Acriku Posted March 18, 2004 Posted March 18, 2004 It's obvious that this story was constructed to resemble Bush's political career, so let's not quibble about that. Now, in what way did Bush have to preserve the Constitution?
nemafakei Posted March 18, 2004 Posted March 18, 2004 "His name was Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States of America"Good for him.I take it this was aimed at the US anti-Bush posters here...
VigilVirus Posted March 18, 2004 Posted March 18, 2004 He practically cured slavery within his OWN country. Can you say the same about Bush?
emprworm Posted March 18, 2004 Posted March 18, 2004 He practically cured slavery within his OWN country. Can you say the same about Bush?yes. Bush practically cured slavery of another country. 25 million people worth.what have you done lately?
VigilVirus Posted March 18, 2004 Posted March 18, 2004 There's a reason for why I emphasized /OWN/. Stop being so blind, man...
DukeLeto Posted March 18, 2004 Posted March 18, 2004 I should tell you now there is no sense in arguing with Emprworm. He refuses to even take heed of your arguments and mearly regurgitates the same sentence or two post after post. Just watch.
Edric O Posted March 18, 2004 Posted March 18, 2004 yes. Bush practically cured slavery of another country. 25 million people worth.Cured the disease by killing the patient...The violence in Iraq is escalating with no end in sight, honest hard-working Iraqis are at the mercy of armed gangs and looters, Al-Qaeda is having a field day... and oh yes, American corporations are getting ready to plunder Iraq's natural resources and "reconstruct" it into a carbon copy of Saudi Arabia.Yep, those 25 million Iraqis are really enjoying their newfound freedom...
Caid Ivik Posted March 18, 2004 Posted March 18, 2004 please, READ this, don't make urteil from first view ;Dhttp://maddox.xmission.com/limits_to_freedom.html
Wolf Posted March 19, 2004 Posted March 19, 2004 I disagree with Edric's post that he cured the disease by killing the patient. I think he cured one disease and replaced it with another. (I.E. Saddam Hussein in exchange for terrorism). This is not to say that the new disease is worse than the old one; in the long run, it might actually be better. But, this isn't saying very much; its still a disease.
Inoculator9 Posted March 19, 2004 Posted March 19, 2004 Dang, good stuff Caid ;DAnd gunwounds, comparing Lincoln with Bush is idiotic. Did Abraham Lincoln destroy the economy? Did Abraham Lincoln increase the national deficit to the highest point its ever been at in the history of the nation? Did Abraham Lincoln falsify evidence to justify war? Did Abraham Lincoln leave a trail of horrendous business failures behind him? Did Abraham Lincoln single handedly set into motion the destruction of 10% of the Alaskan forests? Did Abraham Lincoln propose a constitutional ban on gay marriage that violates the constitution? Did Abraham Lincoln accidentally read a speech riddled with lies that he was planning to use later on?Civil War.... Operation Iraqi Freedom. I can't even begin to wonder how you this idiot can make parallels between these two wars.Ended slavery? Abraham Lincoln ended the slavery of an entire culture with in America. George Bush ended a totalitarian dictatorship and replaced it with utter chaos. Whoo-hoo :P
filecore Posted March 19, 2004 Posted March 19, 2004 Am I the only one here who thinks that it might have been better to leave a dictator where you could watch him, rather than just have lots of terrorists all over the world where you don't have a clue even which country they're in? Okay I agree with most of the propaganda about Hussein, but really, they admitted ("they" being UK and US) that Saddam didn't have the 25 minute missile capability or whatever it was, that was part of their excuse for going to war ("what? I don't remember saying that") as well as STILL not having found any WMD/chemical weapons or even any real EVIDENCE of such. So why not at least have that one dictator in place? There are bigger and more deeply hidden fish to worry about. You can argue about it being better without him but I'm not yet convinced.
Wolf Posted March 19, 2004 Posted March 19, 2004 Well, while I can see the practicality behind that, I think that there is a real issue with knowingly leaving over 25 million people in a country with such a deplorable human rights record and a history of violence with regards to political opposition. I suppose, if allowing people to live with political freedom and personal liberties was your highest priority, above all others, then you cannot simply allow people to live in that state when you have the power to make it otherwise. I say this because the fact that this is your highest principle allows it to trump all others. Chaos, to you, is preferable than having people live without the democratic liberties you profess to love. Now, I'm not saying this outright justifies the war, since these liberties must be maintained, but I am pointing out that if the issue of Iraq is an issue of principle, and if your principles state that people must live in democratic freedom, you will seek to establish that principle at all costs. I'm not saying that's what I necessarily believe, but I'm saying that's probably what GW beleives.
VigilVirus Posted March 20, 2004 Posted March 20, 2004 The US put a lot of third world dictators in power, whether directly or indirectly. Iraq just needs another one that listens to US.
emprworm Posted March 20, 2004 Posted March 20, 2004 The US put a lot of third world dictators in power, whether directly or indirectly. Iraq just needs another one that listens to US.and its about time we started taking them out of power.
Wolf Posted March 20, 2004 Posted March 20, 2004 Okay, the argument that, "America put dictators in power in the past, therefore, it has no right to remove Saddam" is horribly flawed. That is like saying, "A man has committed murder in the past, therefore, he has no right to save peoples' lives". What? Should America put more dictators in power? Of course not! The United States should allow the Iraqi people to govern themselves, naturally, since this is how the principles of US government say government should be established. Perhaps America put dictators in power in the past, and this was wrong. However, that does not mean America should be barred from removing dictators, and it does mean that America should never again place a dictator in power. Realize, though, that if the Iraqi people choose for themselves a dictator, the US is not to blame for this occurance.If you want to argue why the United States should not have invaded Iraq, argue the following points; the United States currently has no evidence to justify its weapons of mass destruction claims, the United States ignored the interests of foreign allies, the United States did not achieve a mandate from the United Nations, and that the United States is helping terrorism rather than hurting it. Don't tell me that they shouldn't have gone into Iraq to get rid of Saddam because they put him there in the first place. That's like saying a man can't rectify his mistakes, or that a country must adhere to an amoral (amoral because they follow their interests despite the morality/immorality of the actions taken) foreign policy for the sake of consistency.
filecore Posted March 20, 2004 Posted March 20, 2004 and its about time we started taking them out of power.Yep Wolfwiz I see what you're saying but by that logic we can then see the US going after Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, China... in fact, you may well indeed be right. I believe that list has already been written ;) but my point is, when you say "knowingly let 25 million people suffer" and so forth, they know that people suffer in all these other countries. So as I say, by that logic they should be consistent and "free" the people of every other country, too.Or is Iraq some sort of a special case?
Wolf Posted March 20, 2004 Posted March 20, 2004 You're right filecore, absolutely right. If this is a matter of principle (which the Republicans tell me it is), then we must go into other countries. It would be hypocritical if we knowingly let millions others suffer. Iraq is just the first stone in the road.Now, I'm not necessarilly saying that this is what the United States should do, I'm simply putting up this disclaimer so that I don't get yelled at personally. This is here to represent what I believe are the motivations behind the warhawks and, as filecore has eloquently put, the extent to which the warhawk logic takes us.
VigilVirus Posted March 20, 2004 Posted March 20, 2004 Some people might prefer dictatorships, if the dictator is close to decent. Faith in a leader?
Wolf Posted March 20, 2004 Posted March 20, 2004 Well, isn't the best form of government a benevolent dictatorship? (If you've ever seen the movie Chariots of Fire you know where this is coming from.)If that's the case, which dictator is more benevolent? George W. Bush or Saddam Hussein? If you're going to take the stance that some dictators are okay, then, we should follow the lead of the better dictator, which, I think, since he hasn't committed genocide, would be Bush. No, the argument that some dictators are good cannot be allowed as an objection to the Iraqi war if we are to consider ourselves democratic individuals who value freedom and liberty for all.
VigilVirus Posted March 20, 2004 Posted March 20, 2004 A good dictator also needs to be intelligent. I believe Saddam beats Bush by several miles in that department.
Wolf Posted March 20, 2004 Posted March 20, 2004 Benevolence does not necessitate intelligence. A benevolent dictator need not be smart, only wish to create good things at all costs. At this point, I hope it should be very clear who the better dictator would be, since, while Bush was reforming the Texas school system, Hussein was gassing Kurds.Furthermore, your assertion that Bush is an idiot is just as much opinion as fact. In addition, as smart as Saddam is, I think that his intellect is roughly equal to Bush's, and we could argue "who's the smarter one" all day, but I'll bet that most people here would say Bush is the preferable dictator.EVEN THEN, YOU MISSED MY WHOLE POINT."No, the argument that some dictators are good cannot be allowed as an objection to the Iraqi war if we are to consider ourselves democratic individuals who value freedom and liberty for all. "I'll just keep quoting it 'till you get it.
danielsh Posted March 20, 2004 Posted March 20, 2004 I'd like to start by pointing out that Abraham Lincoln was indeed a Republican, but not as we know them now. You see, the Republican and Democratic parties crossed paths in the 1920s: the Republicans took their fiscal conservatism and extended it to social conservatism, and the Democrats took their fiscal liberalism and extended it to social liberalism. So if Lincoln were to run for office today, he'd do it on the Democratic ticket.Additionally, Lincoln was wrong to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, so your argument doesn't convince me. Even if it did, he went outside the bounds of the Constitution once. Last time I checked, President Bush had done so a few more times. Also, Lincoln had been in politics for a long time before his Presidential bid: look up information on the Spot Resolution to see what one idealistic dissenter thought of the war with Mexico. (I'll give you one guess at his name.) Additionally, no one thought that he was an idiot (at least, not in the same way that we know President Bush to be an idiot), and no one thought that he was a buffoon.And this is when I get radical. The Civil War was, to a certain degree, about imperialism. The North desired socioeconomic domination of the South, and the South of the North. It was not about slavery (read the text of the Emancipation Proclamation---the border states kept their slaves) any more than the war in Iraq was. At the very least, however, we can point to one goal of Lincoln's as the guiding principle behind the Civil War: he wanted to keep the Union together. That meant dominating the South, as I said, but it was certainly a wee bit more noble than a war fought exclusively for economic prosperity and aggrandizement of national power.The Republicans have tried to make this into a war for "freedom" or "liberty," but their claims only superficially mask the truth behind what's going on. If we're trying to spread liberty and democracy around the world (this, by the way, is reminiscent of manifest destiny... and we all know how well that turned out), then why is Afghanistan still engaged in a civil war? If we have no ulterior motives, then why are American corporations---many of which actually do harm to our troops---being handed multi-billion dollar reconstruction contracts? And why, if we desire liberty for the world, are we taking it away here?
filecore Posted March 20, 2004 Posted March 20, 2004 I hope it should be very clear who the better dictator would be, since, while Bush was reforming the Texas school system, Hussein was gassing KurdsShould I point out that, under Bush, Texas had the highest rate of electric chair deaths and (iirc) shootings, in all of the USA, by quite a big lead? I seem to recall something like it was four or five times higher death rates than the next state. Now I suppose you could argue "but they were just criminals" but I think I've made my point.
Wolf Posted March 20, 2004 Posted March 20, 2004 "No, the argument that some dictators are good cannot be allowed as an objection to the Iraqi war if we are to consider ourselves democratic individuals who value freedom and liberty for all."Execution of convicted criminals is somewhat different than genocide, I think. But, this ain't about Bush, and I don't wanna defend him too much, so, read the above statement, please.
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