Why I'm a Democrat (Long)

[MarkDel]

Nym90,

Thanks for an extremely intelligent and honest post. I actually have lots to add, but I can't right now since my daughter just threw a temper tantrum. But I wil be back in a few hours.

[MarkDel]

Nym90,

You know what, now that I think about it, it's definitely better that I discuss this with you on the phone. I'll give you a call later this week. For now, I will avoid the overall argument on why I think you're right about so many details, but still not seeing the big picture.

1. As for your "John McCain" comments, you are dead wrong. The reason I and so many other Republicans HATE him is because he's the biggest hypocrite on the entire planet. Have you ever heard of Charles Keating of the Savings & Loan fiasco and the so-called "Keating Five" Well, your buddy McCain was caught taking BRIBES early in his career, and that's why he became so obsessed with campaign finance reform as he tried to resolve his own GUILT. Below is a story from 1990 when the scandal was at its peak, and it was not yet known whether McCain would be impeached, indicted, or whatever, but in the end, it was swept under the carpet because it was a bi-partisan scandal. McCain is hypocritical scumbag...

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/extra/running_john/soul.html

2. As for your hatred of large corporations, I completely understand your position. Many, not all, large corporations HINDER COMPETITION and I find that to be an affront to the Capitalist system that I love so much. I think you'll recall my thoughts on Wamart from several months ago. However, blaming the Republicans (or the Democrats) for the evils of large corporations is like blaming Ronald McDonald when your cheesburger tastes bad...it makes you feel better, but it achieves nothing and it is completely irrational. Both parties play this game and they have to, otherwise they will never get elected in today's media dominated society. Are Republicans more beholden to big corporations? Yes, slightly, but Democrats offset this by allowing the trial lawyers to BUTT RAPE society at every turn, and they also let the teacher's union turn our children into functional illiterates all in the name of political correctness.

2. As for your comments about "the Religious Right" they are just plain wrong...not only wrong, but so amazingly off base that they are beneath a person of your intellect. You talked to me for a long time and I explained to you my religious views when I used to work for the Republican Party, right? Well, I'm telling you that this amorphous concept known as the "Religious Right" is essentially a media creation, further propped up by the Left Wing who wish to demonize these people and scare the hell out of moderate voters like yourself. I can assure you that the "Religious Right" had almost NO POWER in the RNC when I was there. In fact, they actually are taken for granted by the Republicans much the way black voters are at times taken for granted by Democrats. And as for these people being "evil" and a threat to society...I actually used to think the same thing when I was young as I was an Atheist until less than a year ago...and you know what? I WAS WRONG...and not just wrong, but totally IGNORANT.  Like I'm sure is the case with you, I had just never spent any real time around these people. Yes, they are quick to judge you and they will try and convince you to alter your behavior on certain issues, but 99% of them do so in a non-offensive and non-violent manner. Quite frankly, most of them I have met really live the lives they aspire to and they are fine and decent people, no better and no worse than either of us.

But like I said, a phone conversation would be far more beneficial...to be honest, I thought I had "won you over" in our last conversation (LOL) so I was a little surprised by some of the anti-Right Wing statements you made in this thread. However, I'm glad you believe my case for the War in Iraq made sense.

[MarkDel]

They occured, by and large, in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

This was back in the days when Reagan and Mad Dog Bush supported Saddam (something Republicans now deny).

Bandit,

With all due respect, this thread is the philosophical version of the Major Leagues...your Double-A stuff will not hold up at this level...LOL

[MarkDel]

This is a great thread, though someone overwhelming since it covers a huge area. But it should be interesting. Thanks for starting it, Nym.

Beginning with the Iraq war, I suppose Markdel's argument in favor of it was generally tied around the idea of remoulding the Middle East. I say this because you mentioned it, and because it is the only argument that can possibly justify the war.

Iraq was not a threat to the United States. It had no plans to attack the United States. Therefore, an attack on Iraq cannot be justified on the grounds of national security. While his government had contacts to terrorist organizations, these ties did not involve Iraq engaging in terrorism against the U.S. They also do not distinguish Iraq from the governments over a dozen other nations. And by far, it was not worth the vast resources and cost, both fiscally and morally, to break those ties, when those resources were desperately needed in the real challenges the U.S faces in the world. Conquering Iraq  increased the terrorist presence in Iraq, as well as killing about 10,000 people, many of them innocent civilians.

Violating U.N. resolutions was not a justification for attacking Iraq. I only bring this up because the debate was dominated around this issue in the winter of 2002-2003, when the actual decision making was being done. This entire debate was a farce, and deeply soured me to the war.

Saddam Hussein's human rights violations did justify an attack on Iraq, but not in the spring of 2003, because his vast mistreatment of his own people by and large did not occur during that time frame. They occured, by and large, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Saddam's gassing of the Kurds in 1988 may have justified military action to protect them, just as Sudan's genocide today justifies military action in the Sudan government. In 1991, Saddam's brutal suppression of the revolt in southern Iraq justified a military intervention to protect the Shias who had taken part in it. Military action will always be justified in a humanitarian crisis where the military cost of intervention will be lower than the cost of allowing the crisis to go unchecked. However, these calamities were not ongoing in the spring of 2003. The military cost of intervention far exceeded the benefits wrought, except perhaps in the full lifting of sanctions.

I should also say that the sanctions were not justified against Iraq. Though Saddam did not deserve to benefit from the lifting of sanctions, his people did. An endless regime of sanctions was perhaps the most cruel policy the international regime could have imposed on the Iraq people. It cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Now to the argument that the attack on Iraq will reshape the Middle East. First note that this is a utilitarian argument; the Iraqis and Americans who died in the war and continue to die in the aftermath will never see the "new" Middle East. They paid for this vision with their lives, and also against their will. However appealing such a vision may be, there will always be good, Christian people, who in their conscience cannot support it. I mention Dostoevsky.

Getting past this hurdle (which is possible, if you imagine killing Hitler), there are still a number of issues here. While theoretically, the establishment of a liberal democracy in the center of the region, if successful, will have a critical long-term impact on the region, its impact is moulded by the manner in which a new government is formed. This government will always be tied to the United States and the United States invasion. It will not be a indigenous government rising from the ashes of a just national humiliation, such as the postwar government of West Germany. It keeps no Emperor like Japan. It will be a government imposed upon by a war that was carried out without the sole possible justification (helping the Arabs with long-term nation building) as either its stated or credible reason. The 'credible' reason that was (and is) percieved is the self-interest of a nation that is at best indifferent, at worst hostile and dangerous, in the eyes of the Arabs. A nation that installed the government for its own reasons. Nation-building can work if the government being overthrown is the antithesis of some indigenous identity that will replace it, or if the action is truly and credibly justified as a response to some ongoing moral crisis (since ideas can form a new basis for a nation as well... but the ideas must be genuine). In Bosnia, there were the Bosnian muslims, and the genocide was something that the West credibly intervened on, on moral grounds. This is not the case in Iraq. Although there are the Kurds, it is an Iraqi state we are trying to build, not a Kurdish one. We neither recognize Kurdistan nor did we change its automonmous status. The antithesis to the Arab identity was not Saddam Hussein, but is the continuing Israeli occupation, and increasingly, not to small extent due to Bush's policies, the U.S. Ironically, while there is an element of hatred of domestic governments among the Arabs, Hussein's government was one of the least hated due to its strong defiance of Israel (of however questionable morality that defiance took its form in). The neo-con dream is to somehow export liberal democracy to the Middle East, but like angus mentions, it exists alongside nationalism, even in the U.S. In most countries, liberal democracy exists as a form giving expression to a cultural and national core. With the core against a liberal government, it is deprived of its most essential source of support as a democratic government. As a puppet government, fundamentally non-Arab, and even anti-Arab, it has no legitimacy within Iraq, let alone the Arab world. In the end, the neo-con dream, or more accurately the manner in which foreign policy was conducted by the neo-cons in general, has mired the U.S. in a deep, deep quagmire.

Beet,

Mentally, I do not have the inclination to tackle this post of yours right now, but I will at a date in the near future. For now, I will say that you are close to my "war rationale" but you have already made one HUGE ERROR in your assessment. You said that because Iraq had no imminent plans for an attack on the US that a war with Iraq could not be justified on the grounds of National Security....that's DEAD WRONG. Events in 2003 or 2004 can and will have massive long term security implications for the United States, the West in general, and the Middle East for that matter.

Let me create a personalized analogy for you to illustrate my point...

1. You and I are philosophical enemies.

2. I have a history of starting fights with people and hurting them badly when I get a chance. Essentially, I'm a bully and a jerk, and completely irrational.

3. You are physically very tough, but don't like to fight by nature. But you could definitely beat me in a fair fight.

4.  You believe that I would do harm to you if given the chance, and that I would not fight fair, but would instead use weapons and anything else I could get my hands on. Many of your friends tell you that they think you're right, and everyone knows that a few years back, I beat a guy to death with a lead pipe, so I'm clearly dangerous.

5. Well, then I start taking verbal and physical slaps at you, it's relatively harmless, but it suggests that I might one day become bolder....especially when you're not looking and your guard is down.

6. So you do the responsible thing...you go to the Police and inform them of me as a potential threat.

7. But the police refuse to do anything...they tell you that you have no real proof, and even though I'm a despicable person who has harmed others and expressed an interest in harming you, I'm not an imminent threat...yet.

8. Worse yet, you begin to suspect that the Police are being paid off by ME and that they could care less if you get hurt because it doesn't impact them.

9. So you are not in immediate danger from me at this very moment, but you are almost certain that you will be in the future, and it may cost you your life when that time comes.

10. You have a choice....sit around and wait for the moment when I AM strong enough to kill you...or you kill me first. Hence you have the chance to enhance your long term security and stop a life-threatening problem before it occurs. What's it gonna be?

[MarkDel]

A simple check of his profile would have shown that he's older than you are....

I know, but he acts like a 5-year-old.

LOL...that's rich...

Bandit, I must say, you are a national treasure...LOL...this board would be far less amusing without your rather unique perspective...LOL

[MarkDel]

Beet,

Well, first of all, the other "naughty kids" like Iran, Syria, etc...now know that they are not above getting the living sh*t beat out of them either. Plus, they also realize that if Iraq is turned into a "nice, strong kid" and part of the club, that their position with their own family might be weakened. And in fact, their family might begin to realize that they are in fact ABUSED children who have been distracted from their misery by the demonizing of the club, and when it comes right down to it, the head of their household might need to GO.

The problem with your analogy is that "The Club" is not populated by friends who are looking out for our best interests. Some of those friends have grown to resent us for being bigger, stronger, better looking, dating the best looking cheerleader and driving that nice new Porsche. And their resentment had NOTHING to do with ambivalence towards us taking care of the bully...

[MarkDel]

Nym,

I think you made a good case against Republicans if we assume your premises are true.  I don't really think they are.

I don't think corporation rule the Republican Party.  We are more pro-business, but that's only because being pro-business works for generating growth.

I don't think the Religious Right controls us either.  I am working in GOP politics, like MarkDel once did, and there just isn't a Religious Right constituency outside the south.

John Ford,

And even if there IS a Religious Right Constituency, it is without firm coordination and leadership, and what few "leaders" there are, have ZERO power and influence on the party.

[MarkDel]

BAsically, this is why I think we went into Iraq. After September 11, those of us who were defeatist fools looked around and said, "Why do they hate us? What must WE do to appease THEM?" Those of us who were not blinded by seeing what we hoped to see said "How do we stop these killers?"

The first problem was to define the parameters of the enemy. George Bush took less than a weak to do this. The foe here was Terrorism, and the Rogue States that sponsored It. The foe was not whoever te individual perpetrators turned out to be- as it happens, Al Qaeda. In the same way in WW2 we faced not only the Japanese who bombed us, but the Germans, Italians, and minor Axis partners (save Finland) that never had attacked us, here too we face not only Bin Laden and his cronies, but also the Hezbollah, Hamas, the IRA, the ETA, FARC, ELN, Sendero Luminoso, the Tamil Tigers, and mny many more. In addition our enemies are the states that succor them, notably Iran, Syria (which occupies Lebanon), Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Lybia, North Korea, Cuba, the Palestinian Authority, and of course, the former Taliban regime of Afghanistan and Baathist regime in Iraq. Our goal is no less than the elimination of the scourge of Terrorism and the ideologies that supported it, notably fascist Pan-Arabism and Islamism, both Shi'ite and Sunni, from the face of the Earth.

We have accomlished no less before, three times in the last century. Fiirst in the Great War, when absolutist monarchism was delegitimized in the West. Second in the Second World War, when fascism and its relatives were delegitimized. And thirdly in the Cold War, when the same was done to Communism. All of these monstrous ideologies sought to oppress mankind and snuff out the embers of freedom. Howeverm while none of these ideologies has been completely exterminated as a form of govt (even today, Saudi Arabia and Bhutan are absolute monrachies, Syria is National Socialist, and North Korea and Cuba are Communist), all were wiped out as serious contenders for global domination, and greatly reduced in their scope, to the benefit of Global Democracy. Yet a new monstrous ideology of tyranny and oppression, that of Islamism, has appeared in portions of the post-colonial world that as yet have had no experience of democracy.

This is unbelievable. In the year 2001, 225 years after the Declaration of Independence, 56 years after the surrenders of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, a decade after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, there are still places in the world where people are not free to live and be governed freely. Intelligent, historied and cultured peoples, like the Cubans and the Iranians, are degraded, oppressed, murdered, raped, and enslaved. Years after the spirit of Lockean representative democracy seemed to have sweeped the world, there are still people suffering under the lash and the iron boot of Authoritariansm.

If one takes a brief look at history in the past 200 years, one will find only one war in which two democracies fought one another: Great Britain on the one hand and Finalnd on the other, as part of the Second world war. In this conflict Britain did launch a single raid on Finnish soil at Petsamo, but specifically targeted Nazi personnel, not Finnish. As a general rule of thumb, democracies do not go to war with one another. This lends practical security value to the defeat of dictatorship worldwide. It is even possible that World Peace is an accomplishable goal, but it is as a facet of the far greater goal of World Freedom.

Many have criticized this vision as unattainable in the Middle East. Arabs, they lecture us, are unfit for democracy. The Islamic temperament is suited to three things- anarchy, war, and oppression; never freedom. These allegations, not to put too harsh a word on them, are racist. Similar claims were made about Germans, Asians and specifically Japanese and people of Chinese ethnicity, of Catholics and especially Latin Americans, of Russians and those strongly influenced by their cultire and history. These accusations were all proven to be, if you will apologize the bluntness, DEAD WRONG. Freedom is a universal aspiration, a universal state of dignity, and anything else is a perverse travesty of humanity, stripped of all dignity nd hope and treated like beasts. I have absolutely no compunctions or regrets about declaring loudly, we, the (small l and d) liberal democrats, are RIGHT, and they, the tyrants, terrorists, and killers, are absolutely and always completely and totally WRONG!

Therefore we must not rest until we make the world safe for mankind, ensure that Life, Liberty, and Property are inalienable rights for every human being, and that governemnt of the people, by the people, for all peoples and people, shall not ever perish from the Earth.

And I'm sorry, but up to that lens, abortion, stem cell research, tax breaks, health care, school prayer, and all the rest seem like the tantrumms of a little child. We must acquire a sense of perspective as a nation, because we are in the middle of the Fourth World War in an ideological sense, and either Democracy or a new and hideous (though no less so than the last two, Nazism or Communism), will, in the end, triumph utterly. And I know one man who will not rest until the crawling things creep back into their holes and sufficate their until the people of the Middle East and elsewhere can raise their heads and say I am a Human Being, and I have my own life to live, and no one is going to make me live it to suit their own twisted vision, because I am Free. And the name of that man is George W. Bush.

G-d bless you, Mr. President.

M,

As you know, I always liked and respected you, but with this post, your stock just went WAYYYY up in my eyes. Extremely well said...