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Old 12-01-2008, 03:27 PM   #26 (permalink)
smooth
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aceventura3 View Post
I think it is ironic how some people viewed the threat from Sadaam and Iraq under his control relative to how (at least during the campaign and I guess currently) they view the threat from bin Laden and al qeada in Afghanistan. Obama said he is going to escalate the war to go after a single person, with virtually no current power and who may be dead or very il, and that is o.k., but Bush going after Sadam was a travesty. I don't get it other than to assume that some people simply hated Bush to a level that anything he did was wrong. I think under Obama we will see a lot of this kind of thing. In my view there will not be much change, if any, from Bush to Obama.

Currently, I agree with the quote above, I don't think bin Laden is currently much of a threat.
Sometimes I just don't know what to make of your posts, ace.

First of all, the "left" is not in sync with Obama on going into Afghanistan. The reason you can't understand this is because of your annoying tendency to frame everything "not you" as "left." Hence, Obama is a leftist, all of his positions are leftists, and leftists are in sync with all of Obama's positions.

A more sane and informed view would recognize that the leftist, anti-war movement was supportive of Obama's anti-war stance and opinions range from reluctant to appalled that he wants to reproduce strategic errors in Afghanistan. I don't know of any leftists groups that support invading Afghanistan...although there may be some people who position themselves along the political spectrum in all sorts of permutations that I don't control the labels of who do support going after bin Laden.

Secondly, the reason I and others I know were opposed to invading Iraq had nothing at all to do with President Bush. I don't have any personal feelings about him one way or the other. I knew that destabilizing a nation-state would leave us with very little options if anything went wrong, I knew that the public was not aware that we were going to destabilize a nation-state, or the history of why and how Iraq became a nation-state with Saddam in power, the lack of insight into which led to the faction warfare we are witnessing today, I knew that the search for weapons of mass destruction was built on flimsy evidence...and that the link between Saddam and Al Queda was tenuous to put it mildly, I suspected that military contracts would strip our resources beyond capacity, and that in no uncertain terms was the war going to be quick or easy despite the claims initially made.

Most importantly, I am opposed to Bush's form of international relations. I prefer Obama's usage of leverage and diplomacy, which has a long history of success. Even after all this time I'm not sure what you are defending other than it appears we have achieved something...but I'm not sure what that something is. We've essentially supplanted one ethnic group for another and I'm always baffled as to why people think that is a good thing other than the fact they usually don't have a good handle on all the information.
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Last edited by smooth; 12-01-2008 at 06:54 PM..
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