Posted on 09/20/2003 9:28:03 AM PDT by areafiftyone
I live in an ultre-liberal area so I may not really know what is happening out there - all the people out here hang on every word the media says, even when it flies in the face of the most basic common sense.
Hope you are right.
Iran could be done, but it would require a significant "offensive" by the Pres. and more public support than we now have for even finishing the job in Iraq.
So there is little or effort to do anything meaningful for conservative Christians. We have to endure insults like have been thrown on this thread, and worse, most of the time, but when an election comes around, we get courted, and many of the same pubbies who have spent their term claiming impotence against the left, suddenly promise all sorts of pro-Christian efforts.
Many of us are tired of being played like that. If a politician has Christian beliefs, s/he should legislate/govern like it. If not, don't pretend just to get elected.
I am seriously considering the idea of sitting out the next election. I've never done that before, but the idea is becoming more attractive the more I get blasted for posting my expectations that politicians live up to their election time blather.
Gore was never president, so how can you make a comparison between a sitting president and a non-president?
When the people support it.
Bush is quite painfully aware that the last election was, to him I think, surprisingly close...and he is painfully aware that good case can be made that he got fewer votes overall nationally than his opponent.
His actions throughout his Presidency have been tempered by an understanding that the nation was very evenly divided, about him, about the election, and about what they "want" from government in 2000. That division was muted by 9/11 and the aftermath -- but essentially it still exists.
There is not a majority amongst the voters for limited government. That was one of the lessons Bush took from 2000. And he is correct in this view. It isn't true everywhere in the country, but it is true in the heavily populated urban areas that house a majority of the voters.
You are right on...Bush knows his vulnerability. It is a vulnerability based on the fact that we are now a deeply divided nation -- really two nations living in one geographic area. And the upper hand, at this time, is with activist government, with lots of entitlement programs.
Bush, or any other President for that matter, will get behind limited government once that concept is supported by a majority of the voters. Once they need to go there to get the votes to win, then they will go there (conversely, if a President is so strong that they can go there "with impunity", and not be harmed by it, the philosophy of limited government could be pursued. But Bush...or anyone else in these days of division...is not that strong electorally).
Bush, like every other politician who isn't a raving nutball, is in politics to win. There simply is no percentage in losing.
We who want limited government had better, finally, come to grips with the fact that we are a minority. We can not simply sit back acting like a majority and bitching (and not voting wisely) when politicians go the other way. Our philosophy is not the majority philosophy. If we are to make gains in the current environment then only stealth and guerilla politics will do. Take a cue from DemocRATs: They never run on their philosophy. They would be considered too extreme. Instead, they get in power by hook, crook and lie if need be, and slowly, ever so slowly move the ball an inch down the field in their direction.
As for the other deployments you mentioned, GITMO's size is tiny - it is just a garrison; we do not have army troops station in Japan, only a carrier group, parts of MEF III and some Fleet Marines, and part of an Air wing that mostly does training. Everything in Japan is there to project in to Koera anyway. Korea has 35,000 army and some fighter wings plus a small bomb "wing," and I suppose that we should count MEF III sitting in Okinawa as part of that force.We are pulling out of the Balkan and have pull out of SA; there are less tham 50,000 army in Germany and that is dropping, and could be easily deployed to Iran - the Russians are not going to invade Germany next year and if they did Schroeder would greet them with open arms anyway.
Again, the media really is just propagating a myth that we are "overextended." It does not hold up. That is not to say that we should not draw down in Germany and elsewhere but that should be for different reasons. THe whole thing is about national will. My goodness, we went from nothing to the largest force in the world from 1941 to 1943. And do not forget that the equiptment for the 8 divisions clinton stood down is still out there - they just mothballed all of it.
You could easily stand up another currently active division to replace the armored Division in Iraq and have them inplace by next summer. I do not know if you realize it but there is a substantial underground movement in Iran that has been stockpiling small and medium sized arm. Also remember that unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran has a long and poorly defended coastline. A force comprised of MEF I and II (throw in MEF III if you want) and Armoured Division, a Mechanized division, a few thousand SF, some sort of light force throw together from the 18th Corp., the AEFs in the 'stans and 4 carriers would do the trick. Remember that we mostly have them surrounded and the AEF assets are already inplace. Pull in another 2 reserve divisions for support. The war would be shorter than Afghanistan. It would also not touch the forces need to defend Korea and Taiwan. I bet that the occupation force would actually work out to be smaller than Iraq - the Iraninas are quite PO'd at 20 years plus of this nonsense.
The sunni traingle thing is so exagerated. These are small loses - about a platoon a month. If they would have gone after them immediately after they went into Bagdad it would have been much worse and the civilian caualties and destruction could have turned the population against us. The mop up will be over soon, in any event. What is more dangerous is to ease up on Iran and thereby give the Islamic world the notion that we have drained our resolve. It amazes me that we have turned a stunning victory into a defeat because of the lose of about 80 troops. Iraq is going very well, not poorly, and conservative should be shouting that from the roof tops. What did we expect? DId we think that we would be openning WalMarts in July? If we cannot get over this Quagmire BS promulgated by the media then we will lose the WOT.
Nothing personal, but while I understand liberals buying in to the lamestream press's lies, we here on FR should try to be a little more analytical.
Because only 2 parties can win the presidency, so it's a reasonable comparison.
Bottom line: Do you want Bush re-elected or do you want a Democrat? .....these are the 2 choices.
(Sure, I'd rather have a Gary Bauer or a Steve Forbes, but so much for Fantasyland.)
Reading your posts I understand that you feel Bush hasn't done much for Christian conservatives. What specifically do you recall him promising that now leaves you feeling used?
Why -- no, I do not realize that.
Gore was never president, so how can you make a comparison between a sitting president and a non-president?
Okay, let's try this again. A couple of other people have also explained this to you, but I'll take one more run at it.
We had an election in this country three years ago. There were a number of candidates on the ballot, but the only two who had any realistic chance of winning the office were George W. Bush and Al Gore. Bush won the election, and has now been president for going on three years.
It is reasonable to compare the current president's performance to the expectations he created for himself during the campaign. You have been invited to tell us of promises that Bush made during the campaign to Christian conservatives that he has failed to keep, but so far have not done so. (And remember as you ponder this question that the GOP was in the minority for roughly half his term so far, and that even now does not have a dependable working majority.)
It is also reasonable to compare the current president's performance to how the one realistic alternative candidate might have performed. I doubt if there are very many people on this board who believe that Al Gore would have done a better job (from the conservative perspective) than Bush. In fact, I think most of us believe he would have done worse. If you disagree with this point of view, you are invited to say so, and to explain why you think this.
And the reason that it makes sense to compare President Bush to the hypothetical President Gore is that we are confronted now with a list of ten potential Democrat nominees for the 2004 campaign, all of whom -- with the possible exception of Lieberman, would be worse than Gore on the sorts of things conservatives care about. In a little over a year from now, then, each of us will be faced with the question of whether to vote for the reelection of Bush, or to cast a vote for someone who will almost certainly be even less satisfactory (to put it mildly) than Al Gore, or not to vote at all -- and casting your vote for a third party or independent candidate counts as not voting in this context, whether you want to hear that or not. Trust me on this -- I labored for ten years in minor party politics, and it is a dead end, because of the basic structure of our electoral system.
I have now done the best I can to connect the dots for you. If you don't get what I am saying, I can do nothing more. It is possible that you are so completely dissatisfied with the political state of the country that there are no alternatives for you that have any chance of making enough of an improvement to make you feel it is worth your while. If so, you have my sincere sympathy; because that's a terrible place to be. But the world is what it is, not what we wish it to be. Your choice, 14 months from now, will be to vote for George Bush, flaws and all, to vote for a Democrat who will almost surely be to the left of Al Gore, or not to vote at all/cast a protest vote that will accomplish nothing. I think George Bush has in fact done things for us during his term that Al Gore would not have done, and has refrained from doing things that Al Gore would have done. I think that is even more likely to be true of his (at this point) hypothetical second term. And so I stand pat, and take what I can get, rather than throwing a tantrum over something that I cannot get.
You don't know what the House and Senate would have done. We can see how the minority Dims are thwarting the president's positions in this Congress, and we saw how the minority Republicans thwarted President Clinton's positions during his first term.
If you ask the question, Are President Bush's positions on issues closer to mine than Gore's positions, I would agree that they are. But then we are talking about efforts and results, not merely positions.
The impression I have of this administration is this: They are more interested in positioning President Bush to be re-elected than they are in accomplishing anything in the areas that conservative Christians are interested in. The resulting pre-election efforts they are making seem to be designed to mollify the Dims.
I have seen very little active, public support for the efforts in the House and Senate toward the PBA ban coming from this administration. President Bush may be in favor of this important legislation, but what has he done to help get it passed?
The administration's visable efforts toward the so-called Road Map seem to be directed more at weakening Israel than I expected. During the campaign, Nominee Bush said he wouldn't meddle in that mess, then two years later he was dictating to Israel, telling them not to do anything that would get the Arab world more angry than they usually are. All the while, he was directing U. S. forces to attack those who attacked us. I don't have a problem with the later, but for this administration to tell Israel not to do exactly what we are doing is unreal.
Nominee Bush claimed he would never do any nation-building, and was extremely critical of President Clinton for his nation-building. Now look at how things have turned out. You might be tempted to argue that 9/11 changed everything, but I disagree that 9/11 forced us to begin nation-building when nation-building was a no-no to Nominee Bush. Christians want to vote for a nominee who says what he means and does what he says. President Bush may well be excellent in the first category, but he has failed in the second in at least these two critical areas, nation-building and the PBA ban.
Also, I think that the Patriot Act is the most repulsive piece of legislation I've seen in my lifetime. The reasons we were hit on 9/11 were not because the Justice Department didn't have enough power, but because they, and other agencies, failed to do their job with the power they had. Also, a major reason for our vulnerability isn't even on the table with this administration: Securing our borders.
All the new powers granted by the Patriot Act will not help when terrorists can freely enter through our porous borders. And surely you agree that patting down little old ladies and beautiful women in airports won't keep us safe from the terrorist-types who are allowed to board without checking them out, all in the name of NOT profiling. Mustn't offend those religion of peace Muslims. Sheesh.
What's the point of that?
As for me, if I decide to not vote, it will be a principled decision, based on what President Bush actually does. I'm looking for efforts and results toward conservative Christian issues. Not words or excuses.
He can't control Congress (and I wouldn't want to live in a country where the president could control the legislature) but he can make the effort to get conservative Christian legislation passed. He isn't doing nearly enough to satisfy me, and many others. I'm not alone in reaching these conclusions.
That's the way to have Democrats controlling the whole government again.
Does it really make no difference to you?
You are the one sounding to me like you are unrealistic. It took a four-to-five month buildup to go into Iraq, and now much of that has already been stood down again. I don't have the numbers, but I would guess it will be two years before we again have our precision guided munitions stocks back up to where they need to go.
Talking about who will, and won't, "revolt" in Iran is good for Friday night bar chatter, but in the real world, we have screwed up MAJOR operations (Bay of Pigs) by betting people would revolt.
You bring up the reserves: this is exactly one of the problems, in that the media is emphasizing all of these "weekend warriors" who now think they should be back home or at their jobs. And this was a remarkably quick war.
Where did you get info that we are pulling out of the Balkans? I haven't seen that. Nor have I seen that we have removed our "threat" in Liberia.
The divisions may not be "on paper," but the plan is, and this is where the danger lies. It is cowardice to cave into American media propaganda, but it is foolishness to overextend yourself before you have put out the fires in your rear. And, again, you are totally overlooking the political component. The American public, short of another direct attack on the U.S. mainland clearlya nd directly tied to Iran, will not support an invasion of Iran or Syria any time soon. It took Bush one whole year of preparing the public for Iraq, and the links to direct threats on the U.S. were much clearer there. I think Iran is a threat, and should be dealt with, but I'm not naive enough to think that even 20% of Americans agree with me.
On, and on WW II, we had a draft, we had a full-scale war mobilization, rationing, full censorship, etc. Honestly, how do you think THAT would play today?
I realize a principled stand like that doesn't make any sense to some on FR, but it's my vote, isn't it?
Exactly. Remember the huge "scandal" over Ashcroft holding morning prayer meetings in his office?
The hostility toward Bush by the left and the liberal press over his Christian convictions has been unrelenting, and in spite of it all I think Bush has been an excellent testimony for Christianity.
I thank God we have somebody like Bush in the White House.
Unfortunately, nothing he does will ever be good enough for some people.
Incredible. Are you trying to make us laugh on purpose or what?
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