Archive through September 06, 2002
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TV ClubHouse: Archive: Bush must stop: Archive through September 06, 2002

Fluff

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 07:13 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Goodness.

This thread is refreshing from those other ones regarding the reality tv shows. But anyways, I feel that starting a fight with Iraq is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of, not to mention the timing. I mean, come one!!!!! This is the worst time ever to get involved. To me, it is almost childish. And this is my personal opinion, but I think that this is no different than bullying, considering that this country would be starting it first. Do we have any overwhelming proof?? Have they made any specific threats?? Grief!!! They haven't even caught the other guy yet! Bush, please don't start something you can't finish! Take care of this country first! I'd hate to see our troops having to go through another war, not to mention we are already in one!

Okay, I'm done. Peace.

Twiggyish

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 07:32 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Jville, no offense, but I sometimes wonder who they question for those polls.

Jville

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 07:42 am EditMoveDeleteIP
No offense taken - I expect you to wonder b/c you don't agree with them. That's human nature.

Kstme

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 07:44 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Twig...Ditto that! I certainly didn't receive a call!

Moon...I made the box a little bigger and stronger this time! We can fit most of this thread on it now!

Fluff

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 08:11 am EditMoveDeleteIP
LOL!

Yeah, I wish they had called me. Even though I am not a Republican, I definitely supported Bush early on, particularly after 9/11. But, this year, he has really aggravated me. Then the Sadam thing made me realize that he really isn't that smart.

Faerygdds

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 08:35 am EditMoveDeleteIP
I'm going to say something that will offend MANY ppl... but here goes anyway...

The reason that the majority of ppl in this country still support Bush based on a POLL is because the majority of people in this country are SHEEP! They will follow blindly and loyaly any president or person who has not been completely discredited morally. They think he does a good job because MANY of the people they call have no clue what is really heppening in the world. Notice I say MANY and NOT *ALL*... there are ppl who STILL support Bush that I would consider to NOT be in this category, but the reality is that many Americans are indeed sheep...

It's not a popular opinion to have... but it's an honest one. I don't say it to be mean... it's just fact... Some people are leaders, some are free thinkers.... and others are blind followers...

Jville... it's not human nature to wonder who they call for those polls.. I know who they called... they called the same ppl who called me for tech support while I worked in the industry... they called John Q Public. The problem is that John Q Public doesn't know anything more about what is currently going on in the world than what they see on the 10 o'clock news (if that even). They do no additional research into the history/politics/religion of the region. They take what is given to them and just accept it.

The poll results don't shock me at all... they sadden me because it tells me that many people still don't question the information they are being given. That saddens me because if the government decides to start taking away our civil liberties they (govt) will sugar coat it with, "It's for the good of the nation and it's people" and this same majority will CHEER... THAT'S why it makes me sad.

Jville... I'm not trying to attack you directly as I do not personally know you - and I do NOT believe in personal attacks. As I stated before I know many people who ARE informed and still are pro Bush. I am NOT saying that you are one of these sheep... I'm just saying that many ppl are and that's why polls are like that.

Fluff

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 08:44 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Yes, after the 2000 election, we should have learned that those polls don't mean a thing. After American Idol, we should have learned that the poll numbers are not accurate (stating that Kelly would win by 80%, when it was a 52/48 vote).

No one in my family has ever gotten a call from the poll folks. Gee, I wonder why? I can't wait till the next presidential election. I was a year too young to vote at the last one, not that it matters anyway. DC is a democratic city anyway. But still, I can't wait to participate in the process!

Twiggyish

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 08:50 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Whether or not people support Bush in the Iraq situation, should not be coupled with his popularity polls.
There are people, lifelong Republicans and Bush supporters, who are opposed to the possibility of war with Iraq.
I don't like polls. I have never liked polls. It doesn't matter who is president.
Polls aren't always fair representations of opinions. (It depends who is asked and how they are asked)

Gentoo

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 09:05 am EditMoveDeleteIP
The world needs its free thinkers. The world also needs its sheeple. Too many free thinkers and we have anarchy. Too many sheeple and we have despotism. Free thought leads to debate, dispute, and conflict. Sheepledom leads to harmony, obedience, and abuse. A healthy balance of both free thinkers and sheeple is needed. The world needs all kinds.

Jville

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 09:05 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Baaaaa Baaaaaa!

:)

Fluff

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 09:12 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Sheepledom leads to poor decision making.

Gentoo

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 09:19 am EditMoveDeleteIP
BTW, I find it sad that 9/11, the ultimate and most extreme expression of sheepledom, didn't wake americans up to the importance of at least a little free thinking.

Sheep in the planes above New York, sheep on the ground within new york. Let's have us a pot roast.

Ocean_Islands

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 09:26 am EditMoveDeleteIP
It seems as if Bush is trying to start a war that will last longer than his four-year presidency.

The country would vote for a president who is leading a war and he would be re-elected.

Faerygdds

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 09:29 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Jville! I was NOT calling you a sheep.. but if you REALLY want to think of yourself that way.. that's your right! lol

That being said... yes... the world need all of those people... leaders, followers, and free thinkers... we DO need a balance of all that...

Twiggyish

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 09:54 am EditMoveDeleteIP
just like this board!

Faerygdds

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 10:16 am EditMoveDeleteIP
OI... I totally agree... Bush is already working on trying to get re-elected. The biggest PROBLEM I see in his Presidency isn't that he wants to go to war as much as he wants to go to war no matter the cost. The PROBLEM is that the rest of the WORLD is looking at Bush and going... "What the HECK is he doing?" We no longer have ANY backing (so it seems) for what he is trying to in the global political arena! Yes... Amrica is a strong country, but EVERY country needs it's allies! My biggest concern is that he will push so far that foreign relations will completely disappear and we will have no allies.

I think that's ONE thing that many ppl fail to think about. They see the little picture... 9/11 and the war on terrorism, but they fail to see the BIG picture which is OUR place in Global political arena. And what's worse is that many don't care what X country thinks of us. Do ppl even realize what will happen to us as a country if the rest of the WORLD is AGAINST us???

Webkitty

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 10:25 am EditMoveDeleteIP
I voted in the last election. I'm in Florida (but don't blame me, I punched the right chad!!) Actually, that was a joke, we didn't have those types of ballots in my district.

We were hounded relentlessly by telephone pollers before the election. It was non-stop, we finally took the phone off the hook until it was over. I think it may have had something to do with the fact that we are registered Independant voters. (each side wanted us) I'm not "into" politics so I could be way off.

We voted for Gore and watched the process of re-counts and the whole ordeal with horror and fasination.
When the supreme court handed W the victory, I had a sinking feeling.

I don't care if Gore has no personality. I just want the job done without plunging the economy into ruins and causing WWIII. It scares me sometimes that people vote for charisma over substance. (not that I think W has any)

I have to admit, I haven't been following current events lately, and at the risk of sounding like a ditz, what happened to getting Osoma? How did W get from his stated mission after 9/11 to going after Sadam? Geesh. Diversion from the mess he made out of the ecomomy is my guess

I agree with Ocean, its scary to think that W would actually do that, but the economy is so bad he can't run on that..........(actually, its the same thing my husband said but I have been ignoring his mutterings on politics lately, my little, insignifigant life has been keeping my attention, dangerous in some ways, I know)

Fluff

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 10:52 am EditMoveDeleteIP
I'm so into politics, and I am loving this thread.

Yes, when Bush first started on the mission about Sadam, the first thing I thought about was Osama. The main person that he should've been after. I mean, we had proof on him, but he'd rather start something with someone that has not done anything to us recently (or that I know of).

I think that it is a bully tactic, and it helps take the heat off of him for not finding Osama (not that he would do the actual looking anyway).

I also think that Osama is chillin' right now, wherever he is.

I think that Saddam is crazy, so anyone in their right mind would just stay away from him if he hasn't done anything to us.

I also think that Bush may be trying to make his popularity ratings go back up. Why? It seems that whenever our country is in war, the ratings of the president go up. Bush's approval ratings were like 80% after 9/11. They've lowered since then.

I totally agree with Ocean_Islands when he/she says that he wants to lead us into a war that could possibly help him to be re-elected next year. I also think that by doing this, he's trying to help Republicans keep their seats in Congress this upcoming election. People aren't going to want to switch administrations when they are in the middle of a crisis, but in this case, who knows?

And maybe he does just want to make his daddy proud.

I'm done fussing.

PS- Do you know that like last week when Bush got back from his ranch with a meeting with Rumsfield, when the press were questioning him, he had the nerve to imply that he didn't understand why there was this big fuss over Saddam and why people were so concerned with it, and that it was being blown out of proportion!!!!!

I laughed when I saw it. He was the one on TV everyday talking about it, not us!!!! LOL!!

Marysafan

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 11:16 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Well, personally, I think President Bush is going to have a tough row to hoe. He has very little clout with the Congress. I beg to differ with the "sheep" theory. That might have been the case in 1960, but Viet Nam did teach us some very valuable lessons.

1. It is possible to love our country, but not support the current government.

2. Our government isn't always right.

3. We do have a voice and we can make it heard.

4. We can stop a war if we shout long enough and hard enough.

5. It is our duty to speak out.

I fear he will use the 9/11 commemorations to further his agenda just as he did last year, but people will wake up to it eventually.

We cannot be the agressor...ever. I will not stay silent again. I will do whatever it is I can do to stop the spread of this "war". We are not the world's policemen. If no one is behind us. If there is not a united front...then we MUST not be so bold as to think we alone are in the right...and everyone else is wrong.

If George W. Bush feels the need to finish the job his father started...we must stand up and tell him that we will not support this effort.

and THIS time...no one had better question our patriotism. We have paid the price and have earned the right to object. I will defend this country. I will help to make it strong, but I will not allow it to become a bully.

I apologize for my passion. I cannot bear to think what will happen to this country if this plan is allowed to go forward.

Fluff

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 11:40 am EditMoveDeleteIP
WOW!

Marysafan, that should be our new anthem. At least for the next two years, anyway.

Faerygdds

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 11:52 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Mary... I would LOVE to agree with you on this.

The problem is this... so many people have FORGOTTEN! How does that saying go again... if we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it...

Well... here we go again... the sheep theory is alive and kicking.. much to MY chagrin. I find myself saying, "You would think after (insert major historical event) that people would not (insert bad thing)" But it happens everyday in our counrty. I am a child born in 1971. I was not alive during vietnam. HOWEVER... I am all too aware of 1960's events because I have a thirst for knowledge and I asked a LOT of questions.

My father used to sit and tell me tales of Kent State, Vietnam, Whitman, JFK, Dr King, Malcolm X, etc... My Mother told me stories of having to sit in the back of the bus because she was hispanic. So I learned a lot FROM that time even though I wasn't ALIVE during that time. The problem is that during the 80's (the time when I was an impressionable teenager) MANY perents were more worried about thier bottom lines and their social status in life than they were about teaching their kids the lessons from the past.

I do agree though that one voice CAN make a difference... and I have hope for us as a species. But I also KNOW that one voice can only make a difference if it is heard and repeated by another voice. Chain reactions are what matters. I will NEVER give up without a fight!

Now... on to Saddam vs Osama...

When Desert Storm happened everyone was so upset because "Bush (Sr) didn't finish the job" But I knew then WHY it wasn't finished... Sadam was allowed to stay in power much for the same reason we put up with Arafat for so long... it's a known factor. We know how (whether positive or negative) HOW Saddam will react. Who knows how his predecessor would react to X situation.

Why don't we go after Osama... simple... we don't know where he is... we can't find him... and the gov't CHOOSES to presume that he is dead. So their theory is... why hunt a dead man??? Now... do we have any prove he is alive? NO. Do we have any proof that he is dead? No.

And Mary... don't lose that passion... I'm counting on it!!!! ;)

Jville

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 12:52 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
September 11 was the day everything changed. Everyone said so, and some still do. This Wednesday, CBS's special commemoration will be called 'The Day That Changed America'. Fox, slightly less passive, has gone with 'The Day America Changed'. But the best proof that nothing has changed are the networks' day-that-everything-changed specials themselves. The other day I warned against the Dianafication of September 11. But I was too late. Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, Connie Chung and the rest of the all-star sob-sisters will be out in force with full supporting saccharine piano accompaniment. The most disturbing footage - the planes slicing through the building, 200 people jumping to their deaths, the thud of bodies landing on the lobby roof - will not be shown. The networks have decided our anger needs to be managed. It's a very September 10 commemoration of September 11.

Much of the stuff that was alleged to have 'changed' never did except in the mind of addlepated media gurus: Irony is dead! Columnists wrote columns about it. And TV producers put vox-pops together with folks who agreed there was no irony to be found. And then people wrote columns ironically commenting on the irony-is-dead TV items. And, pretty soon, irony had snuck back in. And, before you know it, the pneumatic widow Anna Nicole Smith got her own reality show on MTV.

None of this matters. Most Americans don't watch Anna Nicole. I can't get MTV, never see it. But, if I could get it, whether or not I watched would be unconnected to the events of September 11. Nations do not change in a day. The day-everything-changed myth was a convenience. It enabled the media, for example, to explain why the guy they'd dismissed as an idiot for the last year seemed to be handling things okay. If this was the day that changed America, then it must have changed him, too: he'd been 'transformed'; he's 'grown in office'. (This narrative has now been discarded: the Bush dummy jokes are back, the cartoonists have re-shrunk him in office, drawing him once more as a small preppy schoolboy way too teeny for the Oval Office chair.) Bush, of course, was unchanged. He reacted to September 11 just as anyone who'd paid him any heed since 1999 would have expected him to. His view of the world was reinforced by 9/11, not shattered.

The change that occurred on September 11 was a simple one. When Osama bin Laden blew up the World Trade Center, he also blew up the polite fictions of the pre-war world. At Ground Zero, they've been working frantically to clear away the rubble. Likewise, at the UN, EU and all the rest, they've also been working frantically not so much to clear away the mess but to stick it back together and reconstruct the great fantasy world as it existed on 10 September, that bizarro make-believe land where Nato is a 'mutual defence alliance' and Egypt and Saudi Arabia are 'our staunch friends'. Even in America, some people are still living in that world. You can switch on the TV and hear apparently sane 'experts' using phrases like 'Bush risks losing the support of the Arab League'.

The easiest way to understand how little has changed is to consider the two UN conferences in South Africa which bookend the year. The weekend before 9/11, at the UN Conference Against Racism, Colonialism, Whitey, Hymie and Capitalism, Robert Mugabe's government was cheered to the rafters for calling on Britain and America to 'apologise unreservedly for their crimes against humanity'. Last week, when the world's jetset Luddites convened at the Church of the Sustainable Conception for the so-called Earth Summit, who got the biggest roar this time? Why, ol' Starver Bob, for a trenchant assault on the wickedness of Tony Blair.

A few weeks earlier, Libya was elected to chair the UN Human Rights Commission. Washington doesn't expect much from the UN, but why did it have to be Libya? Okay, it's never going to be America or Britain, but how about Belize or Western Samoa? Why did it have to be something so utterly contemptible of reality as the elevation of Colonel Gaddafi's flunkey? If the multilateral world is irrelevant, it's because its organs - the UN, EU, Nato - are diseased and sclerotic, and it has shown no willingness in the last year to address the fact.

Does that mean Bush is a unilateralist? Not at all. Bilateralism is booming. Since September 11, US-Russian, US-Chinese, US-Indian and US-Turkish relations have all improved, all of which are arguably more important than whether Washington sees eye to eye with Chris Patten. Only a very blinkered, self-absorbed Eurocentric would assume that because Mr Bush (as quoted in The Spectator last week) doesn't 'give a shit about the Europeans', he doesn't give a shit about anyone else: within a year, for example, the US has built productive relations with the Central Asian republics.

As for Europe, for the next couple of decades it will be too preoccupied saving itself to do much on the world stage: the EU faces a declining birth-rate, rising social costs, a swelling unassimilated immigrant population - all the indicators heading in the wrong direction. Islam For All reported approvingly the other day that, at present demographic rates, in 20 years' time the majority of Holland's children (those under 18) will be Muslim. It will be the first Islamic country in western Europe since the loss of Spain. Europe is the colony now.

So, whether or not the world changed, America's relationship with it did. A year on, there's still no agreement as to the meaning of 11 September. To some of us, it was an act of war. To Guardian columnists, it was the world's biggest 'but': yes, it was regrettable, BUT it was also a logical consequence of America's 'cowboy arrogance' blah blah. To the Muslims who celebrated openly in Ramallah and in Denmark and at Concordia University in Montreal, it was the most spectacular victory in a long conflict stretching back through Osama's ever greater provocations of the Nineties to 23 October 1983, when Hezbollah suicide bombers killed 300 American and French soldiers in Beirut and drove the Great Satan out of Lebanon. To other Muslims, it was obviously the work of Mossad. To John Lahr, theatre critic of the New Yorker, it was possibly the work of George W. Bush trying to distract attention from Democrat criticism of his missile-defence plans.

When an opinion-former's caught unawares, he retreats to his tropes, however lame, as Lahr did, and Pilger, Chomsky et al. But the clearest way to understand the meaning of the day is to look at those who were called upon to act rather than theorise. We now know that the fourth plane, United Flight 93, the one that crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, was heading for the White House. Had they made it, it would have been the strike of the day. It might have killed the Vice-President and who knows who else, but, even if it hadn't, think of the symbolism: the shattered façade, smoke billowing from a pile of rubble on Pennsylvania Avenue, just like the money shot in Independence Day. Those delirious Palestinians and Danes and Montrealers would have danced all night.

That they were denied their jubilation is because the dopey hijackers assigned by al-Qa'eda to Flight 93 were halfway across the continent before they made their move and started meandering back east. By the time the passengers began calling home on their cellphones, their families knew what had happened in New York. Unlike those on the earlier flights, the hostages on 93 understood they were aboard a flying bomb intended to kill thousands of their fellow citizens. They knew there would be no happy ending. So they gave us the next best thing, a hopeful ending. Todd Beamer couldn't get through to anyone except a telephone company operator, Lisa Jefferson. She told him about the planes that had smashed into the World Trade Center. Mr Beamer said they had a plan to jump the guys and asked her if she would pray with him, so they recited the 23rd psalm: 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me....'

Then he and the others rushed the hijackers. At 9.58 a.m., the plane crashed, not into the White House, but in some pasture outside Pittsburgh. As UPI's James Robbins wrote, 'The Era of Osama lasted about an hour and half or so, from the time the first plane hit the tower to the moment the General Militia of Flight 93 reported for duty.'

Exactly. The most significant development of September 11 is that it marks the day America began to fight back: 9/11 is not just Pearl Harbor but also the Doolittle Raid, all wrapped up in 90 minutes. No one will ever again hijack an American airliner with boxcutters, or, I'll bet, with anything else - not because of predictably idiotic new Federal regulations, but
because of the example of Todd Beamer's ad hoc platoon. Faced with a novel and unprecedented form of terror, American technology (cellphones) combined with the oldest American virtue (self-reliance) to stop it cold in little more than an hour. The passengers of Flight 93 were the only victims who knew what the hijackers had in store for them, and so they rose up, and began the transformation of Osama into a has-bin Laden.

Al-Qa'eda might yet come up with something new, but invention and improvisation are the hallmarks of a dynamic culture, not a stagnant one like Islamofascism. Flight 93 foreshadowed the innovations of the Afghan campaign, when men in traditional Uzbek garb sat on horses and used laser technology to guide USAF bombers to their targets. The B2s dropped their load and flew back to base - Diego Garcia or Mississippi. The 'Vietnam-style quagmire' crowd made the mistake of assuming the Pentagon is as institutionally resistant to fresh ideas as the average Ivy League faculty or American op-ed page.

The Flight 93 hijackers might have got lucky. They might have found themselves on a plane with John Lahr ('You guys are working for Bush, right?') or an Ivy League professor immersed in a long Harper's article about the iniquities of US foreign policy. They might have found themselves
travelling with Robert Daubenspeck of White River Junction, Vermont, who the day after September 11 wrote to my local newspaper advising against retaliation: 'Someone, someday, must have the courage not to hit back but to look them in the eye and say, "I love you.'' ' But, granted these exceptions, chances are any flight full of reasonably typical Americans would have found a group of people to do the right thing, to act as those on Flight 93 did. When you face these terrorists, when you 'look them in the eye', you see there's nothing to negotiate. Flight 93's passengers were the first to confront that - to understand that what they were up against
was not 'courage' (as I erroneously identified it a year ago) but a psychotic death-cultism in which before committing mass murder one carefully depilates and cleans one's genitalia because paradise is a brothel. They are dangerous only insofar as they're used by wily dictators, cheered on by their fellow Muslims and regarded ambivalently by much of the rest of the world.

But, on Flight 93, Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick, Thomas Burnett, Mark Bingham and others did not have the luxury of amused Guardianesque detachment. So they effectively inaugurated the new Bush Doctrine: when you know your enemies have got something big up their sleeves, you take 'em out before they can do it.

Everything that mattered after September 11 - Bush's moral clarity, the decision to hit back hard, the spirit of innovation, and the crystal-clear understanding that this is an enemy beyond negotiation -was present in the final moments of Flight 93. They're the bedrock American values, the ones you don't always see because everyone's yakking about Anna Nicole or the new 'reality-based' 'Beverly Hillbillies'. But we know that, like the Minutemen of the Revolutionary War, when you need them in a hurry they're always there.

Bush will need them in the years ahead because he has chosen to embark on the most ambitious change of all, a reversal of half a century of US policy in the Middle East. After the War of 1812, the British eventually concluded that neither they nor anyone else could ever win against the Americans. Size and distance made it uniquely secure. That changed on 11 September, and George W. Bush has never been in any doubt about the 'root cause': the lack of liberty in the Middle East. The polite fictions - Prince Abdullah
is 'moderate', Yasser Arafat is our 'partner in peace', the Syrian Foreign Minister is as respectable as Norway's - will no longer do. They led to slaughter.

So the Bush Doctrine of pre-emption is potentially the most profound change
in international relations in generations. Europe, for one, hasn't caught up to it: when it comes to Saddam, the Continentals are like the passengers on those first three planes; they're thinking he's a rational guy, just play it cool and he won't pull anything crazy.

But America learned the hard way: it's the world of September 10th that's really crazy.

The Spectator (U.K.)
09/07/2002
By Mark Steyn
New Hampshire

Costacat

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 01:27 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Bush does not need approval to go to war with Iraq. Two reasons. One, he can override Congress if he chooses (which is not always the popular choice). Second, because we *were* at war, and it "never finished," he's already been told that he just needs to "continue" the war. Totally semantics, and totally makes me mad. Great lesson in how to avoid the checks 'n balances in our country... <sigh>

Twiggyish

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 01:35 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Webkitty, same here with our county. We didn't have chads, either. (We used a different type of ballot)
I know what you're saying about the frustration, too.

Babyruth

Friday, September 06, 2002 - 01:38 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Wonderful thread! I hope to have a little time to add my two cents over the weekend. Will have to borrow Kstme's soapbox for a little bit, though. :)