because he is know to tell a lie.
You research your subject and try to inform people of the true circumstances involving the subject matter.
There seems to be a certain segment of society that have been brainwashed as well as not being able to comprehend.
Keep the facts coming.
It is the economy stupid and it is going to hell in a handbasket. The rope that a person holds onto to be led by party affeliations is the very rope that will hang them.
It’s official. Oil prices, adjusted for inflation, exceeded the record set during the Carter administration earlier today. And it appears that they will continue up for a while. Thank you President Bush for doing an outstanding job keeping those oil prices from getting too high.
Subject: Emailing: Trial Will Reveal ‘Cesspool’ of Obama’s Allies – Sean Hannity
With the corruption trial of one of Sen. Barack Obama’s longtime friends and
supporters set to begin Monday in Chicago, Ill., reform watchdogs say it
will reveal the “cesspool” of Illinois politics in which Obama came of age
and has said little about in his campaign for president. [NL][NL]”We have a
sick political culture,” said Jay Stewart, the executive director of the
Chicago Better Government Association, “and that’s the environment that
Barack Obama came from.” [NL][NL]Stewart says he does not understand why
Obama has lectured others about corruption in Washington and Kenya but “been
noticeably silent on the issue of corruption here in his home state,
including at this point, mostly Democratic politicians.”
Which Unabomber Will the Democrats Nominate?
Obama has a problem with criminals, crooked Chicago politicians, communists and other violent radicals from the 1960s as his pals.
Hillary has all those in her checkerd past, and can’t call Obama on it. Bill Clinton pardoned some of those radicals, who bombed police stations and military bases.
Oil prices are high because the world knows that American socialists will keep America from tapping its oil and gas reserves.
Gas prices are high because the socialist greenies have prevented building of any new refinery capacity.
America still pays way less than most of Europe, where the sheeple are conditioned to high taxes on motor vehicle fuels.
Maybe a poem from a long dead man can shed some light on who is in charge.
Subject: Emailing: Poem Invictus (taking responsibility for one’s destiny)..htm
Invictus
by William Ernest Henley; 1849-1903
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
Brad, whose blog is this? Yours or Lee’s?
Mr. Gordy,
This blog could be your place to engage in conversation. For example, you could respond to my observation that the socialist environmentalists who raise the issue of gasoline prices should be happy that people will be unable to buy and burn as much petro fuel.
I don’t think they are concerned about high oil prices, because that is what they were trying achieve by blocking oil exploration, drilling, and new refineries.
I don’t expect them to care how many poor people starve to death or freeze to death in the “Third World”, because environmentalists made petroleum fuels too expensive for them to buy.
Oil prices are high because the world knows that American socialists will keep America from tapping its oil and gas reserves.
-Lee
Oil prices are high because of (1) peak oil brought about by a sharp decline in oil discoveries world wide since 1965. American oil production peaked in 1970. The world is probably not far behind. And (2) the collapse of the dollar brought on by the disasterous Bush administration.
Gas prices are high because the socialist greenies have prevented building of any new refinery capacity.
-Lee
There is no need for more refineries because there is not enough oil to supply them.
America still pays way less than most of Europe, where the sheeple are conditioned to high taxes on motor vehicle fuels.
-Lee
And the Europeans are well on the way to energy independence. Now that oil is peaking worldwide the Europeans are in a better position to proceed into the future.
Lee, some of these folks need to start getting up earlier if they want to compete with you with knowledge. Hence, the old sayin that people do not get up enough to get ahead of LEE.
We have enough oil in our country and surrounding waters. It is the do gooders that will not let us drill and refine. They have the crazy idea that ethanol will save the day. Could an idea be more rediculous than use food to make ethanol to put in your car instead of gas. I will not go into all that is wrong with ethanol because you can find out for yourself just by clicking on trouble with ethanol. We are paying the price of using the corn in the ethanol plants that are alreay here by paying more and more for all things dependent on corn. The idiot that said use food and turn it into fuel for your car should be tarred and feathered. The fact that the government is awarding grants of millions of your taxpayer money to build these ethanol plants that use billions of gallons of water day and these grants will not have to be paid back to the taxpayers.
Worry about running out of water. Unless of course you think gas is more important than water. Wars have been fought over water rights. We may see that day return in the very near future. Read the other day that Ted Turner is buying more and more land out west that is over the largest acquifer in the USA.
The primary reason for the higher price of oil is that oil prices are denominated worldwide in US Dollars. Deficit spending dilutes the value of the fiat currency, and prices rise to reflect the lower value of money. The first prices to rise are those commodities which are marketed efficiently: oil, gold, silver, natural gas, steel, copper…etc.
If the Democrats had there way under Clinton, and under GW Bush, the deficits would have been twice as large as they are now. If Obama or Hillary are elected, and Congress does not restrain them, the deficits will be much larger than today, the dollar will be worth much less, and will buy less oil. Inflation is merely the manifestation of debasing the currency, which is a back door method of taxation.
Lee, you’re partially correct. The collapse of the dollar, due to GOP deficit spending, plays a big part in the rise of oil prices. However, the more significant reason is the fundamentals of supply and demand. With world-wide demand rising sharply coupled with the fact that production of oil is now on a plateau or even beginning to decline thereby causing a runup in price. The reason for the production plateau is simple, many countries are now in a production decline. Indonesia is now a net oil importer. Mexico, the third leading source of imported oil for the U.S, will be in as little as 5 years. U.S. production continues to drop as it has since 1971. Saudi oil production may have peaked. No one knows for sure given the secret nature of Saudi Aramco. (If so oil prices will go much, much higher within the year).
If ever there was a problem created by the false promises of the free-marker this is it. Clearly we cannot drill our way out of this mess. It doesn’t matter what kind of environmental restrictions we lift. Any new U.S. production will not even offset the drop in our base production, let alone allow us to become energy independent. Without some kind of changes to our fundamental way of powering this country economic collapse is inevitable.
I’m optimistic that if we can get rid of the backwards thinkers in congress and the White House we may be able to cope with this problem. Only time will tell.
The only thing clear is that those who claim we can’t supply our way out of high oil prices is just guessing. Most of them don’t want the US to drill more or refine more oil. They are not impartial observers, but partisans with a some sort of anti-American or naive environmental agenda. They are the backwards (non)thinkers, clinging to junk politics and mysticism.
In 2001, GW Bush and Cheney tried to increase alternate enerty research ten-fold over Clinton (not hard, since he had actually decreased R&D), but the Democrats blocked it. They wanted phony partisan issues, rather than to solve the problem.
Obama and Hillary have vowed to spend more, tax more, run bigger deficits, and throw away more money on subsidies to inefficient energy fads.
How about reading this about NAFTA and Obama.
Memo puts heat on Obama
Canadian memo puts heat on Obama
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Geoff Elliott | March 05, 2008
BARACK Obama flew south from Chicago into San Antonio, Texas, to address
about 200 war veterans yesterday but, for once, all eyes were not on the
Hispanic vote and how the southern border towns might vote.
Rather, all the action was happening north of the border in Canada.
Senator Obama has been thrust into the middle of a bubbling diplomatic row
thanks to a leaked memo of a conversation his top economic adviser held with
a Canadian consular official.
The memo – just 24 hours out from a critical vote in Ohio and Texas today –
put Senator Obama on the back foot and prompted the US media to jump all
over the Illinois senator at a press conference after his speech to the
veterans.
Last week, a Canadian media report cited Obama officials as having
characterised Senator Obama’s trade protectionist talk – namely his call to
renegotiate NAFTA, the free trade agreement between the US, Canada and
Mexico – as simply political posturing ahead of today’s critical primary
votes in Ohio and Texas.
In Ohio, NAFTA is blamed for the loss of manufacturing jobs, and Senator
Obama has been highly critical of the agreement and its lack of labour and
environmental protections. So has Hillary Clinton, despite the fact it was
her husband, former president Bill Clinton, who championed NAFTA and signed
it into law.
The Canadian media report was denied by Senator Obama and his advisers last
week. But yesterday, Associated Press reported on a memo written by Joseph
DeMora – who works at the Canadian consulate in Chicago – detailing his
conversation with Senator Obama’s economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee.
The memo said Senator Obama’s comments on NAFTA were “political positioning”
and that Senator Obama was not a protectionist – a stark contrast to the
denials from Senator Obama and his advisers that a meeting had even taken
place.
Yesterday, Senator Obama denied that his office had given such a “back
channel” assurance. Mr Goolsbee said his comments to the officials had been
misinterpreted. Senator Obama said: “Nobody reached out to the Canadians to
try to assure them of anything.”
Asked why he had at first denied the report that a meeting had taken place,
Senator Obama said: “That was the information I had at the time.”
Senator Clinton seized on the revelation of the memo, saying the Obama camp
had given the Canadians “the old wink-wink”. “I think that’s the kind of
difference between talk and action that I’ve been talking about,” she said.
“It raises questions about Senator Obama coming to Ohio and giving speeches
against NAFTA.”
The row even reached the parliamentary floor in Canada. Conservative Prime
Minister Stephen Harper disputed a claim by the Opposition that Canadian
officials had leaked word of the meeting to complicate Senator Obama’s race
and help Republican John McCain, a strong advocate for NAFTA.
Canada and Mexico have been concerned about the anti-trade talk from
senators Clinton and Obama.
Mr Harper told parliament he was amused by the idea that “we are so all
powerful that we could interfere in the American election and pick their
president for them”.
“This Government doesn’t claim that kind of power,” he said. “I certainly
deny any allegation that this Government has attempted to interfere in the
American election.”
The memo said Mr Goolsbee had urged the Canadian officials not take the
“messaging” over NAFTA “out of context” and had said it “should be viewed as
more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans”.
Associated Press reported that Mr Goolsbee disputed the characterisation,
saying: “I certainly did not use that phrase in any way.”
A statement from the Canadian embassy expressed regret on how the
discussions had been interpreted.
“It must repeat those points over and over again until the public believes it. The principles behind propaganda are the same principles of mind control, hypnotic suggestion, and mental programming: distraction and repetition. With propaganda, distraction draws attention away from information that is true and directs attention to information that is false. Repetition of the false information imbeds it in your subconscious mind so that your acceptance of its truth becomes a conditioned response. You accept this information as true without thinking whenever it is presented to you again.”
-Adolf Hitler
The right-wing spin machine in this country has mastered the propaganda craft used by the Nazis. That’s why Republicans continue to get elected even though their party is failing by any object performance measure.
Hitler was a socialist whose social programs, public works, and deficit spending, and propaganda methods were copied by FDR’s socialism.
Austan Goolsbee and Richard Thaler are big into behavioral economics, and using market psycology to micro-adjust Obama’s message to tailor it to the various audiences.
They also are sources of his platform items, such as mandating workers invest in company 401-k plans, and mandating that everyone purchase medical insurance from the insurance companies ( same as Hillary’s plan).