FOX Clinton Interview

[JES]

justme – Since you have such strong feelings on these issues why don’t you tell us how you would fight this battle. With smoke still rising from the Pentagon and WTC, would you have had the courage to invade Afghanistan and topple the Taliban? Or would you have frozen, unable to take decisive action because of your belief that democracy is no better a form of government than any other, including the oppressive Taliban regime?

Democracy is in fact better, and we should have no hesitation in telling this to the dictatorial countries of the world; especially those who support terrorism against our innocent citizens and have as their stated goal the destruction of western society. What more do you need to convince yourself of the seriousness of this threat?

[bgates]

OK, so justme doesn’t think the people disembowling aid workers are evil. No babysitting jobs for you. Justme also doesn’t think we are any better than the people who carbomb schools. I would hate to live in a country filled with violent felons like that, and that’s not just me.

I wasn’t claiming the alliance with Russia was an exact parallel to the situation with Pakistan, just showing the big gaping flaw in your attempt at logic in snarking that we must not be good because we’ve allied with Pakistan. Speaking of evidence you don’t argue well, the word you’re looking for is ‘disingenuous’. And the statement that I’m wrong ‘twice over’ suggests you have trouble counting. To two.

North Korea has been working on nukes for at least 10 years, Iran at least 15. It is understandable that justme blames those two programs on Bush, who’s been in office under 6 years, since justme can’t count to 2, let alone 6, and never mind the double digits. Justme also seems upset that we haven’t attacked a nuclear power. Or perhaps that we have only attacked countries with oil (besides Afghanistan). Or that we don’t attack countries with military dictatorships (besides Iraq). Maybe justme is just upset about not learning more math, geography, or logic in school, who can tell.

It’s a school night, and we can all hope maybe justme will learn something tomorrow.

[ybc]

“Also, the war’s not costing that much relative to the federal government” — better be careful there. We don’t know the full cost yet. A responsible government should shoulder the cost of taking care of the tens of thousands of soldiers who are seriously maimed in the war. I don’t know how many there are, but the lifetime cost per person should easily be in the millions if you also consider that so many of them have severe psychological trauma on top of physical injuries.

In addition, if you consider that the military is stretched thin (you may not, but I do), then the responsible attitude is to spend extra to “catch up” — just like a business that has been seriously underinvesting needs to catch up in order to maintain sustainability.

If you add everything up, the cost will be much higher than the headline cost.

The rest of your arguments — the only thing that I can say is that we’re definitely follow very different logic here. But I do agree that the likes of Jenna Bush and Paris Hilton will make really bad soliders.

[bgates]

ybc, that’s a fair point about the long-term cost, both for veterans’ health and reinvesting in readiness. I am going to disagree with the ‘tens of thousands’ estimate. From what I understand in this chart, there have been just under 14,000 wounded who didn’t require medical air transport. I’m just guessing, but I would think those are likely to be more minor wounds. About 12,500 were wounded or ‘non-hostile injuries’ (which I’m reading as ‘car crash’) that did need medical air. Another 17,500 were diseases requiring medical air. I’m surprised to see it that high, but again I would expect most diseases to be acute not chronic, so once those guys get healed up they’re ok. Certainly tens of thousands injured, and I’m the last person to denigrate any one of the injuries; but from a pure actuarial look at medical expenses, I think ‘tens of thousands seriously maimed’ is probably overstating the case.

As for your closing “we’re definitely following different logic here” – I think that’s the nicest disagreement I’ve ever had on this board. I’m intrigued, though. Tomorrow you’ll have to tell me where you disagree with me. I rarely get the chance to debate with someone who doesn’t lead by telling me Bush sacrifices Iraqi orphans to Satan in pentagrams made of cocaine to raise Halliburton’s stock price.

[justme]

Bgates and JES respond with a mixture of personal attacks,
attempts at ridicule, assigning to me positions that I do
not hold, and attempts at diversions, instead of responding
to the facts stated.

If for a moment I should get personal, I would say that the
tactics seen here are consistent with someone who does not
have truth and morality on their side.

[socalarm]

whoops, looks like my browser cache didn’t update this thread for half the day.
bgates, i respect your effort in drawing the WW2 analogy, but i disagree. the flaw imo is that you cannot use the “idealism” principle with the “expedient” one.
it’s also expedient to send in swat teams into an alcoholic’s house, but it doesn’t mean we need to. WW2 was a ‘last option’ of sorts so the anything goes argument holds. the iraq war was not a last option.
i admire your tenacity. but i need convincing. there, i’ve said it in the nicest possible way. please scroll back to anything i’ve said. i don’t descend to personal attacks. we can have reason over emotion in this debate.

[ybc]

This will be my last post.

Bgates — thanks for providing relevant data. Although in some of your arguments you assumed that I said such and such — which I didn’t. But other than that, it’s fair exchange. In the end, we are pretty much where we started. Now I know why politics is to be avoided. This is so time consuming for me that I’ll just stop posting. (I changed my password to something random, so for sure I won’t remember it, and I changed to an old email account for which I no longer remember the password – I think that I’m pretty safe from posting again once I log out!)

Since it’s my last post, I might as well add why I think that draft is necessary — because we don’t have enough as it is! If there are lines outside of the army recruiting office, and if army doesn’t need to relax its standards so much that marginal people get to serve and commit crimes overseas, if… So Bgates — when you made your argument about me “suggesting” hiring random people for a business, you really just created an argument against what you intepretated as what I said. (I spot similar pseudo arguments in other such arguments, but am too tired to go through them all). So the real issue is – is there a viable way to enhance the military without draft? If our political leaders set examples by encouraging their kids/nephews/nieces to enlist, maybe enlistment will go up. So the argument here is not whether volunteer is better than draft, it is — now that we really need more manpower to execute the war better than in the past ’cause it was so screwed up, and we don’t have enough volunteers, and we force many of volunteers to serve over and over again (isn’t that a backdoor draft? It’s abuse by our political leaders in my mind), what do we do?

Also, your “random hiring” argument ignores the fact that if people drafted pass the normal checks that military has, they are no worse than the volunteers once they’re trained.

As part of my habit of scanning news on various national papers online, I found the following, which are quite relevant to what we just discussed.

Army warns Rumsfild that it’s billions short:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-military25sep25,1,1852611.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

Two-thirds of MD voters support Iraq withdrawal
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/elections/bal-te.md.senate25sep25,0,81881.story?coll=bal-local-headlines
(this is just a random post. but I believe that a majority of people nationally wants to see an exit plan)

Iraq tour stretched for 4000 soldiers
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060925/ts_alt_afp/usiraqmilitarytroops_060925232059;_ylt=AtKZ_bsZXAuw5Thxr4FQVMkb.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTA2ZGZwam4yBHNlYwNmYw–

Families bear catastrophic war wounds
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-24-families-war-wounds_x.htm?csp=N009
(I didn’t do a search, this just happens to be in today’s USAtoday. But I read almost every article regarding wounded soliders everytime I saw one, and I do a lot of reading. The cost doesn’t end once they’re in the hospital or exit the hospital. Infact, I don’t know if the extra medical costs are part of the war budget).

Farewell.

[socalarm]

dude’s hurt

[bgates]

justme, you asked “Who are we to say we are better?” than our enemies, who murder, behead, and disembowl civilians. That suggests to me you do not think we are better than the people doing such things. Implicitly that means you don’t think I am better than such people; I think you have gotten personal already. You quote the word ‘evil’, a common device to indicate the writer does not believe the quoted concept applies. That suggests to me you do not think our enemies are evil. It’s amusing that you now invoke morality, a concept I honestly wonder whether you believe. I ridiculed your ‘selection criteria’ by observing that in two wars Bush has managed to violate two of the four you list, while suggesting a third (don’t attack countries with nuclear weapons) is hardly a recent American Republican innovation. I noted that you try to blame Bush for weapons programs begun over a decade ago. I consider all that responding to what you claim to be fact.

[bgates]

Socal, I appreciate the tone of your 12:53 post. If I understand you correctly, you’re maintaining that WWII was such a high-stakes affair that it justified an alliance with USSR, while you would characterize the Iraq war as an expedient one, which does not justify alliances with unwholesome regimes.

But your original post – “I’m sure our noble allies would agree [that we’re good]” – suggested that we could not be good, in Iraq, if we allied with those nations. In the two posts together you seem to be arguing that if we ally with a country like Pakistan in anything but a fight for our survival we would lose all claim to the moral high ground.

I don’t think so. It’s almost impossible to overstate how awful our enemy in Iraq is. We are much better than them. Do you disagree?

[speedingpullet]

For me, this whole Clinton interview thing is a Red Herring.
Who cares?
He isn’t the President any more, so what he did/didn’t do while in office is pointless waste of time to dwell on.
What he thinks now, or what other people think he ought to have done, is a classic case of ‘shudda, wudda, cudda’.

What matters is what’s happening now.
George W Bush is the President, and has been for almost 6 years.
All this outrage and Moral Panic ought to be directed against the administration in power at the present time.
Unless someone builds a time machine, then what happened two elections ago is about as relevant as a Chocolate Teapot.
The Republicans are welcome to point the finger at Clinton and make him out to be the Devil Incarnate,
but if they don’t try an do something to remedy the situation after 6 years in power, then all they’re doing is blaming someone else for their problems.

As I said – a Red Herring.

[PerryChase]

For the Bush Administration to equate the war on Iraq to fighting Nazi Germany is a pure sign of desperation. If it’s that important, where the sacrifices that need to be asked of the American people? Iraq is, like a Vietnam, a war of choice that’s gone awry.

Hope as they may, this time, there’s no silent majority supporting the Administration. The American public has already decided that Iraq is a mistake.

We have two more months to go until the mid-term elections. Let’s see what the public decides at that time.

[justme]

Let’s try with an enumerated list of facts:

1. Iraq gassed the kurds in 1988 with WMD that *WE* had
given them to use on the Iranians (*).
2. Iraq was an enemy of Al Quaeda
3. Iraq had nothing to do with 911
4. There was no Al-Quaeda in Iraq until after the Bush
invasion
5. Bush all but abandoned Afghanistan
6. Bush stopped worrying about bin Laden and concentrated
on the war in Iraq.
7. The war in Iraq was started based on lies and false
acccusations, to the UN, the world and the American
public.
8. WMD in Iraq (gas) was destroyed and gone years before
the war started.
9. In a war, both sides often commit war crimes. That is a
good reason not to start a war unless absolutely
necessary.

Yes or no?

(*) Bonus question: That makes Iraq’s actions evil, but our
actions not so?

Yes, Saddaam Hussein did give money to support families of
Palestinian suicide bombers, And that is wrong and evil. But
so did citizens, if not governments, of any number of middle
eastern countries that are our “buddies” and whom we are not
attacking or “democratizing”, even though their governments
allowed this type of activity to take place.

And please stop reading your own personal interpretations in
between the lines of what I write, as exemplified by the
“that suggests to me” line of argumentation.

[Author]

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