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Originally Posted by Professor S
Vampyr, a few notes on your points:
1) Abortion - Thanks for the clarification. I better understand why Obama voted the way that he did. I still don't agree with it, but I better understand his viewpoint, even if I think he was reaching a bit in his explanation.
2) Your comments about the war in the middle east are typically misleading. No one was lied to to go to war with Iraq. At worst, our intelligence was wrong, and also the intelligence of every other major world power was wrong to. The argument never was whether or not Iraq had WMD's, it was what to do about it. There is a difference between being wrong and pirposely misleading an entire nation.
And your comparison of Iraq to Canada is a bit of a stretch. If you did want to foster democracy in the medle east, I know you don't agree, but if you did Iraq is the best choice with a modern infrastructure and an educated populace. Myself, I'm not as pessimistic as you, and I actually think that Iraq will succeed as a nation now, and within 18 months or so, but to give such a timeline is idiocy.
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I have spoken to several people who say that when we first started the war in Iraq, they believed it was a direct retaliation for the 9/11 attacks. These people were typical Americans and not people who closely follow exactly what the government is doing. I'm not saying the government cooked up an elaborate conspiracy, I'm saying that the general American public was mislead by not having all of the facts laid out exactly as they were. I think there was some subtle deceiving that occurred that shouldn't have.
When it was finally made clear that Iraq did not have WMD's, and hadn't even been trying to develop them since 1991, and that Iraq was actually not connected to Al-Queda (or at least no evidence has been discovered yet) the American public became very confused, and quickly after that very angry. I can't help but suspect there were ulterior motives in going to war with Iraq, and I think we've all heard the stories and accusations enough for me to not have to repeat them. However, it is entirely possible that the Bush administration was given misleading evidence to suggest that Iraq was more closely involved with terrorism than they turned out to be.
But now that we -know- how things are and how things were, we should be trying to end this debacle as soon as possible, even if it means just pulling out. We are trying to force a Western philosophy onto a non Western people. We went into this war with the Westernized assumption that we could deal with them with Western reason, and that has failed. There are too many radicals that are clouded by their religion, and you can -never- change their minds, it is engraved into them as writing on stone.
We took down Saddam Hussein, but there will always be another like him ready to take his place. I know that you feel that we shouldn't abandon those people, but I honestly believe that we can't be that much more help to them, and all the while it is costing American lives and American dollars. It's easy for us who are not involved, either in the decision making or the actual fighting, to say "We need to finish what we started," but when everyday American men and women are dying because of what many, including myself, consider to be a lost cause, it is hard to feel like that can be justified in any way.