Char. Limit said:
And that would be a great argument, except for the fact that you're making huge assumptions about what "the American people" do or do not want. For every opinion poll you can find that "the American people" oppose this bill, I could find at least one that finds that "the American people" support it. But unless you ask all 330 million people, the best you've got is a wild guess.
If the American people really had wanted it, Obama and the Democrats would not have had such a hard time getting it passed in the first place, and then ultimately having to ram it through.
Also, it isn't a wild guess. Polls are very statistical in how they do them. Good polls are educated guesses. For example, right after 9/11, Bush had very high support in the polls. Later on, his poll ratings really tanked. I think the polls were fairly accurate.
The unemployment rate also is done through statistics with samples. They can't call up everyone in the country and ask their employment situation.
TV show ratings also are a statistic that has to be calculated from samples.
Oh, please. Every single one of the last three Republican presidents we've had have gotten us into one or more wars or similar military undertakings.
Reagan did not get us into any extensive military undertaking.
George III had the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which completely missed the point, considering that Bin Laden and most of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudi.
Neither of these missed the point. Leaving Afghanistan go through the 1990s is what led us up to 9/11. As for Iraq, it was believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and was growing to be an imminent threat. He was a man who had attacked two neighboring countries, attacked two other countries, and used chemical weapons that killed tens of thousands. His Baath party was modeled on the Nazi party.
He was viewed as a very grave growing threat that had to be dealt with. BTW, it was Bill Clinton who made it official U.S. policy to depose of Saddam. Bush just actually went through with it.
Bush Sr. got us involved in the Persian Gulf War.
Because Iraq invaded Kuwait, and we won that war easily.
Ronald Reagan, the Conservative Messiah, had that whole Star Wars, Evil Empire, Iran-Contra, Iran-Iraq war going on.
The Strategic Defense Initiative was started to develop missile defense capabilities against nuclear weapons, and I think is still a very sound concept to keep working towards. A missile defense system that has around a 70% chance or higher of shooting down a missile launched by a nation like Iran or North Korea provides a huge advantage.
On the Evil Empire, well he just told the truth. The Soviet Union was an evil empire. It brutally oppressed people and the only thing that kept it from conquering all of Europe was the United States. The Soviets were not going to go to war over being called the evil empire.
Iran-Contra was one of Reagan's blunders, but was done as part of a strategy to fight the Soviets. The Iran-Iraq War was similar.
So don't tell me that conservatives don't like war. Their track record shows a stark contrast to your words.
No it doesn't. In fact, it shows conservatives clearly hate war,
but are willing to use force to stop threats from sprouting up when necessary. That is a core tenet of neoconservatism. Neoconservatism arose as a direct response to the horrors of Nazism and Soviet communism. It emphasizes very strong national defense and a complete no-nonsense approach to foreign policy. That confuses a lot of people, the idea that to prevent a war, you need to use military force sometimes, but it is the truth.
For example, a neoconservative would have gone in and knocked out Hitler's Nazi regime long before it became an imminent threat. Then said neoconservative probably would have been blamed for destroying what would have been a bullwark against the evils of Soviet Communism and thus gave us the Cold War
Real war is something historically beloved by the political Left, because it unites industry and state. The Progressives supported U.S. entry into World War I and also liked the effects of World War II for these reasons. Lyndon Johnson took us into Vietnam. Nixon, the "warmonger," is the one who ended the Vietnam War when he opened Northern Vietnam and Cambodia up to bombing finally.
Today's left differ from the Progressives in that they do not like formal war, but rather the moral equivalency of war; I'm sure you've heard how some on the Left want a WWII-style effort to combat global warming for example. They always want something to make everyone hold hands and march in lockstep and to unite industry and state, to give the government wide-reaching powers over the economy.
Conservatives recognize this danger of war, plus war as a whole sucks anyhow, so they do not support it unless absolutely necessary, and are willing to use force to stop a threat from arising, which may incur some casualities, but casualties viewed as peanuts compared with what otherwise might occur. War has everything conservatives hate: infringement on individual liberties, government takeover of the economy, and people having to go and die. The U.S. was lucky in that the socialists attempts to make America socialist with WWI and WWII both failed.
Neoconservatism simply holds a very, very skeptical view about the world. It understands that peace is very fragile and is only maintained through strength. Weakness invites aggression. Thus you always maintain a strong defense so that if necessary you can act pre-emptively to put down any such aggressors so a truly serious threat doesn't arise.
Iraq and Afghanistan, while they suck, are jokes from a historical standpoint as "wars." The U.S. isn't really at war, it's military is. No one has to sacrifice except the families of the soldiers. We lost around 30,000 in Korea, 50,000 in Vietnam, yet "only" about 4,300 thus far in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. All wars stink, but these are peanuts compared to what can happen if terrorists ever detonate a nuke in the U.S. in a major city or a rogue nation became too strong but needed to be stopped. Korea and Vietnam were considered "small" in comparison to the big wars (WWI and WWII). Korea so much so some call it the forgotten war.
