Is Barack Obama a Socialist?

Nobody gave us the right. We took it. Revolutions never come at the convenience of the rulers.

Right, Lieberman is the guy who got the military industrial complex a contract for an $81 billion dollar submarine to fight the Al Queda navy, and McCain is the guy who said the war was a waste, and now says it is a success.

Or were you talking about the policy wonks from AEI?

Iran already has seized the opportunity. Al Sadr is a nationalist. Al Maliki is a shiite with very close Iranian and terrorist ties through his political party, Da'wa.

There are way more Shia in Iraq than any other group. If they truly have the right to self-determination, then they may decide to ally or integrate with Iran. And if you're being honest, and believe we have some moral mission, then who would we be to stop them?

Btw, up until recently, McCain didn't know that Al Queda are not Iranian (I posted that here ages ago). Mr. Foreign Policy expert is an idiot, like Bush, and likely doesn't even know the difference between a Shia and a Sunni Muslim.

I cannot emphasize enough that we are so in over our heads with the dolts we have running the show.

I wish I could remember where I heard/read it, but just in the last week, I got wind of a report that 90% of insurgents are Iraqi. In fact, it might have been higher than 95%. We're fighting the people we're supposed to be helping, not Al Queda.

I think you're going to have to clearly decide if you endorse American imperialism, or American evangelism. Because the two aren't compatible when we are freeing the Iraqis, and getting into gunfights with them at the same time, while paying the Sunni Iraqis to stand down, and providing cover for the Shiite political parties to harass each other with urban warfare.

Do it fully, but phase it out. I feel like I'm talking to Donald Rumsfeld.

What you're really saying is, interventionism probably isn't the right track, but since we're on the wrong track, we shouldn't abandon it too quickly, or we might be held accountable by our enemies and the world at large for how we have conducted ourselves. I'd say that's honest. Honest, but very unfortunate.

You can't make the argument that a divided Vietnam would have been better, or that another US sponsored dictator like Diem would have been any better in a so-called "free" Vietnam either.

Unintended consequences. Instead of letting the Vietnamese find their way to free markets and prosperity as we have let the Chinese do, first the French, then us, have interfered and messed up their course. Perhaps American and French imperial intervention drove them to communism. Their communism is not in the manner of Soviet style system. Not even close.

Strange response. I said it was BANKRUPTING US. Do you agree or disagree? And if you agree, do you feel that bankrupting us is a good way to end this war? With the troops booking commercial flights home, selling their guns for airfare?

He wasn't spinning any uranium. He didn't have a centrifuge. The weapons inspectors were turning up NOTHING and guess what? He had NOTHING.

You're trying to justify interventionism and pre-emptive war. Think about that. Not only would it be right to attack someone before they can attack you (which opens up all kinds of questions as to what degree of certainty of future violence is adequate) but that you have the right to do so in your neighbors house, between two 3rd parties.

Someone without any internal barometer for right and wrong could probably justify it. But not someone with scruples. It would be akin to a license to kill, without discretion, justification or review.

 

I've come to the conclusion that Obama doesn't have socialist plans for America. He's without any real plans, direction or initiative.

He's like the Pinata of Presidential Candidates. Until he's in office and lobbyists start whacking him with sticks, we have no idea what he is made of.

Btw, you should be embarrassed for using the term Pax Americana. This empire won't last as long as the the British or Roman ones. We went broke in under 50 years.

 

Or, he's smart enough to keep his mouth closed until he gets some real power.

Then, we're all screwed.

I can't help but think of the wonderful job another socialist has done in his tenure as President of his country:

“He (Mugabe) ordered the often-violent seizures of white-owned commercial farms, ostensibly to return them to the landless black majority. Instead, Mugabe replaced a white elite with a black one, giving the farms to relatives, friends and cronies who allowed cultivated fields to be taken over by weeds.

Today, a third of the population depends on imported food handouts. Another third has fled the country and 80 percent is jobless. Inflation is the highest in the world at more than 100,000 percent and people suffer crippling shortages of food, water, electricity, fuel and medicine. Life expectancy has fallen from 60 to 35 years.”
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Read Lone Survivor by Marcus Lutrell - he offers a different account as a Navy SEAL who saw Saddam's centrifuge trucks.

Well, at least we can agree on one thing. And that is that we are not voting for Obama or Clinton

 

I've considered the opposite possible as well. As much as such an absolute can be true, maybe we'll all be saved.

Maybe he will close the border, reconcile both halves of the Congress, address domestic issues, and end the war, bringing the budget back into closer focus.

I mean, with this guy, we just don't know.

I think the Mugabe scenario is paranoia. Mugabe wouldn't even be the fear scenario if Obama was O'Reilly. Because if Obama was white, this really would be non-issue given what nutcases like John Hagee, Pat Robertson etc have said about this country and how God has damed it.

 

Do you really think that if the government could produce any evidence of Saddam's nuclear capability, they would withhold it?

I don't know this guy. and I haven't read the book. It's possible, so so highly improbably, I wouldn't base my justification for killing hundreds of thousands of people on it.

I'm not voting for McWar, and not just because he is Songbird McCain either.

He's clueless on the economy. We're broke. We owe so much money, if we had to pay it tomorrow, we might have to go bankrupt twice. People want their war, and they want their entitlements, and they don't want to work. That is all going to come to an end soon.

 

I think Barak's idea of "change" is just another term for "appeasement". One could go out on a limb and say it is also another term for "very close to communism".

 

Appeasement and communism if someone was an idiot.

Obama hasn't said anything to endorse communism.

And he has talked tough militarily about Pakistan and Iran. He's just not into the Iraq war. It's foolish to think he is pure anti-war...

Besides, the idea of a pacifist communist is a total oxymoron. Most communists were Trotskyites.

It would really help if my Reich wing brothers tried using their brains instead of goose-stepping around in their brown shirts shouting down socialists. Contrary to what Hannity and O'Reilly teach you (not that either of them have ever been activists) being louder and more obnoxious than the left might feel righteous, but it is not.

 

Most of the "pacifists" I see are only pacifists when it comes to defending Western civilization.

They aren't "pacifists" when it comes to bombing recruiting stations or supporting Islamist and/or Communist dictators.

 

That's fascinating Will. Perhaps this is an incentive for you to get out and meet new people.

 

Yeah, instead of the crazies here on DP.

 

The insurgents, not the United States, are responsible for a large portion of the casualties of Iraqi civilians in Iraq. We are not baby-killers. Ron Paul would never say such a thing. He believes in noninterventionism, not insurgent propaganda.

 

What is this statement based on? Do you have #s? %s?

If 100 men wanted to a rape a woman, would that make it right? If not, then by what right do we have to kill any Iraqi? If it's in "my interests" to kill you and your family, is that "ok"? Should I pre-emptively attack you at the park with your children or parents, because one day you might buy a gun and be a threat to me or someone I am allied with?

You've got no moral foundation on this. Just a lot of empty jingoism and insulated rhetoric. And I'm the wrong MFer to throw the "Ron Paul would never..." at.

Ron Paul believes in telling the truth. The truth is, Food for Oil and the 90s sanctions killed 500,000 Iraqi children from starvation, malnutrition and dehydration. That was exclusively a western policy, driven by Clinton.

Don't tell me we are not baby killers. That our billions in men and weapons don't claim any lives. Don't tell me we didn't bomb the sh1t out of Iraq's infrastructure. And don't tell me that we aren't paying off the Sunnis, and providing cover for Al Malikis Dawa party to attack it's Shiite political rivals (Al Sadr).

It's annoying that you would even pretend that our intervention has no blowback, no unintended consequences, and has no negative impact.

 

If you want him to win, you shouldn't resort to the same ad hominem tactics used by lowballers in the mainstream race.

You should also check out the (anti-war) Iraq Body Count. http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

Yeah, sanctions don't work. That is not news.

We are not "baby killers" - we do not go around killing babies on purpose. That is what a "baby killer" is. We bombed the crap out of the infrastructure and have to pay folks off because... for a variety of reasons. It's a complex situation and sometimes bribe money is the way to get it done. It's the way you want to take care of bin Laden. It's effective and has its drawbacks.

Of course it has blowblack, unintended consequences, and negative impact. Welcome to reality. The question for our leadership to weigh is whether those consequences will be worth the gains.

 

Obama's campaign put out a policy paper on Indian issues that promises to create a senior White House adviser on the subject.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080405/ap_on_el_pr/obama;_ylt=Ah58RYDPywJ7QjSBreJWrA.s0NUE

Nothing against Indians - but are Indians a national priority that the President of the United States should be dealing with.

 

Apparently no minority is too small to be pandered to.

 

Casinos can make some big campaign donations

 

Oh... So it was about Native Indians... I thought it as related to "Indians" in India...

 

Sorry about the confusion

 

Just saw another post...

No, the general I quoted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/22/world/middleeast/22fighters.html

This article provides a really good explanation: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2008-03-20-fighters_N.htm

If foreign fighters are indeed leaving Iraq, that is a GOOD thing!! Wow.

Weapons inspectors? Do you think Saddam was going to reveal his nuclear ambitions to a bunch of UN weapons inspectors? Do you know how ineffective that organization is at stopping nuclear proliferation? "Heres where our factory is." "Ok, thanks! We may or may not tell you when we're coming." Psht.

The idea is that we don't want to be attacked first.

The justification is that there is a nutball over in the Middle East who we know wants nukes (and will eventually get them), and who has killed xxx,xxx of his own people, and who will probably use those nukes in anger. For reasons that everyone understands, it is a very bad thing for anyone to use a nuclear weapon in anger.

All this stuff about listening to our enemies and having them hold us accountable is nonsense. The most anti-United States groups right now also bomb European countries and their own brothers and sisters in the Middle East. These groups, including al-Qaeda, say all the time that they want to restore the Islamic caliphate. Do you only believe them up to that point, and then just ignore that desire?

That doesn't imply that war is the best option, but it does mean that there are crazy nuts in the world who want to kill you and I and whomever else doesn't want to restore the Islamic caliphate. So what are you going to do about it? You really think they'll all launch a few "accountability" attacks on us, pack up their weapons, and go home? If so, what makes you think that? If not, how would you respond to the terrorist threat?

The naivety of noninterventionism in a globalized world is that there are other interests out there that are not peaceful, not democratic and not peace-seeking. The only feasible nonmilitary answer I've heard to this is world government - but nobody wants that crap. That would be absolutely disastrous for freedom. Ron Paul's solution is to just pull out of everywhere. That may be good for some areas in the short term, but in the long term, what pressure will prevent the formation of an anti-freedom alliance of nations who want world government, or an alliance of powerful nations against us?

We better fix the economy by becoming a really well-oiled capitalistic nation and start trading like nuts if we want to encourage the spread of peace. Unfortunately, I don't see an economic fix coming down the line anytime soon. McCain even wants cap-and-trade - AHHH!!