Your response is proof that Goering is right. He says it doesn't matter what the politics are, if you want war, all you have to do is say the country is under attack. Even though the majority of the population is against war, they will follow.
For every point you make in favor of Bush, one can find arguments against. (See Institute for Policy Studies, www.ips-dc.org, or Senator Byrd's Senate Floor Speech, Feb. 12, 2003.) But arguing whether Bush is right or wrong is not the point. The question is are we making our commitments because they are the right things to do, or because we have been manipulated into committing ourselves and now think we are doing the right thing.
My response:
"Carolyn,
First you cited a Nazi, now a Klansman.
Please free yourself of the notion that only some people are opposed to war. Everyone is against war. It is a commonplace among so-called progressives (a word reeking of arrogance and presumption) that they inhabit a higher moral plane, that they are more sensitive to the ghastliness of war and more fit to judge when violence can and cannot be applied. In reality, everyone opposes war, but thinking people examining the same facts will come to different conclusions about when the benefits of using violence outweigh the cost.
I present you with evidences and factual arguments, but rather than contend with them you repeat this incantation that 'we are being manipulated'. A neat trick, that: At a stroke you free yourself from the need to evaluate facts and logic. After all your opponent is operating under duress, isn't he? His opinions are the product of suggestion and manipulation, and you need not take them seriously.
Ah, Senator Robert C. "Sheets" Byrd. About the only thing he hasn't named after himself is a burning cross. Let's take a look at his speech:
Byrd's speech on the Senate Floor 2/12/2003
Executive summary:
- The Afghanistan war is a failure because bin Hidin' may still be breathing.
- Muslims hate us already but if we attack a secular leader who slaughters Muslims by the truckload, Katie bar the door! That'll really piss 'em off!
- We need the money back here in the US to build more stuff named after Robert "Sheets" Byrd.
- Bush is arrogant.
Point-by-point:
>Anti-Americanism based on mistrust, misinformation, suspicion, and alarming
>rhetoric from U.S. leaders is fracturing the once solid alliance against
>global terrorism which existed after September 11.
Solid alliance? Does he mean the NATO the French have been ripping apart? When Joseph Stalin was alive, sure, it was a solid alliance. Since then I'm not so sure. Maybe he means Europe and America in general. From what I can see the French and Germans are busily surrendering their own countries to Islamic extremism and can hardly be considered solid allies in carrying the fight to south Asia.
>This Administration has ignored urgent matters such as the crisis in health care for our elderly.
Beware politicians pronouncing crises.
>This Administration has split traditional alliances, possibly crippling,
>for all time, International order-keeping entities like the United Nations and NATO.
The UN a stabilizing force? Is he serious? Or just senile? The UN arms embargo against the Kosovo Albanians is what left Slobodan Milosevic so free to slaughter them. The whole situation could have been resolved by simply allowing them to defend themselves (Gun control zealots take note) but the UN refused to do this ('cycle of violence' and all that). And there there was that affair in Rwanda. NATO is a cold-war relic and Joseph Stalin is dead.
>We need the cooperation and friendship of our time-honored allies as well
>as the newer found friends whom we can attract with our wealth.
Translation: "We must continue to take the French seriously and continue to pay barbarians to pretend to like us." In reality the French have made it clear they will not cooperate with us in any way whatever. During the Kosovo war the French were leaking intelligence and targeting data to the Serbs and getting our people killed. That's the kind of 'cooperation' Byrd would like to see continue.
>Our military manpower is already stretched thin and we will need the augmenting
>support of those nations who can supply troop strength, not just sign letters
>cheering us on.
Now he wants to send troops all over the place. And not just our own. Make up your mind there, Sheets.
>The war in Afghanistan has cost us $37 billion so far, yet there is evidence that
>terrorism may already be starting to regain its hold in that region. We have not
>found bin Laden, and unless we secure the peace in Afghanistan, the dark dens of
>terrorism may yet again flourish in that remote and devastated land.
Not a word about the 13,000,000 Afghans now free from a brutal theocracy. Go ask them if the war in Afghanistan was a success. And again the implication that just because Osama bin Hidin' may not yet be taking his dirt nap the enterprise is a failure.
>To whom do we propose to hand the reins of power after Saddam Hussein?
Bush answered this question at the Azores press conference. The country goes back to the control of its citizens. That won't be easy, but it will happen. The oil goes back to the people as well, and the French with their cozy oil contracts with the Saddamite regime can go screw themselves.
>Will our war inflame the Muslim world resulting in devastating attacks on Israel?
Like they need any prompting to kill Jews.
>Has our senselessly bellicose language and our callous disregard of the
>interests and opinions of other nations increased the global race to join
>the nuclear club and made proliferation an even more lucrative practice
>for nations which need the income?
At the time of this speech Colin Powell was wrapping up six months of negotiations at the UN and elsewhere, the end result of which was the French made it very clear they would obstuct whatever the US attempted. The administration went to the most astonishing lengths to court the interests & opinions of countries great and small. The sole result of this was to expose with perfect clarity the French pretension to lead a united Europe as a sort of Anti-US. The French want another empire but are too lazy to do the required work. We have, at every point, paid scrupulous attention to the opinions of many when there was little practical reason to do so. Not for nothing is the UN called a theater of the absurd.
>One can appreciate the frustration of having only a shadow to chase and
>an amorphous, fleeting enemy on which it is nearly impossible to exact retribution.
The clear implication being that attacking Saddam Hussein is just a fit of pique, a lashing-out at a world we do not understand and cannot tame. In fact it is a carefully considered part of a larger plan to disassemble a worldwide alliance of Islamofascists, tin-pot Mussolinis and wealthy-but-frightened oil potentates.
>I truly must question the judgment of any President who can say that a
>massive unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50% children
>is "in the highest moral traditions of our country".
A bizarre remark. Presumably the war would be less odious if waged on a country comprised exclusively of adults. This reminds me of fatboy Michael Moore's outburst on September 11 that the hijackers had slaughtered thousands 'who didn't even vote for Bush!'
Enough of "Sheets" Byrd.
I am quite aware that there are counter-arguments. My point was that comparing GW Bush to a mass-murdering Nazi is silly and demeaning - demeaning to the person making the comparison. You point to 'proof' but you cite only axioms. Can you point to any example of anyone in the administration making, at any point in time whatever, any statement equivalent to Goering's? If not, then how do you know their intent is the same, that they are 'beating the same drum'? Let us suppose, thought you haven't cited any examples, that some of Bush's statements are broadly similar to some of Goering's statements from, say, 1940. Can two people making making broadly similar statements be assumed to have the same intent and the same degree of veracity, with no further evidence than the words they spoke? Of course not, but that is what you imply.
There is a large kernel of truth in what Goering said, and history is full of examples - but so what? We *are* under attack. Perhaps you mean to say that we are not under attack by Iraq. In a narrow sense that is true.* But again, so what? Blair and Bush aren't making any such arguments. The arguments they are making are coherent, closely reasoned and moral, and I have already listed them.
What is this Right Thing that we have convinced ourselves - or as you say, have allowed ourselves to be convinced - we are doing? Is it to preserve the concept of national soveriegnty? By that standard we should probably be leaving Saddam alone. Or is it to prevent human rights abuses? By that standard removing Saddam, by whatever means, is a no-brainer, and would still be justified if the death toll from the war were far, far greater than it actually is. Or is it to preserve the fiction that the UN is a worthwhile and respectable body, never mind that Libya, Syria and Sudan are on the human rights committee? You use phrases like 'the right thing' as if it were a given that other people will agree on what the right thing is. They won't agree if they don't share the same values and traditions as you, and maybe not even then. Utopian schemes like the UN consistently ignore this simple reality.
* I think there is good reason to believe that Hussein's regime was behind the 1993 WTC bombing."