John McCain is presenting our economic situation as if we could bring spending under control and balance the budget by eliminating earmarks. Sadly, this is not the case. Earmarks sum to 13-17 billion a year. This is a lot, but we're dishing that out every month to continue this war in Iraq.
Obama is right: Saddam never attacked us. We should be focusing on preventing the spread of al Qaeda. You hear a lot about "al Qaeda in Iraq". This is ridiculous. Before we went in, there wasn't any al Qaeda in Iraq. We've spent $700,000,000,000 dollars (and counting) in Iraq, with war costs increasing each year. McCain wants to keep us there for 100 years! [Continued}
We have caught some al Qaeda people. But the fact remains that bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, the top two, are still at large.
People forget the history: Zawahiri's Egyptian "Muslim Brotherhood" effectively partnered with Bin Laden during the Russian-Afghan war in the early 1980s. Using oil money and contributions from drug interests and the Taliban, al Qaeda's influence spread as it preached increasingly radically against the influence of the West. Developing strong organizational bases throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan, the group actively recruited and trained volunteers.
We lose sight of the fact that even if we take out these top two figures, they will simply be replaced. With the percentage of people disapproving of the US rising above 90% in many Muslim countries, terrorism becomes an increasingly attractive pursuit for young Muslim men.
My point is that we are not fighting a Cold War anymore. The strength of nations is no longer determined by whether they have two of two thousand nuclear warheads. The strength of the nation is determined by its ability to fight enemies that are not states and cannot be physically destroyed.
Terrorism is an abstract concept, and therefore the "War on Terror" is something which can never be truly "won".
Read 1984.
(Iraq highlighted in red)
If we want to strengthen our nation and go after al Qaeda, we must do so intelligently. Our failure to bring in Bin Laden even after cornering him in Tora Bora reflects a lack of ability to adapt on our part. Let's put aside the old tactics and revise our strategy.
1. Re-establish the respect of the Muslim world. This is the only way to fight terrorism. Become the loved nation we used to be, and we rid ourselves of most of the threat. This means dialogue with organizations and states that we don't like such as Hamas, Syria, and Iran. The time for ignoring them is past. They aren't going away. If we can't be friends, let's find common ground in battling extremism.
2. Nuclear Proliferation - it is inevitable that nuclear capability will fall into the hands of Muslim countries. When we see Iran developing nukes, we can't fight a war to stop them. Next it will be Syria. Next it will be Saudi Arabia. Next it will be Libya. Egypt. Turkey. Let's focus, rather, on safeguarding the technology from falling into the hands of terrorists.
3. Rethink our policy towards the rest of the world - As I see it, there are three types of US aid.
-food and medicine aid (for severely impoverished countries)
-emergency assistance (for natural disasters)
-development loans through the IMF and World Bank
Basically, the first two are legitimate. They comprise less than half of the total aid and have direct and noticeable consequences. Cutting off aid would be a humanitarian disaster.
My problem is with the World Bank loans. These are loans for reconstruction and development which third world countries (often with corrupt governments) are usually not able to pay back in full. Bonded by the interest, they are forced to make concessions which involve succumbing to US corporate interests. Ecuador and Panama are cases in point.
This type of aid I find rather dishonest. By all means, cut this out. Someone recently pointed out that [I paraphrase] "The World Bank isn't a world bank. It's leader is appointed by the US President and most of its funds come from the US government. It in turn supports American corporations and business interests". Although we might take this interpretation with a grain of salt, the overall concept is clear.
To review: we are clinging to a foreign policy that is no longer applicable. If we don't change our way of thinking, then we will continue to suffer the attacks and the responses thereto.
Obama 2008.
The Young Sentinel
We have caught some al Qaeda people. But the fact remains that bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, the top two, are still at large.
People forget the history: Zawahiri's Egyptian "Muslim Brotherhood" effectively partnered with Bin Laden during the Russian-Afghan war in the early 1980s. Using oil money and contributions from drug interests and the Taliban, al Qaeda's influence spread as it preached increasingly radically against the influence of the West. Developing strong organizational bases throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan, the group actively recruited and trained volunteers.
We lose sight of the fact that even if we take out these top two figures, they will simply be replaced. With the percentage of people disapproving of the US rising above 90% in many Muslim countries, terrorism becomes an increasingly attractive pursuit for young Muslim men.
My point is that we are not fighting a Cold War anymore. The strength of nations is no longer determined by whether they have two of two thousand nuclear warheads. The strength of the nation is determined by its ability to fight enemies that are not states and cannot be physically destroyed.
Terrorism is an abstract concept, and therefore the "War on Terror" is something which can never be truly "won".
Read 1984.
(Iraq highlighted in red)
1. Re-establish the respect of the Muslim world. This is the only way to fight terrorism. Become the loved nation we used to be, and we rid ourselves of most of the threat. This means dialogue with organizations and states that we don't like such as Hamas, Syria, and Iran. The time for ignoring them is past. They aren't going away. If we can't be friends, let's find common ground in battling extremism.
2. Nuclear Proliferation - it is inevitable that nuclear capability will fall into the hands of Muslim countries. When we see Iran developing nukes, we can't fight a war to stop them. Next it will be Syria. Next it will be Saudi Arabia. Next it will be Libya. Egypt. Turkey. Let's focus, rather, on safeguarding the technology from falling into the hands of terrorists.
3. Rethink our policy towards the rest of the world - As I see it, there are three types of US aid.
-food and medicine aid (for severely impoverished countries)
-emergency assistance (for natural disasters)
-development loans through the IMF and World Bank
Basically, the first two are legitimate. They comprise less than half of the total aid and have direct and noticeable consequences. Cutting off aid would be a humanitarian disaster.
My problem is with the World Bank loans. These are loans for reconstruction and development which third world countries (often with corrupt governments) are usually not able to pay back in full. Bonded by the interest, they are forced to make concessions which involve succumbing to US corporate interests. Ecuador and Panama are cases in point.
This type of aid I find rather dishonest. By all means, cut this out. Someone recently pointed out that [I paraphrase] "The World Bank isn't a world bank. It's leader is appointed by the US President and most of its funds come from the US government. It in turn supports American corporations and business interests". Although we might take this interpretation with a grain of salt, the overall concept is clear.
To review: we are clinging to a foreign policy that is no longer applicable. If we don't change our way of thinking, then we will continue to suffer the attacks and the responses thereto.
Obama 2008.
The Young Sentinel
12 comments:
Very true indeed...
Obama 2008
An open question: please don't politicize it:
I was advised by a friend to shorten the posts to a hundred words or so, and then to provide a "Read More" link. I want to know if anyone actually clicks the "Read More" button. Is it conspicuous enough?
Your input will be greatly appreciated.
-Eyck Freymann
The Young Sentinel
Another thing: someone asked me how to bold and italicize in comments.
Bold is "b" and italics are "i". Surround them with tags (For example, <"i">, type your text, then <"/i">.)
I should clarify: no quotation marks. I just used them so it would show the tag and not just italicize the text itself.
Basic HTML: Every tag <> must be terminated by an identical command with a / before it.
Young Sentinel:
DEFINITELY don't shorten the posts. Nobody will actually click the 'read more' button.
And also, you should make the home page longer and include more of the posts on the front.
On second thought, I insert a 'read more' section on the much longer articles. And I mean the REALLY long articles, like the Obama one you just posted.
Shorter ones can remain on the site in their entirety.
But make sure on the posts where you use the read more button you make it clear that the article is not over yet.
-fred-anonymous
It's an annoying problem with the template that took me many hours to get right. For now, it will say "Read More" at the end of every post, an annoying feature that I try to reflect by signing the ends of all my posts with:
"-Eyck Freymann
The Young Sentinel"
The voter registration post, for example, for some reason won't shorten.
The problem with having a big homepage is that it takes a while to load. I can only really fit two long ones on a page.
The Obama one is very important so I didn't shorten it.
Are you "Fred Thompson" or is your name just Fred?
come on, young sentinel, you know who Fred-anonymous is!!!
You're a political genius and you can't figure out who I am?
just look into the name and you'll find it.
Sorry. For a moment there I really didn't know who you were. The name seems so realistic that I had to look again. Kudos.
Obama is right of course! We should have never interrupted Saddam poison gassing, rapings, mass graves, iron maidens, and terrorist training!
And like the rest of the left wing, what John McCain said was blown heavily out of proportion.
He said we need to have a presence in Iraq, as long as it takes to get it under control. He didn't more troops are going to go there for 100 years, he didnt say we would bomb them for 100 years; he said we need a presence so this wont have to happen again.
Think
Yes you can.
John McCain 2008
Another point:
We would have had Osama in custody (or dead, i dont have a preference) if it was not for Bill Clinton's inability as president to capture him! Osama popped up numerous times during Clinton's reign, but Clinton, being the president he was, let him slip away
When Bill tried to bomb the al Qaeda camps, everyone cried foul, saying he was trying to distract the public from Monica.
Another thing: as someone who was in New York on 9/11 (in a second grade classroom with multiple people who had relatives in or across the street from the buildings), I know that there was never any doubt as to whether or not al Qaeda had attacked us. My dad picked me up from school about 50 minutes after the fact and, having not seen or heard any news report, told me that the perpetrator was "a very bad man named Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan".
We are not omniscient. Rather, we payed attention when they tried to bomb us before, in 1993. This is why Rudy Giuliani's decision to put the city's only emergency response center in the only NYC building that had every been the location of a terrorist attack was rather, shall we say, non-forward thinking.
We also don't appreciate being told by Southern ministers that God caused 9/11 because he was angry at gays and Jews. [see PAT ROBERTSON].
This is no different from John Hagee's rants, calling the Catholic church "the Great Whore" and saying that God caused Katrina because he was angry at a gay rights parade.
We're better than that.
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