I don't think there is a politician in the US that I trust as much as Joe Biden, but I can't find the entire transcript of his remarks.  That ABC website is impossible to navigate.  "I think that he is right, we should level with the American people", but that seems quite self-evident to me.  What did Joe Biden REALLY say, if anything concrete....like what is he suggesting we do about it?

I've suggested this before:

There are millions of people age 25 - 50 that are on probation or parole that are trained to perform support jobs like driving trucks, mechanics, and medical assistants. They would need the "basic" training of a soldier, but not the advanced training for support roles. Many of these people can also be put into patrols as soldiers too.
I'm not suggesting a "get out of jail free card" I think it should be on a volunteer basis only, but this doesn't terminate their probation/parole status.. that is up to the state/feds after that person is released. Regular duty soldiers could keep a special record for these individuals that is forwarded to the probation/parole office upon the release of that soldier and if that office wants to take special consideration then they can. But its not a guaranteed thing...the soldiers that are on probation/parole should get no better or no less then another National Guard unit. As soon as the they are no longer needed they will be dismissed from duty. If one of these probation/parole soldiers messes up they are given an immediate dishonorable and sent back to face the charges at their home state plus any violations that are applicable.

The probability of continued insurgent actions will escalate before, during, and after the planned election times. If you need 500,000 soldiers by January 15th act now.

December 6th - 10th to collect more than enough volunteers.
December 11th - 19th to make selections.
December 20th - 31st for US based basic training.
January 1st - 15th for Iraq based training.
January 16th - 19th for duty assignments.

Lets get control of this bad situation right away or we are in a position for some real bad things. If the insurgents converge we are likely to have some heavy losses, if we have sufficient manpower they will not have a chance to.

throwing an untrained and/or unready man into combat is asking to get that man killed.

"Every single solitary commander in the region says, 'We've got to stay here for a long time, in significant numbers, spending billions of dollars, to get this done,' " Biden said. "And it's about time we level with the American people and tell them the truth."
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/12...iraq.elections/

I think  most American people understand that Iraq is a mess and will require a long term American  military committement. What's to tell?  Most seem to believe that we "must" stay there until Iraqi security can handle things by themselves and who knows when that will become a reality? Bush has been up front about his "vision" for Iraq and the level of continued American committement he sees as necessary for a stable Iraq. Americans gave him a second term, so apparently most agree with him.  Congress gave Bush "carte blanche" to wage this war, contrary to post war cries of " Bush allowed the war to be poorly executed". In my opinion, all that  is happening in Iraq is a natural consequence of war, whether the war has been well executed or poorly executed. The only Congressional Reps. I pay serious attention to are those who voted against a pre-emptive strike on Iraq. I supported Kerry and  and very much wanted him elected, but I do have a big problem with his "yes" vote on the Iraq invasion.

I'm saying that if a probation/parole officer has people that are really trying to make a good go of it that we use them to tie us over until there are sufficient trained troops to fill the gap that President Bush has left in Iraq/Afghan.
I work with a lot of people and some of the best, and most trusted workers have a police record and are on probation/parole now. Kids scare me; they mess up on things that seem so obvious.

I've suggested this before:

There are millions of people age 25 - 50 that are on probation or parole that are

"Every single solitary commander in the region says, 'We've got to stay here for a long time, in significant numbers, spending billions of dollars, to get this done,' " Biden said. "And it's about time we level with the American people and tell them the truth."

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/12...iraq.elections/

Bring back the draft!!  That is why they voted for Bush let them have what they wanted

What I do not understand is how the administration plans to win this thing.  Are they simply in denial?

I guess everyone has their favorite conservative for this issue, so here is mine:

"What went wrong with the West—and with the United States in particular—when not just the classical but especially the recent antecedents to September 11, from the Iranian hostage-taking to the attack on the USS Cole, were so clear? Though Americans in an election year, legitimately concerned about our war dead, may now be divided over the Iraqi occupation, polls nevertheless show a surprising consensus that the many precursors to the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings were acts of war, not police matters. Roll the tape backward from the USS Cole in 2000, through the bombing of the Khobar Towers and the U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the destruction of the American embassy and annex in Beirut in 1983, the mass murder of 241 U.S. Marine peacekeepers asleep in their Lebanese barracks that same year, and assorted kidnappings and gruesome murders of American citizens and diplomats (including TWA Flight 800, Pan Am 103, William R. Higgins, Leon Klinghoffer, Robert Dean Stethem, and CIA operative William Francis Buckley), until we arrive at the Iranian hostage-taking of November 1979: that debacle is where we first saw the strange brew of Islamic fascism, autocracy, and Middle East state terrorism—and failed to grasp its menace, condemn it, and go to war against it.

That lapse, worth meditating upon in this 25th anniversary year of Khomeinism, then set the precedent that such aggression against the United States was better adjudicated as a matter of law than settled by war. Criminals were to be understood, not punished; and we, not our enemies, were at fault for our past behavior. Whether Carter’s impotence sprang from his deep-seated moral distrust of using American power unilaterally or from real remorse over past American actions in the cold war or even from his innate pessimism about the military capability of the United States mattered little to the hostage takers in Teheran, who for some 444 days humiliated the United States through a variety of public demands for changes in U.S. foreign policy, the return of the exiled Shah, and reparations.

But if we know how we failed to respond in the last three decades, do we yet grasp why we were so afraid to act decisively at these earlier junctures, which might have stopped the chain of events that would lead to the al-Qaida terrorist acts of September 11? Our failure was never due to a lack of the necessary wealth or military resources, but rather to a deeply ingrained assumption that we should not retaliate—a hesitancy al-Qaida perceives and plays upon.

Along that sad succession of provocations, we can look back and see particularly critical turning points that reflected this now-institutionalized state policy of worrying more about what the enemy was going to do to us than we to him, to paraphrase Grant’s dictum: not hammering back after the murder of the marines in Lebanon for fear of ending up like the Israelis in a Lebanese quagmire; not going to Baghdad in 1991 because of paranoia that the “coalition” would collapse and we would polarize the Arabs; pulling abruptly out of Somalia once pictures of American bodies dragged through the streets of Mogadishu were broadcast around the world; or turning down offers in 1995 from Sudan to place Usama bin Ladin into our custody, for fear that U.S. diplomats or citizens might be murdered abroad.

Throughout this tragic quarter-century of appeasement, our response usually consisted of a stern lecture by a Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, or Bill Clinton about “never giving in to terrorist blackmail” and “not negotiating with terrorists.” Even Ronald Reagan’s saber-rattling “You can run but not hide” did not preclude trading arms to the Iranian terrorists or abruptly abandoning Lebanon after the horrific Hezbollah attack.

Sometimes a half-baked failed rescue mission, or a battleship salvo, cruise missile, or air strike followed—but always accompanied by a weeklong debate by conservatives over “exit strategies” and “mission creep,” while liberals fretted about “consultations with our allies and the United Nations.” And remember: these pathetic military responses were the hawkish actions that earned us the resignation of a furious Cyrus Vance, the abrogation of overflight rights by concerned “allies” such as France, and a national debate about what we did to cause such animosity in the first place.

Our enemies and Middle Eastern “friends” alike sneered at our self-flagellation. In 1991, at great risk, the United States freed Kuwait from Iraq and ended its status as the 19th satrapy of Saddam Hussein—only to watch the restored kingdom ethnically cleanse over a third of a million Palestinians. But after the murder of 3,000 Americans in 2001, Kuwaitis, in a February 2002 Gallup poll (and while they lobbied OPEC to reduce output and jack up prices), revealed an overwhelming distaste for Americans—indeed the highest levels of anti-Americanism in the Arab world. And these ethnic cleansers of Palestinians cited America’s purportedly unfair treatment of the Palestinians (recipients of accumulated billions in American aid) as a prime cause of their dislike of us.

In the face of such visceral anti-Americanism, the problem may not be real differences over the West Bank, much less that “we are not getting the message out”; rather, in the decade since 1991 the Middle East saw us as a great power that neither could nor would use its strength to advance its ideas—that lacked even the intellectual confidence to argue for our civilization before the likes of a tenth-century monarchy. The autocratic Arab world neither respects nor fears a democratic United States, because it rightly senses that we often talk in principled terms but rarely are willing to invest the time, blood, and treasure to match such rhetoric with concrete action. That’s why it is crucial for us to stay in Iraq to finish the reconstruction and cement the achievement of our three-week victory over Saddam.
******************************************
Excerpt only, full article here:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_2_the_fruits.html

We need a draft...PCR is a raving Buchanan paleo-con, but before Saudi falls we need enough troops trained to win in Iraq without sending the wounded back to fight. 

Let's just suck it up and admit it, we can't leave and we need more troops.  The administration needs to level with the American people by telling us that those that can, need to step up to the plate.  We need more than Kerry's extra two divisions for the next 5 years at least.  Better start training now.  It's going to have to be done.  No one is going to do the things that need to be done if we don't....evidently.

let them indoctrinate their citizens with hate so they could control their population.  That's why we're in the fix we're in now.

I guess everyone has their favorite conservative for this issue, so here is mine:


In the face of such visceral anti-Americanism, the problem may not be real differences over the West Bank, much less that “we are not getting the message out”; rather, in the decade since 1991 the Middle East saw us as a great power that neither could nor would use its strength to advance its ideas—that lacked even the intellectual confidence to argue for our civilization before the likes of a tenth-century monarchy. The autocratic Arab world neither respects nor fears a democratic United States, because it rightly senses that we often talk in principled terms but rarely are willing to invest the time, blood, and treasure to match such rhetoric with concrete action. That’s why it is crucial for us to stay in Iraq to finish the reconstruction and cement the achievement of our three-week victory over Saddam.
******************************************
Excerpt only, full article here:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_2_the_fruits.html

Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on ABC's "This Week" that U.S. troops "are unable to secure our victories," pointing to continuing unrest in Falluja, site of intense coalition battles with insurgents in November.

The Iraqi Red Crescent, the only humanitarian group to have returned to Falluja, suspended its operations there Sunday because of fighting between insurgents and coalition forces in the city.

Biden supported the invasion of Iraq but has criticized the Bush administration's handling of the occupation and insurgency. He predicted that the number of U.S. troops would remain at their higher level of 150,000 after the elections.

"Every single solitary commander in the region says, 'We've got to stay here for a long time, in significant numbers, spending billions of dollars, to get this done,' " Biden said. "And it's about time we level with the American people and tell them the truth."

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/12...iraq.elections/

Marine: If you go in, you don't come out without winning.  I think that's the point the author is trying to make.  I too believe this started with Iran in "79" and we should have fought it out then.  All we have done since is perceived as weakness.  We allowed this to grow by placating tyrants and we let them indoctrinate their citizens with hate so they could control their population.  That's why we're in the fix we're in now.

BIDEN IS ON CNN NOW!!!

Back on topic>>>>>
I don't think the Bush Admin plans on leveling with the American people; they'll just push things through like they always do.

I joined the Marines a long time ago and minor police records (no felons) didn't disqualify someone from being a Marine.

The guys some judge gave an option of jail or the military almost invaribly kept f*cking up in the Marines.  The guys with a minor record who realized on their own they had a problem and joined to learn discipline did ok.

Take the time to train them and kids who are there to learn won't scare you, you can turn that kid into a man.

Do you think joining the military and getting sent to war is the best way to learn about becoming a man?

Istoodforu: Listen, I don't normally post any conservative stuff on this forum.  It's supposed to be for moderates, progressives etc...so if some paleo-fascist article pops up I have every right to repsond to it with a counterveiling argument that I find compelling okay?  Don't tell me about "passion plays" when you clearly don't wish to deal with the facts presented and instead wish to attack me for having had the audacity to listen to both sides of this issue and arrive at my own conlcusions.  I will remind you that MOST Senators, D and R voted for this war and 67% of the population supported it too.  I represent 20-25% of Democrats in my support for winning in Iraq and I think I deserve a place at the table just as much as the 20% that's rabidly against it.

I'm very happy that you won't "fight for oil" or whatever the stupid chant is these days, but perhaps that's because you don't understand the sorry state of affairs that we would be in if the pipeline ran dry for even a week!  People would STARVE!!!  People would DIE!!  People would FREEZE!!!  Not us posh Americans...oh no...we just absorb the cost right?  NOT EVEN! 

Yet, in your search for reductionist, imperialist arguments I doubt you ever stopped to consider that the reasons for going to war in Iraq may have been many, many more that won't make nice slogans and little attack ads.

I have no problem with your anti-war position.  I have a problem with anyone who wants to live in a fantasy world and bury their heads in the sand and not look out upon the world to see that the bad people who want to take us down are not going away just because we leave.  I think it's utterly naive to deny the true motives of Al Queda and the league of imitators in 50+ countries.  Reductionism worked in a simpler time, but collapses under the weight of the evidence of internet communication era terrorism.

Toward a More Moral Foreign Policy

Speech by
Patrick J. Buchanan
Reform Party Presidential Candidate

to the Center for Strategic & International Studies

December 16, 1999


After seven years, this administration has yet to find the right formula for dealing with what we now call "the rogue nations." Five years of bribes to North Korea seem only to have whetted the hermit kingdom's appetite for more bribes. On the other hand, U.S. sanctions have failed to dislodge or weaken the grip of hostile regimes in Iraq, Iran, Cuba, or Serbia, but have enraged our allies who defy them, and spread resentment against America all over the world. In our desire to punish old enemies, we seem only to be creating new ones. Indeed, sanctions have become the feel-good but ineffectual foreign policy of the self-righteous. Let us consider.

A year ago, an article appeared in the New York Times under the headline "Iraq: A Pediatrician's Hell: No Way to Stop the Dying." The reporter led readers through a day with the chief resident at the central teaching hospital for pediatrics in Baghdad.

Iraq, the doctor told his visitor, was once the most advanced country in the Arab world for science and medicine. Now, Iraq's doctors cannot even read medical journals; because medical journals are embargoed. Childhood leukemia, a disease with a cure rate of 70 percent in America, is now nearly always fatal in Iraq. Disposable syringes must be used over and over again. Their importation has been blocked out of fear that medical syringes will be used to create anthrax spores. Ancient X-ray machines leak radiation. Chlorine, a vital water disinfectant, all the more necessary because Iraq's sewage treatment plants were bombed in Desert Storm, is embargoed, lest it be diverted into chlorine gas. Even the plastic bags needed for blood transfusions are restricted.

Last year, Denis Halliday, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, resigned in protest and returned home to Ireland. By Halliday's estimate, 5,000 Iraqi children die every month from the impact of sanctions on Iraq's water supply, sanitation, diet, and medical care. The deaths come from dysentery, cholera, and malnutrition, which lowers resistance to other diseases. Halliday holds America, the principal advocate and enforcer of UN Security Council sanctions, responsible for the deaths of 60,000 Iraqi children every year, and of 500,000 since 1991. If his figures are correct, more Iraqi children have been lost in nine years to U.S. sanctions than all the American soldiers killed in combat in all the wars of the 20th century.

Woodrow Wilson called sanctions the "peaceful silent deadly remedy." Today, they may fairly be called America's silent weapon of mass destruction whose victims are almost always the weak, the sick, the women and the young. When Arab terrorists murder Israeli children, we Americans are rightly filled with horror and disgust. But what do Arab peoples think of us when U.S sanctions bring death to literally thousands of Iraqi children every single month? Can a nation that declares piously it will never stoop to assassinating tyrants, but wields a sanctions sword that slaughters children, truly call itself "the home of the brave?"

Now, Saddam Hussein is undeniably a tyrant, who brutalizes his people and has sought to build weapons of mass destruction. But sanctions have failed to remove him from power. And as he cannot survive outside his heavily guarded palaces, he will never surrender power. Thus, the sanctions, while murderous to Iraq's people, have little prospect of success. In a real sense, Saddam today is holding the people of Iraq hostage, while America kills the hostages. A few years ago, Madeleine Albright was asked on 60 Minutes if she believed that a policy that killed so many children was worth it. She answered: "We believe the price is worth it." No, Madam Secretary, it is not worth it. A policy that sentences thousands of Iraqi children to death every month, because their parents will not rise up and overthrow a tyrant, is unrighteous and immoral.

For centuries, philosophers and theologians have grappled with the question of under what circumstances a just war may be fought. Christian doctrine demands that such a war be defensive, and never aggressive. It must be waged only as a last resort, after all other means of negotiating peace have been exhausted. The violence used must be proportional to the threat. There must be a prospect of victory so that soldiers are not sent to their death for no purpose. In a just war, innocents may never be directly targeted; and, after the fighting is over, there must be no acts of vengeance. Today, U.S. sanctions on Iraq contravene virtually every tenet of the Just War doctrine. After nine years, we have failed in our goal of ousting Saddam; it is not he or his henchmen who suffer, it is the innocent people of Iraq. And it is impossible to argue that the death of scores of thousands of children is a price proportional to the threat associated with Saddam Hussein's survival in power.

Surely, these are the reasons Pope John Paul II has called for an end to sanctions on Iraq, that the National Council of Catholic Bishops has called for lifting the embargo. These clerics are giving witness to the deepest traditions of Christian ethical teaching on the most difficult of human problems.

But U.S. economic warfare is not confined to Baghdad. In Mr. Clinton's first term, the U.S. imposed 61 unilateral sanctions on 35 countries. Even his own Secretary of Commerce, William Daley, concedes that "we've become a sanctions happy nation."

Since Colonel Khadafi was found culpable in the air massacre of Pan Am 103, the U.S. has imposed strict sanctions on Libya. What have they accomplished? Khadafi has handed over two suspects in the atrocity and ousted Abu Nidal, the front man for Palestinian terror. But even as U.S. sanctions have remained in force, U.S.-made computers, fuel pumps and drilling equipment pour in from our NATO allies and our ban on air travel is circumvented by a ferry to Malta. Lately, Italy's Prime Minister completed a visit to Libya.

We also maintain sanctions on Iran, which has indeed been a hostile nation. Twenty years ago, Teheran held 52 U.S. diplomats and Marines hostage for 14 months. That regime undermines the Middle East peace process; and its agent may have colluded in the terrorist bombing of Khobar towers. But if Iran is responsible for the deaths of scores of Americans, China, North Korea, and North Vietnam are responsible for the deaths of 100,000 U.S. soldiers. Yet, we engage Vietnam, send foreign aid to North Korea, and provide China with a $60 billion annual trade surplus?

Are the regimes in North Korea and Vietnam morally superior to Iran's? Are those countries more strategically important? If we believe the cause of peace is advanced when Israelis talk to Arafat, and British talk to the IRA, why should we not talk to Teheran?

Just last month, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Afghanistan, because the ruling Taleban refuses to deliver up Osama bin Laden. But rather than revolting against the regime, the Afghani people took to the streets of Kabul shouting "Death to America!" They burned our flag; six UN buildings were stoned or burned. Have we not learned from our own history, of British sanctions against the 13 colonies? Embargoes do not cow people into submission, they unite people in defiance.

Last May, nuclear tests by India and Pakistan triggered a U.S. law imposing sanctions. India has since increased defense spending by 14%; Pakistan by 9%. Has either given up its nuclear arsenal?

As for Myanmar next door, Mr. Clinton declared in 1997 that "the actions of the Government [there] constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the security of the United States." He then banned all American investment in that country. And what was the "extraordinary threat"? The ruling junta in Rangoon had refused to recognize an opposition victory in the May 1990 elections and was holding Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.

And how effective was our policy of "isolating" Myanmar? The Philippines and Thailand dropped their opposition to Myanmar's application for membership in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN, and, to defy Uncle Sam, invited Myanmar, and Laos and Cambodia as well, to join ASEAN.

After smashing Serbia with our 78-day bombing campaign, we now quarrel with our NATO allies over how severe sanctions should be. The Clinton-Albright preference is to block all assistance in removing toxic war debris and bombed bridges from the Danube, and to deny the Serbs heating oil in coming the brutal Balkan winter. This immoral policy shames us as a people. We are putting old men, women, and children under a sentence of death for failing to do what NATO itself could not do: overthrow Slobodan Milosevic? Moreover, as the London Economist writes:

Isolation has helped [Milosevic and Saddam] to stoke paranoia, justify repression and escape responsibility for their people's suffering. In Iraq, and to a lesser extent in Serbia, sanctions have ruined the liberal middle class and spawned gangster elites. The poor, meanwhile, cannot think beyond the struggle to keep alive.

Finally, in Cuba, our embargo continues to give Fidel Castro a scapegoat for his own socialist failures. His dictator's grip has not been loosened; seized American properties have not been returned; yet, after 37 years, the sanctions endure.

In 1991, Castro's umbilical chord was severed when Havana lost its $5 billion annual subsidy from Moscow. Though the world has turned upside down since then, U.S. policy remains frozen. And, because of the siege mentality our embargo has created inside Cuba, our sanctions may today be the main pillar of Castro's power.

And there is monumental hypocrisy in how President Clinton applies his sanctions policy. He blockaded, starved and invaded tiny Haiti for human rights violations, but he proudly chaperones China into the WTO. He imposes sanctions on Myanmar as a threat to the security of the United States, but shovels billions in aid to a North Korea that is building missiles to target America and our allies.

In recent years, President Clinton has sought waivers on many of these sanctions, not because his administration has any scruples about sanctions, but because Europeans have repeatedly protested Washington's arrogance in unilaterally imposing its will.

But if these sanctions enrage Europeans, think of their impact on the nations that suffer. It is child's play for targeted regimes to ascribe all the deprivations of their people to U.S. malice and power. Their propaganda task is made easier, because the charge has truth. Our sanctions are sowing seeds of hatred that will one day flower in acts of terrorism against us, years after these sanctions expire.

Looking over the record of U.S. sanctions against rogue states, it seems that they fail us by virtually every measure. Sanctions impose suffering not on dictators, but on their oppressed people; they antagonize allies and undermine our leadership; they build up deposits of resentment and hatred against us among Arab, Islamic and Asian people; they deny our businessmen and farmers access to markets our rivals rush to capture; and they fail either to disarm or dislodge the targeted regime. They only massage our sense of moral superiority over other nations.

I do not oppose sanctions because I worry principally about our lost exports, though the economic arguments of U.S. businessmen who fight a sanctions-driven policy are persuasive. I do not oppose sanctions because I am worried about the reaction of European businessmen and diplomats who resent America's efforts to apply our laws to their activities. I oppose them because sanctions have become a way for the United States to vent its anger on the cheap.

Among my first acts as President will be to declare an end to all sanctions on the sale or transfer of U.S. food, medicine, or goods essential to a decent life or a civilian economy now in force against Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Myanmar, Sudan, and all the other targeted nations of U.S. sanctions policy.

I am not naive. I have served three Cold War Presidents in the White House. I know that if U.S. sanctions are lifted, our problems with rogue regimes will not end. After we wipe the slate clean, there may arise circumstances in which sanctions appear the only possible action. No president can forswear the option. But if they are to be reapplied, I will understand what the world used to know: that embargoes and blockades are weapons of war. If they are to be used, they must be designed so that innocent people are not the principal casualties; and they should be imposed only on regimes that engage in acts of war against the United States. That a regime is autocratic, dictatorial, or odious to us is not enough; no one has deputized America to play Wyatt Earp to the world.

There are other ways to punish rogue regimes. We can seize the bank accounts and overseas assets of their rulers, deny visas to their diplomats and military, cut off World Bank and IMF loans, deny Export-Import Bank credits, put tariffs on the principal exports of hostile governments to deny them the hard currency to strengthen the state. We can deny their national airlines landing rights.

In retaliation for attacks on U.S. citizens, the United States, the most powerful nation on earth, can retaliate militarily as we see fit. We can indict terrorists in U.S. courts and run them down. These are legitimate sanctions that zero in on real enemies.

Once, we knew how to deal with tyrants, even tyrants armed with nuclear weapons. Deterrence and containment worked against the evil empires of Stalin and Mao. They can work against the lesser tyrannies of a new century.

As we end this American Century and this decade of national preeminence, we remain a people divided over our role in the world. It is a time for what Catholics call a "retreat," not a withdrawal into isolationism, but a day of introspection. Why is America, its economic and military power unrivaled, its popular culture dominant in the world, so resented by so many. Is it envy? Is it because we are an enlightened nation and they are benighted? Or have we, too, succumbed to the hubris of hegemony? Recall: In 1763, the England of Pitt had crushed her great rival, France, seized her vast American estate, and emerged as the world's only superpower. London reveled in its preeminence. As Walpole wrote, his contemporaries were "born with Roman insolence" and "acted with more haughtiness than an Asiatic monarch."

Yet, in less than a generation, Britain had lost the loyalty of its American subjects, who, aided by a defeated vengeful France, expelled her from the 13 colonies that had been the crown jewels of the empire. And all the world rejoiced in Britain's humiliation, as, one suspects, much of today's world might rejoice in ours.

I count myself a patriot. But if all this Beltway braying about our being the "world's indispensable nation" and "only superpower" grates on my ears, how must it grate upon Europeans, Russians, and those peoples subject to U.S. sanctions, because they have failed by our lights to live up to our standards?

The great foreign policy question before this generation is the one that has bedeviled us since our birth as a nation. Are we to be a city on a Hill, a light unto the nations, Henry Clay's "lamp burning on the Western shore"? Or have we been handed a divine commission to "go abroad in search of monsters to destroy" and impose our values and system on a benighted world? Are we a republic or an empire?

Once again, it is time to choose.

We are in a unique season. The last Hanukkah of the century is over; the last Ramadan and Christmas season of the millennium are underway. On this eve of a new century, let us cease to hector and discipline the world and try to lead it; let us conform our foreign policy to principles more becoming a godly nation and great republic.

Istoodforu: Listen, I don't normally post any conservative stuff on this forum.  It's supposed to be for moderates, progressives etc...so if some paleo-fascist article pops up I have every right to repsond to it with a counterveiling argument that I find compelling okay?  Don't tell me about "passion plays" when you clearly don't wish to deal with the facts presented and instead wish to attack me for having had the audacity to listen to both sides of this issue and arrive at my own conlcusions.  I will remind you that MOST Senators, D and R voted for this war and 67% of the population supported it too.  I represent 20-25% of Democrats in my support for winning in Iraq and I think I deserve a place at the table just as much as the 20% that's rabidly against it.

I'm very happy that you won't "fight for oil" or whatever the stupid chant is these days, but perhaps that's because you don't understand the sorry state of affairs that we would be in if the pipeline ran dry for even a week!  People would STARVE!!!  People would DIE!!  People would FREEZE!!!  Not us posh Americans...oh no...we just absorb the cost right?  NOT EVEN! 

Yet, in your search for reductionist, imperialist arguments I doubt you ever stopped to consider that the reasons for going to war in Iraq may have been many, many more that won't make nice slogans and little attack ads.

I have no problem with your anti-war position.  I have a problem with anyone who wants to live in a fantasy world and bury their heads in the sand and not look out upon the world to see that the bad people who want to take us down are not going away just because we leave.  I think it's utterly naive to deny the true motives of Al Queda and the league of imitators in 50+ countries.  Reductionism worked in a simpler time, but collapses under the weight of the evidence of internet communication era terrorism.

Istoodforu,
So you are a college professor, are you good with math?  Fluid motion and mechanical transfer???? You do support Energy Independence, right?

target='_blank'>


http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...?showtopic=5761

I agree, the Right has perfected the Communist's orwellian psych-ops on us, but I only wish they would tell us the truth and use the psy-ops on the OTHER people in the world that want to kill us all.

When Kerry picks his cabinet, I want Sen. Biden as Director of National Intelligence.

Physics and math are not my areas.  These are fascinating ideas.  I hope that others on the forum with suitable expertise can offer feedback and collaboration.  Do you have any working models?

from > heart,
Look around you and tell me how many things in your house are NOT made from a petroleum product? Every piece of plastic, every lip balm and medicine bottle, every PVC pipe, I mean EVERYTHING.

Have you tried to buy an American product lately...I sure have and it's an exercise in futility.