[Kosh]

Also- Hitler was a good speaker with tons of charisma, but not much else, so we could use him against Obama just as well as against McCain.

Hitler also didn't understand his own limitations and genuinely believed his WW1 experience allowed him to understand how to wage war, which combined with a bit of paranoia led to him taking complete control of the german army which allowed him to make all of those mistakes.

[Turambar]

we've got some McCain ads up in our banner asking if it's OK to unconditionally meet with Anti-American foreign leaders

i think we know who the better choice is just from that.

(i tried to click yes but it just took me to the donation page    )

[Mars]

That's one of the reasons I'm voting for Obama, it was pretty strange when both Mccain and Hilary were ranting about how naive it was to talk to the leader of Iran.

[Blue Lion]

If you talk to them, they become real!

If you ignore them, they exist only in imagination land!

[Flipside]

If you demand an experienced candidate- McCain was in the Navy for 22 years, an Arizona Senator 1982-1987 and is a US Senator since Jan 1987.
Obama's career starts much later.

Also- Hitler was a good speaker with tons of charisma, but not much else, so we could use him against Obama just as well as against McCain.

Well, experience isn't all that important, America spent 8 years with Ronnie Reagan as President, and, despite being bought up as an actor, he did a considerably better job than many who were raised as politicians. (Oddly enough, another talker with gun, rather than a shooter with a voice).

As for Hitler, he was a great orator but, and this should be remembered, he was also preaching largely to the choir. He was in a country that was ripe for fascism to take control, people wanted a scapegoat, and a promise that things would get better, they were still recovering from the damage of WW1 and were in the middle of a depression caused by it.

Whilst America's situation echoes that in some respects, I'd hardly consider it 'ripe for fascism', if it was, Obamas name and face would meant he'd never even have made it to the position he was in in the first place.

Obama ain't perfect, I'll gladly accept that, but McCain, in my opinion, he's downright dangerous.

[BengalTiger]

Well, experience isn't all that important, America spent 8 years with Ronnie Reagan as President, and, despite being bought up as an actor, he did a considerably better job than many who were raised as politicians. (Oddly enough, another talker with gun, rather than a shooter with a voice).

Yeah, Reagan could come back from the dead and have another presidency. I wonder if the Constitution allows zombie presidents?
Also- Reagan was in the Army Reserves during WW II. His political career began in the '40's with Roosevelt still in office, and before being POTUS, he was Governor of California, 1967–1975, so he had political experience when becoming the President; tons of it.
That means he's a bad example of an inexperienced good president, actually quite opposite from one.

As for Hitler Obama, he was is a great orator but, and this should be remembered, he was is also preaching largely to the choir. He was in a country that was ripe for fascism to take control, people wanted a scapegoat (Bush Administration), and a promise that things would get better, they were are still recovering from the damage of WW1 9/11 and the subsequent 2 invasions and were are in the middle of a depression caused by it.

Whilst America's situation echoes that in some respects, I'd hardly consider it 'ripe for fascism', if it was, Obamas name and face would meant he'd never even have made it to the position he was in in the first place.

You'd be surprized how many similarities there can be found by very simple text manipulations. Most of them seem to be true, to make it more scary.

Obama ain't perfect, I'll gladly accept that, but McCain, in my opinion, he's downright dangerous.

Could you back that up?

[Vretsu]

Could you back that up?

How about staying in Iraq for "100 years?"



And to a lesser degree, more tax cut gimmicks designed solely to piss off the surviving members of the intelligencia.

[Flipside]

Er... By crossing out the part about the country being ripe for fascism, you take away the entire reason Hitler got in. America is not 1930's Germany, that's my entire point.

As for McCain being dangerous, it's his policies that make him dangerous, the last thing the world needs is another 4 years of an America that thinks that posturing, threatening and ignoring any attempts at communication is a good foreign policy.

[Scuddie]

Obama is definitely less experienced.  However, considering Obama doesn't preach hate, acknowledges his shortcomings, and avoids absolutely forcing agendas upon people, I'd say he's a far less dangerous person that John McCain.

[NGTM-1R]

Comparing Obama to Hitler is...

Well let me put it this way. It could only be more utterly hilarous if Obama were Jewish. Either you are ignorant, or you are willfully ignorant, regarding the senator, the megalomaniac, or both.


But I find this commentary on foriegn policy ignorant itself in another way. Put simply, it takes two to communicate, and those people we don't talk to don't really want to talk to us either. North Korea wasn't any more rational during Clinton's time in office then it was during G.W.B.'s (or for that matter his father's, or even Reagan's). Iran wasn't any more tractable. Their leaders regard us as bearers of a plague of democracy that could well get them killed, and their people have been told it's all our fault so often that most of them actually believe it. Communication, unfortunately, hasn't actually solved any major ideological conflicts. It took a world war for democracy to trump facism; it took Reagan's defense buildup in '80s to force the USSR to try to follow suit, and collapse under the weight of its own armor.

Talking to the president of Iran is not going to solve anything. And unless the current situation in Iraq is brought to a conclusion ending in a stable, prosperous democracy for that country forty years from now (there is a famous quote from Eisenhower about the occupation of Germany post-WW2 that comes to mind), then the tactic that brought the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics down won't avail us much either. Which is one of the reasons we need to stay there regardless of whether or not it was right to go in the first place.

McCain's policies are not dangerous; arguably withdrawing from Iraq is more dangerous as it represents increased isolationism, which it can be convincingly argued got us a couple of world wars. What McCain advocates after all worked on the USSR. It's got a successful track record. G.W.B was a failed brinksman and didn't recognize the line between applying them and overapplying them. This is extremely unlikely to happen again in the near future.

[Flipside]

Thing is, I suspect America had far more control in the Middle East before it invaded Iraq. Yes, a lot of those leaders were pretty intractable, which is why Clinton, Reagan etc came up with the idea of ballistic diplomacy, that got their attention and prompted action without dragging both countries into a self destructive wars. It wasn't perfect by a long shot, but it was, at the very least, a step up from the current situation.

I think part of the problem is not that leaders don't want to talk to the US, it's that they don't want to talk to the Bush administration, they delivered a whole pile of statements and ultimatums regarding these leaders, and the East is not the West, their politics doesn't work like Western politics, when Bush made those threats, I think in many areas, they weren't seen as an option to open diplomatic communication and find a solution, and were seen more as a statement of Bush's intended solution whether they liked it or not.

I suppose it's one thing having the enemy right there, in front of you in uniform, and another when they can quite happily pop your balloons from several hundred miles outside your controlled area, that sort of promotes the urge to talk.

[BengalTiger]

Comparing Obama to Hitler is...

I wrote loud and clear I was manipulating text, and even left the original so everyone could know where it was manipulated. It was part of the response I made to people who compared Hitler to McCain.

Also- thanks for the support, I now see there's at least 3 people here who think globaly enough to understand why "100 more years in Iraq" is the right thing to do now (Hell, McCain's son is serving there now).


Being Polish I know very well... too well, what happens when you try to appease a psycho.
The problem with Hitler was he built tanks, airplanes and U-Boats. He had a ban on those weapons, by resolution of the League of Nations, to prevent WW II.
If there was invasion and occupation once the West found out about Germany's expansion plans, most of us here would be b****ing about Germany's rights, and about how wrong occupying a country is, and how wrong it is that a few thousand people got killed because of it.
There was no reaction however, and Hitler understood he could do what he wants. So we had over 6 million people burned to ashes in places like Auschwitz II, Stutthof, Bergen-Belsen.

Now today we have a president in Iran, who has a right given by the Iranian Constitution to erase Israel with all means available (not 100% sure here, but I've read/heard about it from more than 1 source), and who wants to research nuclear energy, claiming he can do what he wants, and that he'll use the atom only in a peacefull way.


Also, we have Osama bin Laden living under a small rock, in the middle of a desert, who's powers are limited to a threat on Al Jazira every now and then. We also have a dead Saddam Hussein, who killed countless people, and tortured many more.

But everyone is b***ing about how wrong it is not to talk to people who use airliners as guided missiles, or use chemical weapons against whole towns, because only 95% of the vilagers support their dictatorship.

[Scuddie]

I sincerely hope you are joking.

[MP-Ryan]

I sincerely hope you are joking.

I was trying to come up with a throrough response to that mess and I gave up - it seemed better to let it stand on its own ridiculousness than try to argue it.  But your method works too =)

[Blue Lion]

The general rule of thumb when dealing with an enemy many many times weaker than you is to trump up their abilities so going to war with them seems like a good idea.

Iran is not Germany. They aren't.

Comparisons to Nazi Germany and death camps and the like will get you ridiculed, not taken seriously.

Second major point: The world is not recovering from a major world war. Quite the opposite, we have plenty of nations with tons of soldiers and defense budgets and nothing to do with them.

Do you what will make us too weak to stop a serious threat to our (the US/the world/whatever) security and safety?

Going to war with every nation who wants to talk big and kick dirt at us.

I can list nations in the Middle East, southeast Asia, the former soviet nations, and Africa who are in dire need of an ass kicking. You can't invade them all and try to completely redo their nations while you have a standing army sit there for x years and keep the peace.

Iraq and Afghanistan aren't rousing successes, no matter what the news media/government says.

Do you keep the troops there for decades to keep the peace? What happens if there is a real conflict? The US armed forces are stretched enough as it is.

Do you really think the American people are going to accept a war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran with the possibility of war in North Korea AND keep US soil safe AND hold troops in reserve for disasters/unforseen wars?

The people and money costs would be enormous. People would start to hate wars, all wars. THAT'S when you'll get your Hitler, when we're too tired to fight back.

[Mefustae]

What is it with orange text and staggering idiocy?

Do you keep the troops there for decades to keep the peace? What happens if there is a real conflict? The US armed forces are stretched enough as it is.

To be fair, McCain and the like have a point in wanting to stay in Iraq for the time being. Regardless of the shady legality of the initial invasion, the botched execution, and the incredible amount of corruption and ineptitude in the occupation to this point; the US must stay there. It's a downer, but the US has a very good chance of achieving its goals within Iraq if it remains in there until it can get the nation under control, whereas pulling out would completely destroy the country and turn a brushfire in the region into an out-and-out inferno.

Staying there is a bad idea, nobody has any illusions to the contrary, but up and leaving would be far, far worse.

[Blue Lion]

To be fair, McCain and the like have a point in wanting to stay in Iraq for the time being. Regardless of the shady legality of the initial invasion, the botched execution, and the incredible amount of corruption and ineptitude in the occupation to this point; the US must stay there. It's a downer, but the US has a very good chance of achieving its goals within Iraq if it remains in there until it can get the nation under control, whereas pulling out would completely destroy the country and turn a brushfire in the region into an out-and-out inferno.

A few major points on that.

We don't have to stay there. Clamping down on the nation is great for pushing numbers down, but it's not the same as fixing the country. When we leave, they will do what they want, period. If it's violence, it's violence, and years of US occupation won't fix that.

If we leave, what's the worst case scenario? Really? Ethnic clensing? Maybe. Do you think a few Iowa National Guardsman stationed at checkpoints for the next few years is gonna solve that? Doubt it.

Sunni vs Shia isn't gonna vanish cause we got them to write a constitution.

What I'm basically saying is they've been killing each other for the last 5-6 years with and without our help. When we leave, they're gonna go back. We cannot support a lengthy occupation of a nation that size in our current state, not alone anyways.

Do I understand that if we leave they're going to start fighting more than likely? Yea, they probably are. It's costing a crapload of money to do what essentially Iran, Saudia Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Turkey should be doing themselves.

There is enough crap going on in the Caribbean, South America, Asia, the Pacific Islands, Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe to avoid putting almost everything we have in babysitting people who hate each other because we hope if we stay there long enough, it'll stop.

It's huge, it's expensive and I didn't want to do it in the first place.

[Flipside]

I think the thing is, it's not a question of the US Soldiers dealing with Terrorism there, they could be there for another 100 years doing that, they might as well walk around carrying boards saying 'scapegoat', every little problem that arises, whether linked to the occupation or not will be the fault of 'them'. It's a gift horse from a political point of view.

Many confrontational leaders see themselves in a win-win position here, they can either do whatever they like or force a country that is already over-stretched and massively in debt to further push its human and financial resources, and create a swathe of world sympathy for themselves at the same time.

As Mefustae says, to pull out now would leave the country a raw turkey waiting to be plucked, and isn't going to happen anyway, because Corporate interests are about as willing to let go of those oil reserves as the average limpet is willing to let go of a rock. But I'll leave that alone before I start with my opinion on legal bribe... I mean Lobbying.

So, if they stay, they will be used as scapegoats for every tiny problem, but may achieve stability in the area, if they go, then there will be anarchy, and it will still be blamed on the US, and if they want to maintain stability in the area, I think it's going to take a talker, not a shooter, in my opinion.

[Blue Lion]

I say this from the comforts of my room, so take this for what it is worth, but spending billions and billions of dollars and thousands upon thousands of US lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives is a big price to pay for "maybe bringing order at some point later"

[Flipside]

I say this from the comforts of my room, so take this for what it is worth, but spending billions and billions of dollars and thousands upon thousands of US lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives is a big price to pay for "maybe bringing order at some point later"

I agree, but I've got a scary feeling it is going to cost that either way, either from keeping Iraq stable, or from the warcry of a 'victory' (and you can bet they will be calling a withdrawal that) in Iraq becoming a rallying point for fundamentalism

That said, I also think that whilst the US is there, it is an easy target, Sunni and Shia can carry on fighting quite happily, and everyone blames the Americans purely for being there.

It's a big, unpleasant mess, and I don't think there is a way out that isn't going to cost everyone.