Contrast President Bush’s statements on the war with Kerry’s non-answer and it becomes clear why Bush is the only serious wartime candidate:
"The enemy will be defeated. My resolve is the same as it was on the day when I walked in the rubble of the twin towers," Bush said, his voice breaking. "I will not relent until this threat to America is removed."
That is the right answer, for those paying attention.
“I will not relent until this threat to America is removed.”
How, exactly, will he know when that is?
What’s the win condition for the War on Terror?
I guess there’s a few of us that think unrelenting global war is just a little worse than the occasional dynamite vest – yes, even the occasional catastrophic act of destruction.
So I have a question for Jay: Why Bush is not going to Haiti to eradicate the dictator, and end the violence that have ruined most of the country, and threat the rest of the civilians?
It’s not far, it’s not big, the humanitarian situation is catastophic, and Aristide really is a corrupt dictator! what is different from Irak besides this mission would be done in 2 weeks, with the possibility of democratic elections soon (you really just have to lock Aristide up, and tell the others that elections are planned; the population is somehow homogeneous in roots and religion)
Why is Bush not going? democracy is only worth in Irak?
Very magnanimous of you to be cavalier with the lives of innocent Americans. I think most rational people would rather engage terrorists overseas than at home.
Hey, I would, too. But we’re not very good yet at separating the terrorists from the civilians, and we won’t be as long as we think cluster-bombing counts as a surgical strike.
Since I don’t think Americans are automatically superior to the citizens of other nations, I’d rather see 500 Americans die than 1,000 Iraqis, if I had to choose. Of course I’d just as soon not choose, but it’s arrogant presumption bordering on racism to state that American lives always trump the brown peoples’.
It’s never that simple.
We know that between 1992-2003 Saddam Hussein killed over 600,000 Iraqis (not even counting the deaths from sanctions) and that’s only the ones we know of now. The figure could be closer to 1,000,000.
The highest civilian casualty estimates for the war in Iraq and the current insurgency is around 15,000 – and that’s probably inflated several times over. It’s probably closer to 5,000 when the Ba’athist’s propaganda is removed from the count.
Which is more humanitarian – 50,000 dead in a year at the hands of tyrant or 15,000 dead in a year in the attempt to ensure that the tyrant is forever removed from power?
Furthermore, our military makes every attempt to spare civilian lives, and has the precision to keep collateral damage at the lowest levels in all of human warfare. Saddam deliberately killed thousands of his own people, and his sons raped and murdered their way across the country indiscriminately. Killing women and children and burying them in mass graves was a common practice.
What is arrogant is the presumption that it’s better to let Saddam Hussein murder his people at random than to risk the casualties that would incurred in ending such bloodshed. What’s arrogant and disgusting is the idea that Iraqis killed by Americans should count more than Iraqis killed by Saddam. What is arrogant is arguing that the agency that allowed them to die and funded the tyrannical regime that killed them should be the one who should be able to stop their liberation.
Just ask the “human shields” who went to Iraq thinking that peace at any cost was the only moral option and left having seen the horror of the Hussein regime and thanking the coalition for having the courage to end it once and for all.
James:
“Haiti is not a threat to the U.S., its interests or its neighbors.” Neither was Iraq. But Haiti is close, and if you’ll recall what 100,000 refugees on sinking rafts fleeing to the US coast looks like, you’ll see problem #1. Problem #2 is that places that go to hell in a handbasket become threats rather quickly, especially when governments are uprooted. Anarchy’s a bitch.
Jay:
“We know that between 1992-2003 Saddam Hussein killed over 600,000 Iraqis (not even counting the deaths from sanctions) and that’s only the ones we know of now. The figure could be closer to 1,000,000.
The highest civilian casualty estimates for the war in Iraq and the current insurgency is around 15,000 – and that’s probably inflated several times over. It’s probably closer to 5,000 when the Ba’athist’s propaganda is removed from the count.”
Once again, I have to ask, Jay, where the hell have you been for the past year? You’re citing our intelligence statistics like they’re verifiably accurate to the nth degree. You talk about inflated numbers due to “the Ba’athist’s (sic) propaganda” and yet I’m waiting for a good explanation for Powell’s and Rumsfeld’s testimony that Iraq’s chem and bioweapons programs had hundreds of tons of stocks.
This administration could say the sky is brown and you’d be here the next day berating Liberals for not giving up that “blue sky” propagandal crap when we KNOW it’s false.
Nice try, but those casualty statistics come from NGOs in Iraq like Amnesty International, not the US or the CPA.
Furthermore, the estimates of the size of Iraq’s WMD arsenal also came from the UN – most of them were taken from the 1998 UNSCOM report by Richard Butler and indicated what the UN believed Saddam had been hiding in Iraq when he kicked weapons inspectors out.
So unless Amnesty International and the UN are suddenly part of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, you’re ranting at nothing.