Is War Necessary?

[Rickm505]

Look what happens.. I'm away for a few days and the right wing whackos think it's safe to attack... Am I the only 'sailor' who sails? I must be as you guys seem to live with your keyboards permanently attached..

Sailaway, I not only never said that if we leave "them" alone, they will leave us alone. I said quite the opposite. I said early on in this thread that our twin pillars of foreign policy are colliding and that something had to give. To restate my point.... We back away from Israel, or we lose our appetite for oil. You pick one. If we don't we'll be fighting every Moslem in the middle east long after you and I are gone. This has to be the dummest position to be in since the British imposed a Tea Tax on their colony. Incidently it's a position the British will no longer share with us as somebody finally got the idea that they can't win this one and they are out of there about as fast as they can be, leaving us holding the bag.

[Rickm505]

Originally Posted by PBzeer

Rick - you mind detailing the constitutional rights that your misnamed Nazis want to eliminate, and explain how you can actually believe the US wants to conquer the world?

I'm in between Church and heading to the boat this afternoon, so I really don't have the time to answer this very good question as completely as I would like, But it does need a response. It's unlike me, but I lifted most of this from online articles . For a more articulate response:

http://www.alternet.org/rights/57689/

For a short answer..


Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

George W. Bush has shown an outright hostility to freedom of speech. Bush has applied and maintained draconian restrictions on the press in Iraq, even forbidding the photography of flag-draped caskets returning home.

Attacking the fundamental right of free political speech, he signed the horrendous Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform bill, which severely restricts dissent. The law makes it a crime for non-profit advocacy groups simply to mutter the name of a national candidate within the last sixty days before a general election. There is no excuse for Congress making a law abridging the freedom of speech when the First Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech." Some thought that the Supreme Court would gut the law’s worst provisions, which it did not. If Congress relied on another branch of the government to intervene and protect the public from its excesses, it is guilty of a major dereliction of duty.

As a result of Bush’s policies, the government has even attacked freedom of assembly, creating "free speech zones" and keeping war protesters away when Bush appears on camera. At the outset of the Iraq War, Oakland police injured several war protesters by assaulting them with wooden bullets and concussion grenades, even as they ran away. Some have argued that the protesters, interfering with war commerce, got what they deserved, but the "collateral damage" suffered by the dockworkers probably disrupted the flow of trade that day more than the protests.1
One could feasibly list examples of how Bush has compromised the right of Americans to "petition the government for a redress of grievances," but the single following statement from Bush to Bob Woodward captures the president’s feelings about his responsibility to answer to the people:
"I'm the commander, see. I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

4th Amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This one is a no-brainer. The Patriot Act's "Sneak and Peak" provision allows the feds to come into your home, search your residence, and leave without telling you for up to six months. It has expanded the government’s powers under the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act to get warrants for wiretaps from special courts, not subject to the same oversight as typical courts. Another provision allowed the FBI to obtain library records from librarians, who had to keep their mouths shut about confrontations with officials. Within months of 9/11, law enforcers had visited nearly 10 percent of America’s libraries "seeking September 11-related information about patron reading habits

5th amendment

Shortly after September 11, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and Justice Department detained more than a thousand individuals, whom Bush labeled as "terrorists" even after the Justice Department admitted the detainees had no connection to terrorism. In addition, at least dozens of Americans were detained without due process of law because of a phony "material witness" status.

6th Amendment

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Perhaps James Madison meant to write at the end of this sentence, "unless the president considers the accused an ‘enemy combatant.’"

Guantanamo Bay is the clearest and most troubling example of accused criminals detained without any of the benefits of an impartial trial with the due process spelled out in the Sixth Amendment. They do not receive the rights of war prisoners, nor of criminal defendants, because they fall under the makeshift category of "enemy combatant." Of course, Bush does not "accuse" these prisoners of being "enemy combatants" – because then they would have the rights of the "accused." He simply asserts they are "enemy combatants," and that settles that.

The assertion that Guantanamo is constitutional because it is located outside America is ludicrous and unsettling. It is ludicrous because the U.S. has jurisdiction there, and if the government can violate your liberties by moving you outside the country, the Bill of Rights is meaningless. It’s unsettling because it is an admission that the goings on in Guantanamo are even more oppressive than the run-of-the-mill Bill of Rights violations that Americans will tolerate at home.

__________

Was the Republican controlled congress complicit in this? You bet they were...

[SanderO]

I'm with Rick.

jef
sv shiva

There was no wind and high humidity this weekend and so we took a break but we are hooked up for a 10 day cruise next weekend. And had to deal with wingnutery. Thanks Rick, a voice of reason.

[PBzeer]

To use McCain-Feingold as an example of right-wing efforts to abridge free speech is laughable. No side of the political spectrum was more against it than the "right-wing". In fact, as I recall, they were the only one's against it.

It would seem we are at odds about what "peacefully assemble" entails, as well as to "seek redress from the government". Peacefully to me, means in a non-threatening, non-confrontational manner. Whilst to seek redress, means through the established channels available to do so, not through staged media events that seek to circumvent those processes.

"Unreasonable" is a modifier. It doesn't say any, or all searches, only unreasonable ones.

As to the Fifth, I will have to look further into the entire context of that statement.

If a person takes up arms, without wearing a uniform, historically, and realistically, they are not treated as prisoners of war. But to somehow, find cause that terrorists from another country should be given the same rights under American law, as if they are merely common criminals, is reprhensible. Especially when these same "criminals" express purpose is the elimination of the rights found under American law. And what are these "oppresive" goings on taking place at Gitmo?

The Republican controlled Congress has a lot to be held accountable for, but I fail to see a wholesale, concentrated assualt on American freedoms as one of them.

[sailaway21]

Rick,
Neither of your two points, backing away from Israel or elimination of our use of oil, makes the least bit of sense.

If your point is that we should pump more of our own oil, I might agree. For better or worse, the world still runs on oil and ethanol isn't going to change that. In fact, it's going to make your food prices, across the board, substantially higher without doing a thing to improve access to energy in the US.

Israel is the lone democracy, with the exception of Iraq, in the middle east. Odd that you should advocate abandoning the only reliable ally we have in the region. Odder yet that you see the solution to our problem there as revolving around the one country that ensured that Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction, and did that long before even the Persian Gulf war.

And I am glad that you brought up the British, although I'd hoped it might have been in reference to the article from the Times of London I posted. the British have an immigration problem, coupled with a birth rate problem, that they share with all of Europe. As things now stand, Europe is becomimg Islamic. The demographics alone ensure it. What is Europe going to look like in ten or twenty years? We know it is going to be largely Islamic but will it live under sharia? Will the caliphate be restored in Europe first? You may find this a bit far fetched, but when a country's birth rate is insufficient to replace it's citizens, it must have immigration. When the immigrants enjoy a healthy birth rate, it ensures that they are the majority of the future. when those immigrants do not assimilate and adopt the culture of the society they now live in, that society is doomed to extinction. You could look it up. Start under birth rates and then proceed to immigration.

Did you see all of those cars burning in France a while back? This was not a French attempt to compete with Detroit. There are some angry young Muslims in France, and a lot of 'em.

But your concerns are one's of due process for foreign terrorists. Nero fiddled whilst Rome burned.

[Rockter]

Why must a country have to have immigration? What happens when the immigrants get old?
What's so toxic about the idea of a falling populace?

[sailaway21]

If you read anything on the war this year, please let it be this. A brief history lesson is rarely inappropriate. It doesn't hurt that the man can flat out write.
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/vi...1074-times-new

[PBzeer]

Rockter - immigration laws provide for an orderly influx of people into any given country. By choosing to immigrate, you are inherently saying you want to live in that country, part of which, is becoming a part of that country. Assimulate into the culture and mores of that country.

When immigration is uncontrolled, and there is no emphasis on assimulating, a falling birth rate leads to the overwhelming of the current culture by that of the incoming one.

[AboardIndigo]

Some form of war against some entity will always be necessary; there will always be elements to defend a peace-based society from. A passive stance (against war at any cost) will result in the extinction of that particular society.

[PBzeer]

Nicely succient Indigo.