Our Next President

[Jerry_Miah]

The Lancet figures are bogus and have been shown to be bogus over and over again, so we can discount them.

The better of the 2 references you site is the Iraq Body Count website. However in both instances they count estimated deaths caused by suicide bombers, an activity not engaged in by US forces. In fact, by a very large factor, many more civilians were killed by suicide bombers and civil war than by US action.

The internal civil war, caused by the toppling of Saddam, is still ongoing. over 4,000 civilians were killed last year.

It is simply not true to say the Lancet figure are bogus. There has a been a debate on methodology, and the Lancet has stuck by their methods. It is basically the best estimate we have. Even if you cut the Lancet figures in half, we are talking hundreds of thousands of dead.

The US invaded Iraq and stated that war, so it owns the chaos it caused and the deaths resulting from the chaos.

My figures stand: we are talking about hundreds of thousands of dead from the US invasion of Iraq. My point remains: It is not moral to vote for the war party for the GOP.

 

[Jerry_Miah]

You said that the GOP starts all the wars. Yet, it was Saddham Hussein who started the first Gulf war by invading Kuwait. So will you retract or revise your statement that the GOP starts all the wars?

Ishii

Please scroll up, I already answered you, and I think you are splitting hairs. Suffice to say that Bush1 decided to enter the Gulf War.

 

[jwashu]

Lets see in the past 4 years we have brought the boys home from a possibly unjust war in Iraq, got the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, are planning the withdrawl of Afghan, the economy has gained jobs every month (except for the first few, since Obama took office), Our allies are working with us (Israel said Obama was the best President they had ever worked with), while not perfect we have health care coming for those who couldn’t get it before (especially the children), while the stats aren’t out my guess is the abortions are probably down for 2011 (as they were going up under Bush and probably remained high during the recession)…

So if I look at actual issues that I vote on - abortion, economy, hawkish behavior etc… I don’t see a reason yet to vote for anyone but Obama.

If I only listened to 1 news source or didn’t check to verify 99.9% of all those emails I get about Obama are lies I might be wanting someone else. However since I do actually study my politics, I’m good so far.

The only real worry is about the dollar… but no Republican but Ron Paul is even touching that subject and there is no way he will get the nomination and even if he did he is too far out on some basic rights issues IMHO.

 

[Jerry_Miah]

Unfortunately your ‘citations’ are self-defined anti-war organizations. You think there is a bias there?

With respect, that is nonsense. Neither the Lancet, one of the oldest and most respected medical journals, nor CSM is an “anti-war organization”. The studies were cited by just about all news outlets.

It seems you just don’t want to believe the fact that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq killed hundreds of thousands of men, women and children.

My point is that voting the party that instigated that war into the White House is the wrong thing to do at this time.

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

Lets see in the past 4 years we have brought the boys home from a possibly unjust war in Iraq, got the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, are planning the withdrawl of Afghan, the economy has gained jobs every month (except for the first few, since Obama took office), Our allies are working with us (Israel said Obama was the best President they had ever worked with), while not perfect we have health care coming for those who couldn’t get it before (especially the children), while the stats aren’t out my guess is the abortions are probably down for 2011 (as they were going up under Bush and probably remained high during the recession)…

So if I look at actual issues that I vote on - abortion, economy, hawkish behavior etc… I don’t see a reason yet to vote for anyone but Obama.

If I only listened to 1 news source or didn’t check to verify 99.9% of all those emails I get about Obama are lies I might be wanting someone else. However since I do actually study my politics, I’m good so far.

The only real worry is about the dollar… but no Republican but Ron Paul is even touching that subject and there is no way he will get the nomination and even if he did he is too far out on some basic rights issues IMHO.

This post is so fraught with errors I don’t even know where to begin. :hypno:

 

[Ridgerunner]

I am talking about the thirty yeas of post-Vietnam era, 1980 to now, the era where the parties came to their current definition.

In this time period, from Reagan’s illegal support for the terrorist contras in El Salvador that killed thousands including Archbishop Romero, to pointless invasions and up to Bush1 entering the Gulf War and the moral tragedy of the Iraq War, the GOP has been the War Party. I summarized this in more detail earlier in you want to check that post.

With McCain-Palin in the White House we would probably still be in Iraq and we would be bombing Iran by now. Unless the Republicans change soon, to vote the GOP is to vote for unnecessary, immoral wars. And that is not a moral act for a Catholic voter.

The communists in El Salvador also killed thousands. It was a war. Would the Salvadorans now be better off under some Castro-type character? Abp Romero was killed by private freebooters, not by the U.S.

Iraq was immoral? Takes more to prove that than just to say it. Saddam murdered about a million people and started a world war. Would it have been more moral for us to do nothing while he killed another million? Iraq is hardly a stable nation in the western sense of the word, but they do elect their leaders now, and murder is still there but it’s no longer a governmental industry, the way it was under Saddam.

And you have no idea whether we would still be in Iraq with McCain than we ARE with Obama. We’re still there, you know. And, of course, for Obama, Afghanistan is the “good” war, which he escalated with highly dubious results. Then there’s Libya where Obama started a war, and he might still intervene in Syria.

As little as some on the left might think so, the morality of any given war is a matter of prudential judgment on the part of the individual. All are arguable, and it’s terribly incorrect to say or imply that Catholics voting for a Republican is an immoral act just because you, youself, have persuaded yourself that the GOP is more warlike than the Dem Party; a dubious proposition in itself.

 

[He_Man]

This is nonsense, Jerry Miah. How can you overturn Roe V Wade when you don’t have a strict constructionist majority on the bench? How can you get a strict constructionist bench when the pro-abortion Democrat party thwarts every attempt by the GOP to nominate solid justices? The GOP never had a filibuster proof majority. You display an ignorance of the politics of the last twenty years.

Ishii

It is pretty obvious is debating this issue over the years that people who use this excuse simply don’t care that much about the issue of abortion. Oh, they will claim to, and claim mitigating circumstances to make they seem better in other people’s eyes, but in the end, they just don’t care as much as they should. The list of achievements for limiting abortion under Bush II is long and has been repeated many times, and the list of abortion rights expansion under Obama is verifiable, but since no Republican has managed to illegally use the Executive Branch to over turn law, they are called frauds. The attempts to limit or end abortion always seem to come from the right of the political spectrum. And yet if they fail, it is because conservatives don’t “do anything for abortion.” At least they are trying.

We did not fall into the cesspool of abortion over night. It began decades earlier. Yet we expect the complete opposite with the elimination of this practice. It makes no sense, is disingenuous, and simply an excuse to justify voting a certain way.
*
in before anyone says this isn’t true and that they do care*

 

[iamrefreshed]

With respect, that is nonsense. Neither the Lancet, one of the oldest and most respected medical journals, nor CSM is an “anti-war organization”. The studies were cited by just about all news outlets.

It seems you just don’t want to believe the fact that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq killed hundreds of thousands of men, women and children.

My point is that voting the party that instigated that war into the White House is the wrong thing to do at this time.

What I want to believe is meaningless. Facts count. You don’t have any.

I think this is about what you want to believe.

 

[zab]

I think it is a grave mistake, especially during the time of the primaries to try to pick a winning candidate rather than the candidate that best represents your views. You’ll never know if the best candiate is a winning candidate or not if your focus is not on what is most important. It should be the right of the people to choose their candidate not settle for what the party thinks is best for the people. Courage and trust are needed to do the right thing.

 

[Rich_Olszewski]

Iraq was immoral? Takes more to prove that than just to say it. Saddam murdered about a million people and started a world war. Would it have been more moral for us to do nothing while he killed another million?

We aren’t the world’s policeman and while the war might not have been unjust, there was no reason for us to have gotten embroiled in one there.

 

[scipio337]

What I want to believe is meaningless. Facts count. You don’t have any.

I think this is about what you want to believe.

Wasn’t the Lancet study debunked after shortly coming out?

Even if the 655,000 figure were true, it would be equal to ONE YEAR of abortions in the US.

Now imagine a Republican president who started a war that killed around 1 million Americans…

every year.

 

[iamrefreshed]

Wasn’t the Lancet study debunked after shortly coming out?

Even if the 655,000 figure were true, it would be equal to ONE YEAR of abortions in the US.

Now imagine a Republican president who started a war that killed around 1 million Americans…

every year.

Well, conveniently, Jerry ignored that part of my post.

 

[Jerry_Miah]

Lets see in the past 4 years we have brought the boys home from a possibly unjust war in Iraq, got the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, are planning the withdrawl of Afghan, the economy has gained jobs every month (except for the first few, since Obama took office), Our allies are working with us (Israel said Obama was the best President they had ever worked with), while not perfect we have health care coming for those who couldn’t get it before (especially the children), while the stats aren’t out my guess is the abortions are probably down for 2011 (as they were going up under Bush and probably remained high during the recession)…

So if I look at actual issues that I vote on - abortion, economy, hawkish behavior etc… I don’t see a reason yet to vote for anyone but Obama.

If I only listened to 1 news source or didn’t check to verify 99.9% of all those emails I get about Obama are lies I might be wanting someone else. However since I do actually study my politics, I’m good so far.

The only real worry is about the dollar… but no Republican but Ron Paul is even touching that subject and there is no way he will get the nomination and even if he did he is too far out on some basic rights issues IMHO.

Excellent summary

 

[qui_est_ce]

If I only listened to 1 news source or didn’t check to verify 99.9% of all those emails I get about Obama are lies I might be wanting someone else. However since I do actually study my politics, I’m good so far.
.

And who on this thread listens to only 1 news source or isn’t supplying credible links to to back up their claims. Who on this thread is linking lying emails?

PS. Is “1 news source” the new code for Faux News?

 

[Rich_Olszewski]

PS. Is “1 news source” the new code for Faux News?

 

[gilliam]

It is simply not true to say the Lancet figure are bogus. There has a been a debate on methodology, and the Lancet has stuck by their methods. It is basically the best estimate we have. Even if you cut the Lancet figures in half, we are talking hundreds of thousands of dead.

The US invaded Iraq and stated that war, so it owns the chaos it caused and the deaths resulting from the chaos.

My figures stand: we are talking about hundreds of thousands of dead from the US invasion of Iraq. My point remains: It is not moral to vote for the war party for the GOP.

It is pretty hard to argue that we “own the chaos” and also argue that we must pull the troops out. As we all are now witnessing, once the troops are pulled out, the chaos continues, and it is very possible that what will result will not be what anyone in the West would objectively want as the final result. Already women in Afganistan are being persecuted again (not to mention gays, liberals, Christians, atheists, those who like rock music, etc, etc, etc…)

The U.S. invaded the country in 2001 with the stated objective of vanquishing al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime that harbored it. When we finally withdraw all forces in 2014, the Taliban influence in Afghanistan is likely to be substantial, if not paramount. Should the Taliban retake much of Afghanistan, whether we label our withdrawal a defeat or call it something more appetizing (a draw, for example) is immaterial: Our enemies will view this as an American defeat, and learn lessons that will bode ill for our future.
nationalreview.com/articles/295523/waiting-lose-afghanistan-leif-babin

 

[Jerry_Miah]

It is pretty hard to argue that we “own the chaos” and also argue that we must pull the troops out. As we all are now witnessing, once the troops are pulled out, the chaos continues, and it is very possible that what will result will not be what anyone in the West would objectively want as the final result.

You are confusing Iraq with Afghanistan.

My point was simple: The death and destruction sparked by the unprovoked US attack on and occupation of Iraq was the obvious fault of the US, and so we can’t start to nitpick details about the hundreds of thousands of deaths we caused. This is part of my argument that a vote for the GOP at this time is not a moral choice, since they have not backed off their warlike ways one bit.

 

[gilliam]

You are confusing Iraq with Afghanistan.

My point was simple: The death and destruction sparked by the unprovoked US attack on and occupation of Iraq was the obvious fault of the US, and so we can’t start to nitpick details about the hundreds of thousands of deaths we caused. This is part of my argument that a vote for the GOP at this time is not a moral choice, since they have not backed off their warlike ways one bit.

Hundreds of thousands is hardly nik picking, but I agree Iraq was a mistake, even if Bush went in for good reasons (that were from bad intelligence.) The country was a mess, is a mess and will probably stay a mess until another dictator takes over it again. But once in do you simply abandon them? That is what is happening right now. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we necessarily should go back in there, and I don’t know if any leading Republican is saying that, so I don’t see how the GOP enters into the picture on Iraq at all. What would Christ do if He were elected POTUS in 2012?

As for Afghanistan, we can either run away from there too (like we did in Iraq to the detriment of that country) or we can try to piece it together for the sake of those who are left there. Which is the moral high ground? What would Christ do if He were elected POTUS in 2012?

 

[Rich_Olszewski]

As for Afghanistan, we can either run away from there too (like we did in Iraq to the detriment of that country) or we can try to piece it together for the sake of those who are left there. Which is the moral high ground? What would Christ do if He were elected POTUS in 2012?

He certainly wouldn’t keep dumping money into that pit.

As for moral high ground, there are many countries in the world that have it bad and could use a “world policeman.” Are we obliged to provide them one? How deeply do we get ourselves involved in the conflicts of the world? Are there any limits to our poking our noses into the affairs of other countries?

 

[scipio337]

You are confusing Iraq with Afghanistan.

My point was simple: The death and destruction sparked by the unprovoked US attack on and occupation of Iraq was the obvious fault of the US, and so we can’t start to nitpick details about the hundreds of thousands of deaths we caused. This is part of my argument that a vote for the GOP at this time is not a moral choice, since they have not backed off their warlike ways one bit.

And again, what is the “death and destruction” figure regarding abortion, wholly supported by a majority of those in the Democrat party since 1973??