As for the Koreans and Japanese wanting us, you may be right but there is a huge difference between dozens of attacks on our troops a day in Iraq and none in those countries. Polls in Iraq tell us a majority of Iraqis think it is OK to attack Americans. Not so in Japan or Korea (not even close)
In short, the comparison is bogus, and in your heart of hearts you know it. There is NO death toll from Japan and Korea and there never was once the wars there were over. In Iraq the war has never ended and looks to be likely to go on as long as we care to fight.
Bottom line - The Iraqis DONT WANT US THERE. Do you believe in democracy? Or is that only for us and not for them? Or do only WE get to decide when they are allowed to decide what goes on in their own country?
And no, there will be no "precipitous withdrawal" from Iraq nor should there be. But there is a huge difference between a President who wants us out of there and who got elected on that platform and a President who backs Bush right down the line on Iraq and has said publicly that it would be "OK with him" if we stayed there a hundred years.
But I have to love a hard rightie like you trying to pretend your guy is just like our guy on Iraq.
Those rocks on our farms are called "cows". On some farms they are called "sheep". And if Obama starts backing away from his statements that he will work to get us out of Iraq he will get no defense from me. I will be disgusted and quite public about it. Even so, remember that he NEVER was a member of the irresponsible group that just wants to drop everything and run. But he DOES want to get out. If that changes, so will my opinion of him.
sck5 - if you can't understand the difference between being ok with something and wanting it, and, think there is no difference between the two, then there is no way to explain it to you. As you are either lacking in the cognitive ability to make the distinction, or the intellectual honesty to admit it.
That you resort to such tactics, says far more about you, than anything you type.
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John
Ontario 32 - Aria
Free, is the heart, that lives not, in fear.
Full, is the spirit, that thinks not, of falling.
True, is the soul, that hesitates not, to give.
Alive, is the one, that believes, in love. JCP
Even so, remember that he NEVER was a member of the irresponsible group that just wants to drop everything and run. But he DOES want to get out. If that changes, so will my opinion of him.
I agree with you on that point - Obama does seem to be interested in a slower exit from Iraq. If Obama could see his way clear to maintaining a base in Iraq with lower troop levels there might even be an issue I could actually agree with him on. Even though I know in his heart Obama has to believe that we are going to be there for the next 20 years, I don't think he'd ever be in a position to admit that to his supporters.
Hillary on the other hand said on many occasions she just wanted to leave, which is reckless and would endanger many more lives. Sudden changes in policy like that could cause great harm to a lot of innocent people.
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What are you pretending not to know ?
I think you wont get your wish. To want a base is to want to stay there forever. If it is their country and they want us out then what right do we have to stay there? Are they allowed to run their own country or arent they? Are we REALLY bringing democracy to them or only if it results in the answers we like?
And I DONT believe we will be there for the next 20 years. I think we will have the vast majority of the troops out within 4 years. With any luck, all of them.
PB
If YOU cant understand that the big difference here is between a candidate that wants us OUT of Iraq and one who either wants us to stay or who is OK with that (being OK with it is a pretty wimpy copout position for a man who wants to be President - McCain himself puts it a lot more strongly than that you know) then it is no wonder that your side is going to lose, and lose big.
Your huge distinctions sound like Clintonian hairsplitting to me, but have it however you like, the big difference is still there between the Dem and the Repub.
And we all ought to be happy about that. It is good for us to have two candidates who are so clearly different. There is no doubt that we will get a very different president depending who we vote for. I like that. Dont you?
And is it really necessary to paint me as some sort of shape shifting lying pile of crap simply because we disagree? I dont doubt you hold your views honestly. Why dont you try to credit me with the same? After all, most of our fellow citizens agree with me - Are a majority of the citizens in the USA lying shapeshifting America haters? Dont be silly. You win some and you lose some, but that doesnt make you a traitor or a liar.
Obama's evolving views on the war: Almost as soon as the war began in March 2003, Obama had second thoughts about his opposition to it. Watching the dramatic footage of the toppling of Saddam’s statue in Baghdad, and then the President’s speech aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, “I began to suspect,” he would write later in his autobiographical The Audacity of Hope (2006), “that I might have been wrong.” And these second thoughts seem to have stayed with him throughout the entire first phase of the occupation following our initial combat victory. As he told the Chicago Tribune in July 2004, “There’s not that much difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage.”
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in September 2004, in the heat of his campaign for the U.S. Senate, Obama said (according to an AP report) that even though Bush had “bungled his handling of the war,” simply pulling out of Iraq “would make things worse.” Therefore, he himself "would be willing to send more soldiers to Iraq if it is part of a strategy that the President and military leaders believe will stabilize the country and eventually allow America to withdraw."
“If that strategy made sense and would lead ultimately to the pullout of U.S. troops but in the short term required additional troop strength to protect those who are already on the ground, then that’s something I would support,” said Obama.
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In November, having won election to the U.S. Senate, Obama once again confirmed his determination to stay the course in Iraq in an interview with PBS’s Charlie Rose. “Once we go in, then we’re committed,” he said, adding:
[O]nce the decision was made, then we’ve got to do everything we can to stabilize the country, to make it successful, because we’ll have too much at stake in the Middle East. And that’s the position that I continue to take.
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Obama also re-stated his belief that, having gone in, we had an obligation to “manage our exit in a responsible way—with the hope of leaving a stable foundation for the future, but at the very least taking care not to plunge the country into an even deeper and, perhaps, irreparable crisis.” How were we to accomplish that? The answer was: slowly but surely. In the months to come, Obama said, “we need to focus our attention on how to reduce the U.S. military footprint in Iraq. Notice that I say ‘reduce,’ and not ‘fully withdraw.’” With a hint of greater specificity, he elaborated in January 2006 that “we have a role to play in stabilizing the country as Iraqis are getting their act together.”
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But as conditions in Iraq worsened over the course of 2006 and polls registered lower and lower levels of support for the President and the war—and as he himself was nearing a decision to run for the presidency—Obama’s position shifted again, markedly so. On October 22, 2006, Obama proclaimed the urgent necessity for “all the leadership in Washington to execute a serious change of course in Iraq.”
....the change Obama had in mind was to initiate, as quickly as possible, a “phased withdrawal” from Iraq. There was to be no more talk from him about leaving a “stabilized” situation. Nor, for Obama, was the issue debatable. His latest predictive judgment was that “We cannot, through putting in more troops or maintaining the presence that we have, expect that somehow the situation is going to improve.”
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On January 10, 2007, Bush announced the administration’s change in strategy in Iraq, popularly dubbed the “surge.” That very night, Obama declared he saw nothing in the plan that would “make a significant dent in the sectarian violence that’s taking place there.” A week later, he repeated the point emphatically: the surge strategy would “not prove to be one that changes the dynamics significantly.” Later in the same month, he summed up in these words his impression of the hearings on the new strategy held by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “What was striking to me, in listening to all the testimony that was provided, was the almost near-unanimity that the President’s strategy will not work.”
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within a mere matter of weeks, Obama had moved to align himself with the most extreme critics of the war. This re-positioning coincided with the announcement of his presidential candidacy on February 10, 2007. “It’s time to start bringing our troops home,” Obama said forcefully as he launched his run. “That’s why I have a plan that will bring our combat troops home by March of 2008.”
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In May 2007, Obama did something he had never done previously: he voted in the Senate against funding for combat operations, claiming as a reason the fact that the bill included no timeline for troop withdrawal. As the campaign season intensified, his position hardened still more. In September, a mere three months after the final elements of the 30,000-strong surge forces had landed in Iraq, he declared that the moment had arrived to remove all of our combat troops “immediately.” “Not in six months or one year—now.”
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When Obama opposed the war in 2002, it was clearly in his political interest to do so; according to Dan Shomon, his campaign manager at the time, the key to Obama’s chances in the Democratic race for the Senate nomination lay in his ability to rally the Left to his side.4 Then, in 2004, when the war was still supported by most Americans, he associated himself with the Bush occupation strategy. In 2005, as Iraq was becoming increasingly unpopular, he temporized by joining those saying we had to reduce but not withdraw our troop presence. By 2006, with the war’s unpopularity deepening, he embraced a policy of full-scale withdrawal.
Now...he would execute a phased withdrawal. From his current website: " Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda."
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Excerpted from Obama's War commented on by me.
I note SCK's comment that "Even so, remember that he NEVER was a member of the irresponsible group that just wants to drop everything and run." Please see the red highlights above.
Thank goodness he has finally come to his senses eh sck?! I wonder how much more he will move to the center before the election if the loss of American lives continues to be lower in Iraq. If last months rate is kept up...there will be more murders in New Orleans than combat deaths in Iraq! Contrary to your belief system Iraq is a winner for McCain. He is the guy who called for the surge putting his political life on the line. He gets credit from the public for the "win".
You can't tie McCain to Bush Iraq policy in the public mind. Gonna have to find some other way to win. But maybe McCain will continue to help by mimicking lib positions.
sck5 - I was not addressing the difference between the candidates on their position on the war. So which one has the better viewpoint is not material. Nor did I say McCains view was either right or wrong. That also, if you bothered to actually read the posts, has no bearing.
All I was commenting on, was your methods of debate. Nothing more, nothing less. But, just as you brought up McCain in response to my post #2371, to avoid responding about Obama (which you never bothered doing), you have yet to respond to the substance of my remarks that followed.
I'm not trying to paint you as any one thing or the other. All I've done, is make an assessment of your methodology.
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John
Ontario 32 - Aria
Free, is the heart, that lives not, in fear.
Full, is the spirit, that thinks not, of falling.
True, is the soul, that hesitates not, to give.
Alive, is the one, that believes, in love. JCP
sck5 is also oblivious to the fact that the Iraqi war is going quite well and that the Iraqi's seem to far and away appreciate the American presence over the presence of al-Qaeda and other foreign terrorists. I've no doubt that they'd like the Americans to leave but, like the Americans, they want it done when a self-sustaining Iraqi government is in place and the threat of not only al-Qaeda is removed but also foreign intrigue from the likes of Iran and Syria.
I guess sck5 missed the fact that the surge has been working and that things are going well in Iraq. Whether that omission is intentional or just from laziness I cannot say. I can say that I'm hardly surprised at it.
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“Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it.” Wm. F. Buckley, Jr.
While both candidates have various and sundry flip-flops, in the name of political posturing and pandering, getting back to the subject that was raised about Obama's choice to opt out of the public financing, what I find troubling about it, isn't that he flip-flopped, but that he did so on a principle, not an issue.
For over a year now, we have heard Obama say he is the candidate of change from the old ways of politics. Yet, when the time comes to stand by his oft repeated pledge to remain within the public financing system, we see the "change" is just the same ol', same ol'
Has anything changed between the time he made his pledge, and the time he threw it under the bus (to join the rest of the debris he said he wouldn't throw under there?). As a matter of fact, one thing, and one thing only has changed, the amount of money he has available.
His "reasons" existed at the time he made his pledge. They did not suddenly appear. But, given the choice between political expediency and standing by his word, he chose politics as usual. In and of itself, it would be no big deal, but, if one chooses to present themselves as being above such political expediency, the choice then becomes one not of simply pandering, but of gross hypocrisy.
__________________
John
Ontario 32 - Aria
Free, is the heart, that lives not, in fear.
Full, is the spirit, that thinks not, of falling.
True, is the soul, that hesitates not, to give.
Alive, is the one, that believes, in love. JCP
