Scaredy-Cat Nation

S.A.M. said:

What do you think will help now?

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Stop Helping!

Stop helping the banks.

Stop helping the automakers.

Stop helping the Israeli lobby.

Of course, theres not much help one can provide with 12 trillion dollars less than zero!

This is why Geithner is in China today...begging for more cash so he can keep on helping everybody.

hypewaders said:

spidergoat: "I'm not so ideologically stilted into thinking that just because Bush's War on Terra was a farce, there aren't really people out there trying to kill us (for God)."

You're ideologically stilted into Stay the Course (for a farce).

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I'm saying we have to fight the real war on terror.

hypewaders said:

madanthonywayne: "Obama's projected deficit for this year alone is almost 2 trillion."

It's not Obama's deficit. That our war deficit is piled right on with it doesn't make it OK.

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Obama is the president. He pushed for the stimulus package which added nearly a trillion dollars all by itself. He's supported bailout after bailout. He's responsible for his actions. I never said he was responsible for the debt built up before he took office. But he damned well is responsible for what happens on his watch. Stop making excuses for him.

spidergoat: "the real war on terror."

Please describe this new version, and contrast it with the disastrous TWOT 0.1 beta.

It doesn't include Iraq.

Any nation that identifies itself, and defines its politics by a perceived threat, Is doomed to fail. Eventually.

spidergoat: "the real war on terror [doesn't include Iraq]"

So the scary monsters are coralled in Afghanistan? What do they look like, and how are we gonna git 'em?

hypewaders said:

and what's been recently bugging me about Obama's spineless pandering to the same irrationality that has been plaguing us since 9-11.

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Thought I'd check in and see what you thought of this president.....

Remember this....

"If the place falls apart he will be hassled for a long, long time."

News flash: Iraq has already fallen apart, and the public blame is already firmly affixed to the Bush Administration.

"Repubs can say he abandoned 'the good people of Iraq'."

Republicans are all out of credibility on Iraq.

"he will be swimming in internal and then external criticism if he lives up to his promises."

How does this philosophy work for you in your personal life?

"you are looking at the issue in terms of justice and good decisions"

...and you consider injustice and bad decisions more effective?

"I am talking about the experience of the man himself."

Have you ever been experienced?

"If he pulls out fast, whatever happens is all on him."

No, because Obama has opposed the whole fiasco, on the record, from the outset.

"I sincerely doubt we will give up our access to oil there."

The occupation of Iraq is fucking up our access to oil.

"So to pull out and have chaos ensue that requires troops to go back"

Be specific- what course of events do you imagine would compel us to occupy Iraq again?

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I'm in quotes there, you're responding. You got personal because I considered it possible that Obama might not pull the troops out. Yet here we are and as far as I can tell Obama will be leaving many 10s of thousands of troops, sorry advisors, in Iraq for the forseeable future. He has upped the ante in Afghanistan - and started preparing the ground for more military intervention in Afghanistand AND PAKISTAN even before he was in office.

No need to occupy Iraq again. The occupation will not stop. Under his current planning. And who knows how many private troops will continue to be there.

It was so hard to at least respectfully consider ove you asked methat a politician you liked might have appeared better pre-office than once in office that you had to attack someone who was not convinced. I said I wasn't sure, but I was skeptical, and when I stated some of the reasons why live up to what he seemed to be you said

How does this philosophy work for you in your personal life?

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trying to make me feel bad rather than dealing with valid concerns - iow, the potential for

spineless pandering.

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to word it the way you have now.

The more we go on thinking a shining Democrat Knight will come and save us - or for Conservatives the Repbublican counterpart - the more things will remain the same.

hypewaders said:

spidergoat: "the real war on terror [doesn't include Iraq]"

So the scary monsters are coralled in Afghanistan? What do they look like, and how are we gonna git 'em?

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How about we adults take care of it and you can relax and not have to think about all the scary people out there, OK?

Simon Anders: "here we are and as far as I can tell Obama will be leaving many 10s of thousands of troops, sorry advisors, in Iraq for the forseeable future"

While I'm disappointed that Obama's pragmatism has delayed the fulfillment of his promise about Iraq, we have binding timetable (a formal agreement with Iraq) for troop reductions below 50,000 next August IIRC and every US soldier out by the end of 2011. There are many more geopolitical and economic forces compelling our withdrawal besides.

What's slowing Obama down is that it's not just about Obama. What's confusing you in reading my posts is that the problem is not just about you. But you're a part of it, and so am I. We're a nation that can't stand losing, and we're a nation gripped in fear. Even so, in both our personal and collective lives, we either face our mistakes or we compound them. That's why I still want to challenge this President and all of us to choose wisely then follow through, and never give in to the critics who appeal to our fear, and tell us to cower behind "Our Troops" and Authority as our Protectors.

Does this make you feel bad? It's only temporary, until we get back to functioning with the real world, by taking an honest look at what we've done wrong. The alternative to facing our unrealistic fears is what will spiral into real horror.

"The more we go on thinking a shining Democrat Knight will come and save us"

"We" aren't thinking that. We're going to save ourselves, by abandoning these foolish myths.

spidergoat: "How about we adults take care of it and you can relax and not have to think about all the scary people out there, OK? "

I'm not afraid of them. That's your illusion, not mine.

You can hide your head in the sand, but there is a real struggle out there between Islam and those that represent progress and modernity, the West. It may not be possible to eliminate an ideology militarily, but as long as the Islamists are organized into a militia or army, they can be confronted. The long term solution must go beyond this, but no one seems to know how.

hypewaders said:

EmeraldAxe: "maybe 1/20 ppl know how many troops are actually deployed right now"

I expect that far fewer than 1/200,000 USAmericans know that figure.

I don't know the answer, and it's not so easy to find reliable averages- of course the figures continuously change slightly as deployments cycle in and out. Even in round numbers, the statistics are elusive. Googling general reports and recent changes we could make a very rough estimate, that about 400k total US troops are deployed abroad, including roughly 180k (slowly declining) in Iraq, and roughly 40k (and rising) in Afghanistan.

For all the lack of interest in the numeric aspect, the interest among the US citizenry about how these forces are specifically enhancing our national interests is still more neglected. That they are all out there "Defending Our Freedom" is scarcely challenged.

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Good points all around. When I looked up the numbers (I had to actually add them up on a disorganized spreadsheet from a government website), they came out around 450k. I'm pretty sure Ron Paul said it was over 500k during the last election cycle (he's the only reason I looked it up on the first place). But 500k is just an easier number to work with so it's probably an overestimate on his part. Adam Smith has this famous quote that I can't remember in it's entirety so I'll paraphrase, whenever the country wants to go to war, special taxes should be levied against the populace, this way war will be at a minimum.

What did you find when trying to assign actual dollar costs to the troops overseas? Also, I was not able to find if we are leasing the land for our bases or if we just tell countries that we're making bases. I did find a few news articles about American troops boozing in Japanese cities and raping Japanese civilians.

No one talks about this. And I'm not so surprised by the raping and booze, but the amount of money to fund these ventures. It has to be on the order of 500 billion or a trillion per year especially if we lease the land for the (540?) bases.

spidergoat: "there is a real struggle out there between Islam and those that represent progress and modernity, the West."

Bullshit; bigotry; cultural insecurity; fear.

Scaredy-cat.

It's fear of change that drives Muslims to demonize the west, fear of the free human being, fear of feminism, fear of free expression, and fear of a non-existent Allah.

spidergoat said:

It's fear of change that drives Muslims to demonize the west, fear of the free human being, fear of feminism, fear of free expression, and fear of a non-existent Allah.

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Yeah, I'm watching it on CNN right now.