A move by Senate Democrats to force Bush and the White House to come out with a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal was defeated. Oh the subtlety of media outlets is so beautiful yet so ugly. The GOP "blocked" this move, according to ABC News. They didn't "disagree" or "stop" it. Like a-holes, they "blocked" it.
The Democrats, and a good deal of other people, want a timetable for withdrawal. This seems like a reasonable request on the part of the Dems. It would be nice to know when the war will be over.
There's a problem, however. Wars don't end on schedules. Looking back through history, wars are often underestimated in length. When the war goes over that length, the people start getting aggravated. Although the White House has NEVER come out with any schedule or promises of a quick and easy war, people in this country expected one. In reality, the legitimate war has been over for a long time. A second war in Iraq has been underway since then.
If a timetable were to be made for U.S. troop withdrawal, it should not be made public. Only coalition and Iraqi forces should know when and how our troops will be leaving. This information should be kept from the insurgents. If they knew when we were leaving, they could somehow use it to their advantage. What if they plan massive attacks before we elave Iraq, killing hundreds or even thousands of our troops? What if they plan massive attacks for the day after we leave? This would seriously jeapordize Iraqi security forces ability to maintain stability.
Politically, issuing a timetable would be an unwise move. If the White House published one that was a cautious prediction, people would think that the war would be going on for too long. If the timetable were very aggressive in bringing troops home early, it would probably not be followed. This would cause even more political outrage towards an administration that is suffering from that mallady as it is.
The Democratic Party, in my opinion, often suffers from over-idealism. Yes, it would be terriffic to be able to mark a day on a calendar as "Troops Come Home Day." Then we could plan big parades and celebrate that our part in the war is essentially over. Unfortunately, wars do not operate in such ways. When the Allies invaded Normandy, nobody knew how long it would take for them to liberate France. Their timetables for the Normandy invasion itself were quite mistaken. In an effort to make up for lost time taking Caen, the Allies implemented a plan that was somewhat foolish and resulted in far too many Allied deaths for far too little gain. Timetables can often be dangerous.
To simplify (perhaps overly so), war is like a football game with no clock. The two sides don't stop playing until one is destroyed or one quits. Imagine if the Super Bowl were played in such a manner. You couldn't really come up with any sort of timetable for victory, could you? Even if you were up by 56 points (which we aren't in Iraq), you still couldn't point to a moment when your team could claim victory and leave the field.
What makes the Democrats request somewhat ridiculous, in my eyes, is that they often claim that we are losing the war in Iraq. I'm not going to claim that we are winning it. Wars between terrorists and legitimate armed forces rarely have a side that is "winning." This is because the goal of the terorrists is to destroy the armed forces and the goal of the armed forces is to destroy the terrorists. Until either one accomplishes their goal, neither one is winning or losing.
If the Democrats truly believe that we are losing, then troop withdrawal timetables are not a good idea. If they beleive that we are losing, they should either be pushing for total and outright withdrawal from Iraq to save the lives of out troops, or they should not be expressing any desire to remove troops so that we can win the war. They claim that we're losing, yet they want us to withdraw slowly as if we were winning but the war wasn't over. Which is it?
This is what Harry Reid (D-Nevada) had to say:
"We want to change the course. We can't stay the course."
If that isn't a defeated attitude, I don't know what is. It sounds to me that Harry is assuming that we cannot win in Iraq. If he truly felt this way, however, he would urge for total withdrawal now, not a timetable for eventual gradual withdrawal.
The Republicans of the Senate did not vote for the timetable measure. They proposed a different measure. It passed 79-19.
Bill Frist (R-Tennesse, Majority Leader) stated: "They [the Democrats] want an exit strategy, a cut-and-run exit strategy. What we are for is a successful strategy."
The measure passed by the Senate urges there to be a concerted effort to make Iraq a fully sovereign nation. This would eliminate the need for U.S. troops in Iraq, thus ending our direct involvement in the war. However, the measure included no desire for a specific timetable to be set by the White House for troop withdrawals.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
LONE STAR TYRANNY
The State of Texas has approved a Constitutional ban on gay marriages. I’m straight, a citizen of Massachusetts, and I live in New York. So how does this affect me or any other straight person and/or non-Texan? It doesn’t…just yet. However, despite fear of using a hackneyed cliché, the slope is a slippery one.
The main argument behind banning gay marriage seems to be a desire to maintain the so-called sanctity of marriage. That’s the public face of the argument. I don’t think I’m assuming too much when I assert that the less visible motivation behind this desire is the view of homosexuals as people with some sort of psychological disease.
This belief may be true and it may not be true. Like most aspects of psychology, there just isn’t enough scientific evidence to prove or even imply a conclusion either way. However, lack of scientific evidence has rarely stopped ignorance. (See: Kansas)
The people who are against gay marriage are mostly people who believe that there is something immoral about homosexuality. Not that there’s anything wrong with that belief. It isn’t my right to tell people who to believe. However, it soon may be.
If you’re gay, you can’t get married in Texas. So what? Just think about this, though. What’s to stop a state from banning marriage between alcoholics. After all, alcoholism is perceived by many as a disease. Furthermore, alcoholics might degrade the sanctity of marriage. They might even get drunk on the wedding night! Certainly a good, moral, Christian marriage would not require alcohol to assist in the couple’s copulation. This means we can ban alcohol from any marriage. If you can’t stay sober throughout the marriage, it must not be a very good marriage. The sanctity of marriage must be preserved!
We’re still not truly sanctified yet. What if people of two different religions want to be married? How is that sacred or moral? How would they raise their kids? What if they (gasp) raised their kids without a religion? How can a person be moral without religion in their lives? This rules out marriages between atheists, agnostics, and anyone who will allow their child to make his or her own spiritual decisions. They’re not sanctified enough.
And what about those Jews and Muslims? They don’t believe in Christian morality as we do. How can any marriage be truly sanctified if the people involved aren’t moral, upstanding Christians? According to a good deal of people, it can’t. Don’t be shocked to see this type of amoral union banned pretty soon.
Then there are the Catholics. It is true that they have some Christian morals, but they are also Papists. What if the Pope tells them to do something amoral in their marriage like engage in consensual sodomy? It may be a sin now in the Catholic Church, but those Catholics are always changing their minds based on what the Pope tells them to do. They can’t be trusted to have a sanctified marriage.
Then there are those sinners that have sexual relations before being married. They even have sex with people they don’t love! How can these people be trusted to have sanctified marriages if the act of making love is seen as a game to them? They can’t be trusted. Pretty soon, they won’t be.
There are many people who think that gay marriage should be legal. They obviously do not believe in the importance of the sanctity of marriage. Either that, or they feel that gays being marries does not violate the sanctity of marriage. Either way, they cannot be trusted to have a sanctified marriage if they don’t value sanctity or don’t recognize the threat of homosexuals.
Gays could still get married in secret by priests or judges that don’t agree with the law. There has to be some way of stopping this. We must save the sanctity of marriage! We must eliminate homosexuality in Texas. We can do this several ways. We can try to cure them of being homosexuals by deprogramming them. We can kick them out of Texas. We could imprison them and separate them. Or we could kill them all. The safest option is to kill them.
If we kill the gays, we mind as well kill the Jews, Muslims, Catholics, atheists, liberals, and everyone else who might violate the sanctity of marriage. We’ve violated their other rights such as liberty and the pursuit of happiness, so violating the right to life isn’t that big of a deal. Besides, the sanctity of marriage is much more important.
Will the state of Texas go all the way down this road? I don’t know. Probably not. But they have started. This might be an issue that effects only gay Texans that want to get married, but like all issues involving civil liberties, it affects us all.
The main argument behind banning gay marriage seems to be a desire to maintain the so-called sanctity of marriage. That’s the public face of the argument. I don’t think I’m assuming too much when I assert that the less visible motivation behind this desire is the view of homosexuals as people with some sort of psychological disease.
This belief may be true and it may not be true. Like most aspects of psychology, there just isn’t enough scientific evidence to prove or even imply a conclusion either way. However, lack of scientific evidence has rarely stopped ignorance. (See: Kansas)
The people who are against gay marriage are mostly people who believe that there is something immoral about homosexuality. Not that there’s anything wrong with that belief. It isn’t my right to tell people who to believe. However, it soon may be.
If you’re gay, you can’t get married in Texas. So what? Just think about this, though. What’s to stop a state from banning marriage between alcoholics. After all, alcoholism is perceived by many as a disease. Furthermore, alcoholics might degrade the sanctity of marriage. They might even get drunk on the wedding night! Certainly a good, moral, Christian marriage would not require alcohol to assist in the couple’s copulation. This means we can ban alcohol from any marriage. If you can’t stay sober throughout the marriage, it must not be a very good marriage. The sanctity of marriage must be preserved!
We’re still not truly sanctified yet. What if people of two different religions want to be married? How is that sacred or moral? How would they raise their kids? What if they (gasp) raised their kids without a religion? How can a person be moral without religion in their lives? This rules out marriages between atheists, agnostics, and anyone who will allow their child to make his or her own spiritual decisions. They’re not sanctified enough.
And what about those Jews and Muslims? They don’t believe in Christian morality as we do. How can any marriage be truly sanctified if the people involved aren’t moral, upstanding Christians? According to a good deal of people, it can’t. Don’t be shocked to see this type of amoral union banned pretty soon.
Then there are the Catholics. It is true that they have some Christian morals, but they are also Papists. What if the Pope tells them to do something amoral in their marriage like engage in consensual sodomy? It may be a sin now in the Catholic Church, but those Catholics are always changing their minds based on what the Pope tells them to do. They can’t be trusted to have a sanctified marriage.
Then there are those sinners that have sexual relations before being married. They even have sex with people they don’t love! How can these people be trusted to have sanctified marriages if the act of making love is seen as a game to them? They can’t be trusted. Pretty soon, they won’t be.
There are many people who think that gay marriage should be legal. They obviously do not believe in the importance of the sanctity of marriage. Either that, or they feel that gays being marries does not violate the sanctity of marriage. Either way, they cannot be trusted to have a sanctified marriage if they don’t value sanctity or don’t recognize the threat of homosexuals.
Gays could still get married in secret by priests or judges that don’t agree with the law. There has to be some way of stopping this. We must save the sanctity of marriage! We must eliminate homosexuality in Texas. We can do this several ways. We can try to cure them of being homosexuals by deprogramming them. We can kick them out of Texas. We could imprison them and separate them. Or we could kill them all. The safest option is to kill them.
If we kill the gays, we mind as well kill the Jews, Muslims, Catholics, atheists, liberals, and everyone else who might violate the sanctity of marriage. We’ve violated their other rights such as liberty and the pursuit of happiness, so violating the right to life isn’t that big of a deal. Besides, the sanctity of marriage is much more important.
Will the state of Texas go all the way down this road? I don’t know. Probably not. But they have started. This might be an issue that effects only gay Texans that want to get married, but like all issues involving civil liberties, it affects us all.
INTRODUCTORY POST
My name is Rob. I am an economically conservative, socially liberal college student from Massachusetts. I live in the center of the liberal enclave known as Ithaca, NY. When I say center, I mean center. City Hall is my next door neighbor.
I am a supporter of George W. Bush because I feel that national defense takes precedant over most issues. This doesn't mean that I am for every decision he makes or policy he supports. I beleive in tax cuts for large corporations, but I also beleive in universal health care. The most important thing to me, politically speaking, is our ruler: The Constitution.
I am not a product of right wing spin. I don't watch Fox News. In fact, I don't have cable in my apartment in Ithaca. My news comes from the Associated Press, CNN.com, and Boston.com. When I am in Massachusetts, my television watching is limited to HBO and ESPN.
My first love is the Boston Red Sox, my second is the New England Patriots. I also love the Bruins, Celtics, and every other team that calls Massachusetts its home. Here is a link to my Boston sports blog.
Anyway, I hope to post consistently on this blog. I feel that the overwhelming amount of news in the world today will make finding topics easy. However, my school work often involves writing and I tire of it easily so at the end of the day I occasionally neglect doing more writing than is necesary for school.
A more regularly updated political blog is my brother's: Edit Copy. He and I rarely agree on a good deal of issues, but it is a well formatted blog and he is good at expressing opinions. He was trained as a philosopher by the Jesuits of Fairfield. That sounds more mythical than saying he was a philosophy major at Fairfield U, don't you think?
Anyway, that's me and my intentions with this blog in a nutshell. Enjoy.
I am a supporter of George W. Bush because I feel that national defense takes precedant over most issues. This doesn't mean that I am for every decision he makes or policy he supports. I beleive in tax cuts for large corporations, but I also beleive in universal health care. The most important thing to me, politically speaking, is our ruler: The Constitution.
I am not a product of right wing spin. I don't watch Fox News. In fact, I don't have cable in my apartment in Ithaca. My news comes from the Associated Press, CNN.com, and Boston.com. When I am in Massachusetts, my television watching is limited to HBO and ESPN.
My first love is the Boston Red Sox, my second is the New England Patriots. I also love the Bruins, Celtics, and every other team that calls Massachusetts its home. Here is a link to my Boston sports blog.
Anyway, I hope to post consistently on this blog. I feel that the overwhelming amount of news in the world today will make finding topics easy. However, my school work often involves writing and I tire of it easily so at the end of the day I occasionally neglect doing more writing than is necesary for school.
A more regularly updated political blog is my brother's: Edit Copy. He and I rarely agree on a good deal of issues, but it is a well formatted blog and he is good at expressing opinions. He was trained as a philosopher by the Jesuits of Fairfield. That sounds more mythical than saying he was a philosophy major at Fairfield U, don't you think?
Anyway, that's me and my intentions with this blog in a nutshell. Enjoy.
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