Posted on 01/31/2003 9:07:10 AM PST by missileboy
President Bush's audience was clearly most stirred, Tuesday evening, when his State of the Union address turned to the promise of a thrilling patriotic war on Iraq.
"If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning," the president said after detailing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's cruelty. "We seek peace, we strive for peace, and sometimes peace must be defended," the president said, to booming applause. "If war is forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the United States military, and we will prevail."
These were stirring words, and true, if taken in isolation. The problem, as with Lincoln's Gettysburg address 140 years ago, is that they are not appropriate to the case at hand.
Lincoln — as most schoolchildren recall — declared over the fresh corpses of the fallen at Gettysburg that the Civil war was a great struggle, "testing whether ... any nation" dedicated to the principle of "government of the people, by the people, for the people ... can long endure."
That was true. Problem is, the people fighting for that principle wore gray, not blue. An overwhelming majority of the populace of the South wished to set up for themselves a new government free of Washington, just as Jefferson and Washington had decided to break their bonds with England 87 years before.
The Confederacy — despite the horrible flaw of retaining slavery (but remember, Lincoln repeatedly said the South could keep its slaves if only they'd come back into his Union) — was in fact a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people," whereas "Reconstruction," under armed occupation from 1865 to 1877 ... clearly was not.
Lincoln's goal — like that of Cornwallis and Howe a century earlier — was in fact to invade that newly independent nation and subdue it by the sword. And he didn't care how many ways he violated the Constitution (mandatory conscription, jailing newspaper editors, martial law, a socialist income tax, worthless greenbacks) in the process.
So as it turns out, the principle Mr. Lincoln so movingly voiced, was the one he was fighting ... against.
Similarly, Mr. Bush is correct when he paints Saddam Hussein as a cruel and murderous dictator. But he's not the world's only cruel dictator — when do we mount our invasion to liberate Tibet, or Chechnya?
Nor is the assertion that Saddam's Iraq is a direct threat to the United States — that war has been "forced upon us" — clearly established. In fact, the notion that Iraq (hardly a sea power) could effectively attack the U.S. or our merchant shipping is quite far-fetched.
(I happen to support Israel's right to exist. But if attacking Iraq is really all about Iraq's potential to threaten Israel — Israel now being our 51st state — shouldn't we at least have been told, so we could sew another star on our flags? And when do we indict for treason the Israeli/Americans who shot up the U.S.S. Liberty?)
Anyway, Mr. Bush faces a more serious problem — at least, the way politicians look at things.
Because of the quick success of his father's war against Iraq a decade ago, the president today faces a conundrum of heightened expectations: Anything but a quick victory and regime change in Iraq is now likely to raise questions about the current president's constancy and competence, while even a sharp success runs the risk of being greeted with the same, "Ho hum, what about the economy?" fickleness that turned George H.W. Bush into a one-term president.
It was thus no surprise that President Bush, Jr., spent the first half of his rousing State of the Union address Tuesday focusing on the domestic economy.
At the heart of President Bush's domestic agenda lies a $674 billion plan to revive the economy with tax cuts and Medicare and medical liability reform — as well as what is arguably his most questionable initiative: efforts to offer federal tax subsidies to religious groups offering community services.
(Donations to churches are already tax-exempt — why risk ensnaring them in a soulless civil bureaucracy with direct tax funding, instead of trusting Americans in a lower-tax environment to simply fund their own voluntary charities? Taxes are still collected by men with guns who will set your furniture out on the sidewalk if you don't cooperate, right?)
Challenging Congress to help him create more jobs, the president asserted: "The nation needs more small businesses to open, more employers to put up the sign that says, 'Help wanted.' Jobs are created when the economy grows; the economy grows when Americans have more money to spend and invest; and the best, fairest way to make sure Americans have the money is not to tax it away in the first place."
A profound truth, articulately stated. But if this is true, why do we need to spend $674 billion in additional tax money, doing something that'll happen by itself if we simply cut taxes?
The president was inspiring when he called for reform of the actuarially bankrupt "Social Security" Ponzi scheme by "giving younger workers a chance" to invest in retirement accounts "that they will control and they will own."
Only, I thought we all had that right already. What new right is it, precisely, that the Congress would be "giving" us ... and why will only "younger workers" get it?
Does the president mean he will now set some limited portion of our savings free of the income tax? Then why not simply repeal the whole thing — or declaratively rule that it never applied to wages, in the first place? Think of what that would do for our economic growth.
And finally, the president asserted "Instead of bureaucrats and lawyers and HMOs, we must put doctors and patients back in charge of American medicine."
But "These problems will not be solved with a nationalized health care system that dictates coverage and rations care," the president was quick to warn. "Instead, we must work toward a system in which all Americans ... choose their own doctors. ..."
This all sounds great, because what Mr. Bush has described here is the free market.
So why did the president then promptly propose billions of dollars in new spending over the next decade to offer tax-funded prescription drugs to Medicare recipients willing to use alternatives such as managed care — slyly pointing out this benefit would be "just like you in Congress" enjoy?
All the president needs to do, in order to "put doctors and patients back in charge of American medicine," is to declare that medical practice in America is henceforward free of any government intervention, as it always should have been — seeking an advisory ruling from the Republican-dominated Supreme Court that medical liberty is protected by the Ninth and 14th Amendments, and that Medicare, Medicaid, the FDA, state licensing of doctors, and the War on Drugs are all thus thoroughly unconstitutional, and therefore banned.
In the next few days, expect discussion of the president's speech to focus on his rousing call to war in Iraq. But — as the Bush family knows all too well — this president's political future is more likely to hinge on the domestic economy ...
An economy which would be in much better shape, could we believe for a minute this president's free-market rhetoric — instead of the concrete evidence of the ballooning welfare state he still so devotedly funds.
If someone accepted that Saddam has extensive links to international terrorism in general (which is documented), and that the war on international terrorism (not just on al Queda) was proper, I wonder how they would expect to make progress to win it while Saddam remained empowered.
Hint, the reason that you statement is false resides in the emphasized words.
So you still can't admit that doublespeak is doublespeak? Does it "look" like doublespeak or "is" it doublespeak? No anger here, just insisting that words mean something. So which is it? Getting back to the points made in the article, if we can try to steer it back there, how is the author's characterization of Bush's doublespeak wrong?
And we see that any use of the phrase “real word” triggers a pavlovian response to claim the speaker simply doesn’t posses the intellect to understand the imaginary system he promotes.
No, huh-uh. Not sure why you felt personally attacked on that one. It's not that the speaker (i.e. you) doesn't possess the intellect (though you may not, but I'm not drawing conclusions on that at all). I'm objecting to your magical creation of a totally arbitrary collective, true for each speaker, known as "the real world", used to somehow justify what you believe. Again, how can that argument not be used by anyone seeking to justify, say, rape?
...recognizing that his supporters are unpersuasive, powerless and loosing ground in a political system running away without them.
My supporters???? If I can now speak for "the real world", I submit that the ones with the power are the ones in office, not me, and not you or "your supporters" who may have voted for them. Unfortunately, an election is not a lottery, and you didn't win a prize for picking the winner. I have ideas, and you have ideas, and that's all we have, though I suspect you feel special for belonging to a winning team.
Question is, did you win? I know you have your team's jersey, but G.W. proposes taking your money and sending it to Africa for humanist causes. He's talking about a hydrogen car. He's expanding the scope of the federal government, and it has been expanding since the early part of last century. So isn't the "political system running away without you", too?
As for international terror, I don't sign on to the concept because it is too large, I'll stick with the one's who terrorize us, you can advocate attacking Ireland if you want to make it that broad. I'm in favor of hunting down and eliminating every swine who is involved with the scum who attacked us. One at a time if necessary. That goes for eco-terrorists in this country.
Saddam is an evil force, I don't have enough info to know if he is a threat, so I have to trust our government on that right now, but trusting the government is a risky business at best, and perilous at worst.
Bush specifically said in his big justification for disarming Iraq speech about 4 months back that (paraphrasing) “We do not do this for ant single reason, but for a collection of factors that have come together in Iraq.”
Do you get to wear a uniform?
The administration doesn’t sign onto the concept of war on only those responsible because tracking a few dozen or hundred people across the world is too disruptive, and would insight more against us if we pursued policies to force it (like sending assault teams into Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or God knows where else one guy might be hiding.
The Ireland analogy is an absurdity because Bush has stated several times that we are going after terrorists with international reach (not to mention that the Irish government is not complacent AFAIK).
You did more than that. Your logic in #20 was flawed. I’ve got to go. Will check back later.
No, but if these Libertarians have their way, you can drive up in a tank.
Certainly they are subject to removal. But wisdom and limited resources demand that we choose carefully which ones to forcefully remove. Take out one, and the others tend to get the message. It's efficient leadership and it helps to avoid 9-11s by nipping them in the bud before they can ripen and spread noxious seeds.
Must Americans die to persuade you?
If the administration could do so without compromising sensitive sources and methods, I am confident they would do so. I have been involved on the secrecy side of such matters in a prior professional life. I well understand the need for absolute discretion when dealing with deadly serpents such as Saddam Hussein.
If you do not trust Bush, fine. I do. I do not trust Saddam Hussein. I believe I am on far more solid ground than you are. I do not expect Bush to stupidly compromise intelligence sources just to satisfy some motley squad of libertarians--who likely wouldn't be persuaded in any event.
I do not understand why any rational person would consider it immoral to strike a coiled snake until the snake has struck first.
Bull$hit. They were a loose confederation of states, barely cohesive. Hell' they couldn't even build railroads of the same guage between states. How you can call the Confederacy "socialist" is beyond me.
I thought you didn't read it.
[Not worth reading a second sentence from this embittered little jerk off.]
Typical.
With respect, I don't think you quite grasped my argument. It is a logical fallacy that if fact A is a motivation for action B, then you are committed to action B whenever fact A occurs. This is especially true if fact A is only one in a large number of such motivations for action B.
That Saddam Hussein is murderous dictator is undeniable and is certainly one good reason for intervention. That does not imply that we are obligated to such intervention every time there is a murderous dictator. Were that the only motivation for intervention one might complain that to do so in case 1 and not in case 2 is inconsistent, barring other considerations such as practicality, but it is not logically false. This is the "foolish consistency" that Emerson quite rightly termed "the hobgoblin of little minds."
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