Thursday, May 31, 2007

Ranting on a Thursday

Do you ever wonder if everyone else writes faster than you? I was reading my Blogs of Interest last night and early this morning and discovered that certain bloggers are posting and commenting a flood of words. How do they find the time? I know they have busy lives. I know they're as busy as I am. How can they devote so much time to posts and arguments?
      Yeah. Arguments. I've been reading those on ER's blog and his links to arguments on other blogs, and I'm amazed at the sheer wordage that's produced. Their fingers must blur as all those bloggers and comments respond to their opponents' latest salvos. How do they do it?
      More importantly, where do they get the emotional energy? I'm not a debate person. The few times that debates have happened on this blog -- while the number of comments was sort of cool -- the debates themselves were more distressing than interesting to me. I recognize that there are people who love to debate. Sometimes they pretend that's witnessing or "raising important issues" or "taking a stance," but mostly they just love showing off their intelligence and/or the sound of their own voices. It's a way to draw attention to their lives. And since they enjoy it and aren't making me participate or read, why shouldn't they argue, cuss, discuss, debate, and so on until they're blue in their respective faces? It's a free country and more power to them.
      However, I get cranky when someone says -- as a nameless, gutless, half-witted person did yesterday -- that I don't care about an issue just because I'm not willing to bind my wrist with my opponent's and take to the ring with rhetoric knives. I hold strong views. I hold very strong ones. But once I've stated my position and the other side has stated theirs, I'm done. Particularly if I feel the gulf between the two views can never be bridged. I won't waste my time, and I don’t expect the other guy to waste his. That is perhaps bloody-minded, but I'm busy, I've got things to do, and time is too precious to squander.
      All of this relates to the war in Iraq. I've never made a secret of my opposition to the war, but I don’t go around proclaiming it, either. Furthermore, our troops are there, and there is no quick way to pull them out without losing all the advances we've made. If we had a time machine and could go back and I were president, I'd not send our troops over there in the first place. Instead, I'd put a price on Saddam's head -- say, 50 million because he was a murderous madman and the world is better and safer without him -- and spend the rest of those billions on putting alternative fuel cars on the marketplace. (Not research, which the government seems to fund endlessly, but actual development. Put hybrids, electrics, air-engines, etc. vehicles out there, and let the marketplace sort them out. America has mainlined oil too long and allowed other nations to control us. We need to kick the habit once and for all.) But we have no time machine so we can't redo it. We have to work with what we have. This is the real world.

Our ability to rise above the muck, to strive to be better humans, to believe in justice and liberty when all reason says we shouldn't ... That's the essence of America.
      This is the lesson Cindy Sheehan doesn't understand that the majority of the Democratic senators and representatives do. We're there. We can't undo what has been done. We have to deal with what is. Oh, the Democrats like to snipe at Bush and Cheney and the rest of the Republicans -- that's politics as usual, and if you think either party doesn't play stinkin' dirty when they can, you're deluded -- but most of them realize the predicament we're in. Everyone who has a brain does. Iraq is a snake pit of hate and anger and suffering. Pulling out immediately would plunge that country into further chaos. We walk a tightrope there. And the only hope we have is that enough Iraq people finally decide that they're tired of killing each other. It's not a vain hope. People get tired of losing their children and family. But they're having to overcome centuries of hatred, prejudice and loss. It's going to take time. Our courageous and precious troops are giving those people the time to learn a new way. What they do is noble. Never forget that.
      We Americans have always been hopelessly naïve. We generally behave well, we try to do right, we see ourselves as the guys in the white hats. We're always surprised when other countries break treaties, lie to us, etc. We expect them to be as good as we are. We expect them to long for freedom and peace. This is our greatest weakness and our greatest strength. Our ability to rise above the muck, to strive to be better humans, to believe in justice and liberty when all reason says we shouldn't ... That's the essence of America. We are simply the best and brightest that the world has ever seen. We have problems -- we're not perfect -- but we're the closest we're going to get down here. And we're only going to get better.
      Those are my beliefs. I hold them hard. I hold them strong. If you think I don't, you're either willfully ignorant or hopelessly blind. And I won't waste any time with you.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

You get half an "Amen" from me. However, I won't go into what I disagree with you about because I enjoy the peace I find here. :)

Anonymous said...

You get a full "Amen!" from me. :)

Crystal

Anonymous said...

Tech, you only get 1/2 amen from me, too! I agree with everything you said except where you say we have to stay in Iraq. Why do we? We didn't worry about that country when we went in. We were going to stamp out WMDs. We weren't bringing liberty to them. We were protecting our nation. Of course the WMDs turned out to not exist and were only a lie by BushCo. and the oil companies powerful interests. But my point is that we didn't worry about their country beforehand; why are we pretending to worry about it now? If our troops left today, we leave them in better shape than when we got there. Saddam is dead and good riddance, but why should our boys have to die to bring liberty to a nation that doesn't even want it?

Sorry. I got riled up. But 1/2 amen for you anyhows.

Anonymous said...

Ooo, someone needs a nap! :)

I don't amen but I do attaboy!

SBB said...

So, FF, did I get A or men? :)

Thanks, Crystal.

Thanks for the half, Gloria.

Thanks for the attaboy, Slim. And I did nap today!

Anonymous said...

I guess you would get the "A" since I don't think you lean the "men" way. ;)

SBB said...

Woohoo! An 'A'! When I got an A in school, my dad would give me money, FF. So when's that cash on its way?

Anonymous said...

Can i have the men? I have lots of work for a couple of good strong men. I keep my two really busy.
Roen

SBB said...

Roen, you'll have to talk to FF and Gloria. They're keeping the men!

Anonymous said...

I thought you would give some response to me, Tech! I'm disappointed. :(

SBB said...

Well, Gloria, I didn't respond because we've talked about this before. I know your position on this -- you believe Bush lied -- and I believe that the intelligence agencies dropped the ball. There didn't seem much point in rehashing it. We both agree that Bush made mistakes. We also disagree on whether or not our troops should be immediately withdrawn. Once again, we've discussed that already. I'm not going to change your mind, and you're not going to change mine. So I think we've agreed to disagree. :)

Anonymous said...

At Tech’s encouragement, I have decided to post. I’ll begin by saying my purpose is not to prolong the debate, but rather to offer a bit of insight that has not yet been mentioned…snippets of the literature on the very topics in dispute. Undoubtedly, though, you’ll still identify my political ideology…it’s impossible to disguise in such a conversation. First, you have to note that two separate accounts (Bob Woodward in “Plan of Attack” and Richard Clarke in “Against All Enemies”) indicate President Bush (at the urging of Donald Rumsfeld) decided LONG before March 2003 that we should foster regime change in Iraq. That is not to say, however, that all senior administration officials were involved. Colin Powell, for example, was very hesitant to support this decision, that is until his address to the UN in February 2003, where he so eloquently stated satellite images revealed what “could” be weapons transport trucks or weapons bunkers. We’ve bombed on suspicion before and been very wrong (case in point, the baby food factory that we leveled during Bush senior’s expedition into Iraq). Many people, on both sides of the aisle, believe this change of heart was out of a sense of duty, and Powell resigned at the most appropriate time. I would agree. Second, to point the proverbial finger, you must gesture in the direction of the revered Condoleeza Rice, who was warned in July 2001 (by a duo that included one, George Tenet, DCIA) that an attack was inevitable…an alert she ignored. While we’re on the subject of Dr. Rice, let us not forget the emphasis she and the rest of the administration placed on promoting democracy in the Middle East. A wonderful idea…until a radical sect of Islam is popularly elected (Hamas in Palestine). Quite a costly blunder? Finally, we have to note one final ploy: almost all Republicans will tell you conditions in Iraq are improving, however Woodward tells us in “State of Denial” that internal memos between the White House and Pentagon suggest otherwise. Although a bit contrary to these conditions, Woodward also reveals that former SOS Kissinger, a brilliant intellect and statesman respected by both parties, contends the only successful exit strategy is to defeat insurgents and their ability to trigger mass chaos.

Anonymous said...

I think TL is saying that Bush had already planned the attack on Iraq long before they had any evidence of WMDs. It's a safe bet that the intelligence agencies were given orders to find the evidence needed to justify the attack.

SBB said...

Yes, I do think that's what TL is saying, Gloria. Of course, I always wonder if people seriously think Bush is an insane mass murderer. Because that's the only conclusion you can draw if you believe he lied to get us into the way.

Anonymous said...

Bush is a murderer! Tech I don't know why you have a problem with accepting that.

Anonymous said...

To say that President Bush is a murderer is BEYOND disgraceful! As a populace, we can criticize his administration, its policies, even him personally (we all know he’s not the epitome of eloquence), but to suggest that he or any of his advisors are murderers is 1) unfounded and 2) completely ridiculous. As I indicated earlier and as I’m sure all of Tech’s readers will recall, the debate concerning Iraq began long before the invasion. Moreover, after the invasion, there was sufficient time to write your Senators and Representatives, urging them to consider their position on authorizing military force in Iraq as required by the War Powers Act. Did you do so? Clearly this is a rhetorical question…of course you didn’t, as doing so wouldn’t have made a significant difference. We are limited in our accessibility to those that make important decisions.
I don’t mean this as a personal attack; I’m simply arguing that to use such powerful language, especially directed at our country’s leader and head of the free world, isn’t appropriate; especially considering the extent of the knowledge we (as citizens) have on the subject. Undoubtedly mistakes continue to be made, though to believe truly that POTUS could be a cold-blooded killer is to forsake hope in the strength and intellect of the American people.

Anonymous said...

Although I've never said that about Bush, isn't it true? If he lied, haven't our troops died for a lie? Or if it was an honest mistake, haven't they died for a mistake?

Our troops are wonderful and deserve our total support but there's a difference between supporting our troops and supporting the war. The Republicans try to make it the same thing, but it's not and never ever will be.

Erudite Redneck said...

Re, I guess you would get the "A" since I don't think you lean the "men" way. ;)

LOL

A and men to TL. If Woodward is to believed -- and he was given dang near unprecedented access to the White House -- then Bush did, in fact, come into office looking for a reason to go back to war with Iraq. Of course, 9/11 didn't give him one, but he pretended, and still pretends, that it did.

I won't call him a mass murderer, though, or even a murderer. No more than Johnson and Nixon. Or Lincoln and Jeff Davis. Or ... any other president who skirted or ignored the truth to go to war.

Oh, Tech, as far as the energy to argue in blogdom: I used to do it in bars. I don't go to bars much anymore. ;-)