Thread: Bush, A Special Comment About Lying

Originally Posted by Universal

But Bush tries to create a future of democracy in the Middle East [/b]

They don't want democracy. How is this different than the Soviets "sharing" their philosophy?

Originally Posted by Moonbeam

They don't want democracy. How is this different than the Soviets "sharing" their philosophy?
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We are giving the people of Iraq a future of being able to make their own decisions. The Soviets had and supported a system of government where that cannot happen.

If you were locked up in a cage and I let you out, would I be imposing freedom on you? It is not something you could equate with locking you in a cage. In both cases, I am spreading my philosophy, but one involves freedom and the other involves the opposite.

Originally Posted by Universal

We are giving the people of Iraq a future of being able to make their own decisions. The Soviets had and supported a system of government where that cannot happen.

If you were locked up in a cage and I let you out, would I be imposing freedom on you? It is not something you could equate with locking you in a cage. In both cases, I am spreading my philosophy, but one involves freedom and the other involves the opposite.
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It's not very free to be planting the U.S's choice in easily-manipulated officials is it? You could say that in real life, you're doing everyone a favour by not slaughtering them like cattle in their sleep. It's a pathetic conclusion toward a losing ethical argument.

Originally Posted by Wolffe

It's not very free to be planting the U.S's choice in easily-manipulated officials is it? You could say that in real life, you're doing everyone a favour by not slaughtering them like cattle in their sleep. It's a pathetic conclusion toward a losing ethical argument.
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A system is set up where they can vote for new officials. That is freedom. They didn't have that under the Hussein regime, and they never would have. Hussein got 100% of the votes. Go figure.

Your last sentence really misses the point. I thought I cleared it up for you. Refraining from wiping out a country is not compassionate by itself. Nobody said it is. Where are you getting that? However, setting up a democracy, putting up with extreme controversy and a disgustingly outrageous lack of gratitude from most of the world, and using precision weapons when we could just turn the place into a black spot on the map in 30 minutes is evidence that we are not terrorists. We are not handling this situation the way the terrorist organizations nobody here ever expresses a problem with would handle it. We are not terrorists. Do I need to explain that to you one more time?

Originally Posted by Universal

We are giving the people of Iraq a future of being able to make their own decisions. The Soviets had and supported a system of government where that cannot happen.

If you were locked up in a cage and I let you out, would I be imposing freedom on you? It is not something you could equate with locking you in a cage. In both cases, I am spreading my philosophy, but one involves freedom and the other involves the opposite.
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This analogy does not fit. I am not a history scholar, but it is obvious that American democracy evolved over a very long time and fit the circumstances and then was fought for by the people who believed in it. This is not the case in Iraq. Their culture is not the same and therefore the same processes that we use may not be accepted or even understood. To use your analogy, you can't take a caged animal that has been in there a long time and just open the door and say, there, you're free, be happy. It may not know how to do that, or you may just let something bad in the cage. I don't want to go too far with that, because I don't think the Iraqis were caged animals, or that they were safe, but if they wanted freedom, maybe they should have taken it for themselves. There's a lot of other people who aren't free in the world, are we going to help them next? Or just the ones who happen to live on top of something a few of us can get really rich with? Is that worth American teenagers and who knows how many Iraqis dying for?

You know what is going on in Iraq right now. Does it seem like it is working? That it can possibly work? As low of an opinon as I have of Bush et al, I really still give them credit for lying to us and doing all this for either personal gain or, less likely, cheaper gas for all of us. I expected them to say, OK, Iraq's ours now and so is all the oil, the world is now safe for SUV's. Not that I agree with that, but at least it is comprehensible. If they actually went into Iraq thinking that it would make us safer...well they are way incredibly pitifully stupider than I thought possible.

Originally Posted by Moonbeam

This analogy does not fit. I am not a history scholar, but it is obvious that American democracy evolved over a very long time and fit the circumstances and then was fought for by the people who believed in it. This is not the case in Iraq. Their culture is not the same and therefore the same processes that we use may not be accepted or even understood. To use your analogy, you can't take a caged animal that has been in there a long time and just open the door and say, there, you're free, be happy. It may not know how to do that, or you may just let something bad in the cage. I don't want to go too far with that, because I don't think the Iraqis were caged animals, or that they were safe, but if they wanted freedom, maybe they should have taken it for themselves. There's a lot of other people who aren't free in the world, are we going to help them next? Or just the ones who happen to live on top of something a few of us can get really rich with? Is that worth American teenagers and who knows how many Iraqis dying for?

You know what is going on in Iraq right now. Does it seem like it is working? That it can possibly work? As low of an opinon as I have of Bush et al, I really still give them credit for lying to us and doing all this for either personal gain or, less likely, cheaper gas for all of us. I expected them to say, OK, Iraq's ours now and so is all the oil, the world is now safe for SUV's. Not that I agree with that, but at least it is comprehensible. If they actually went into Iraq thinking that it would make us safer...well they are way incredibly pitifully stupider than I thought possible.
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If the caged animal was living caged up under an abusive owner, I would definitely favor letting it out in the wild as a better of two alternatives, especially considering the fact that its future generations could live in the wild and be adapted to it.

A lot of people have been judging this war based on how things are right now. The war is about the rest of history. We are in an inevitable transition phase right now. You cannot judge the rest of history by it alone. I listed sort of early in this thread the many reasons for the war in Iraq. No matter what anybody assumes or makes up about why Bush has so many of our troops there, it does not get around the fact that the Hussein government had to go, for many reasons. It was not about any one thing.