Candidate Differances
 

Apparently, Howard has come out with the shocking idea that America needs to be an honest broker in the mid-east. "Israel has always been a longtime ally with a special relationship with the United States, but if we are going to bargain by being in the middle of the negotiations then we are going to have to take an evenhanded role,"

Joe-responding to earlier Dean comments, "If this is a well-thought-out position, it's a mistake, and a major break from a half a century of American foreign policy," Lieberman said in a statement. "If it's not, it's very important for Howard Dean, as a candidate for president, to think before he talks."

John- responding to same, "It is either because he lacks the foreign policy experience or simply because he is wrong that governor Dean has proposed a radical shift in United States policy towards the Middle East. If the president were to make a remark such as this it would throw an already volatile region into even more turmoil."

We know Lieberman is an Israel Firster crap I said it out loud, now I'm in trouble. Its clear that Kerry will say anything, so distilling a deep seated belief from his pronouncements will be difficult. I'm not sure if this is a change for Dean, we'll have to see what else is out there.

I'm assuming these are the three candidates that matter, if someone has a favorite with a position on anything that matters to you feel free to lay it out.

I'm backing Kerry. In all the hoopla about the primary, the DNC seems to have forgotten the little fact that whoever they nominate has to beat Bush. Kerry's the best one suited to it. The Republicans can't campaign on domestic issues, which leaves them with foreign policy and a whole lot of shirt-wavin' (already a tricky spot to be in - No matter how well you could do abroad, people will go to the booths asking why you couldn't do the same for your own people).

Now, you have Dean and Kerry. Dean just comes off as one of the blandest men to wear the title of "Democrat" ever. I know he's conservative enough to pull some votes away from Bush, even with more liberal and moderate Republicans leaving the Bush camp over Iraq, but you succeed in whipping the public into enough of a fervor, that edge will dull and quickly.

Kerry now, has the background to beat Bush. Kerry is a Vietnam vet, - enlisted, not drafted - Silver Star, Bronze Star, three Purple Hearts, whereas Bush spent his time in the Texas Air National Guard. Come on, the Air National Guard? In TEXAS? Can you think of a group that could POSSIBLY see less action? I mean, at least the regular National Guard in other states occasionally skirmished against protestors and rioters.

As for his "saying anything" - well, duh. Kerry's in a good position right now in the #2 slot. The primary isn't for several months, and for that time - as long as Dean stays in front - he's pretty safe from scrutiny. Kerry doesn't have to turn up the juice until later on, and in the meantime, just let Dean take all the media pressure and any hits that might entail. Case in point - Dean publicly came out and backed Davis in the recall. If Davis doesn't come through in this, Dean is going to get one hell of a backlash come the CA primary.

Lieberman: voted to authorize use of force in Iraq; subsequently backed the war.

Dean: did not have the opportunity to vote on use of force in Iraq; criticized the war.

Kerry: voted to authorize use of force in Iraq; now criticizes the war and says he didn't really mean "authorize" or "force", and that his vote was really to give the ability to negotiate to the President

I think he's bullet proof on all the military questions. Rush ran out the evil war protester bull on his show recently. His rant sounded pretty empty to me. Kerry volunteered, he served, he realized it wasn't working and he protested, that sounds pretty solid to me. Somehow Bush's lack of service never gets traction but put him against an active duty guy and he loses his advantage.

You really think so? I think Dean has mad charisma. And I think a stance against the war might come out ahead in the end.

Of course, I'm far from decided on who I will actually vote for.

Dean on CNN just now (summarized):

"Even-handed" is a key word to some people and I shouldn't have used it. Everyone knows that I support the same position we've had all along. I just meant both sides have to trust us if we're the negotiator. I blame Lieberman for making this an issue, because it's divisive to the Democratic party.

The DNC gambled that if they could get the force authorization passed and off the table, they could make the midterm elections about domestic issues and retake one, if not both houses of Congress. Kerry went along with it, as did a great many other Dems, and it failed.

It was a worthwhile shot, the way I see it. If they took it and won, they got Congress and could check Bush's moves more effectively. Contrarily, if they didn't take it, the measure would pass anyhow, and the Republicans could tar them with the "anti-patriotic" brush for months. Granted, we suspected Iraq would come back to haunt the Reps, but didn't know exactly how badly. But hey, hindsight is 20/20.

Maybe next time the Dems might consider not playing politics with soldiers lives. Syc's right, bipartisanship is fantasy. Their little game rendered the party irrelevent, it's not the Greens that are killing the party, its the Democrats.

Bingo! Right on the money, Griff.

Griff, Republicans play politics with soldiers' lives as easily as Democrats. In a nation where the soldier is ultimately answerable to the civilian, that's their purpose. War is, nor has ever been anything else than, the enforcement of a political agenda through the harshest means. There is no such thing as a "good war", a "necessary war", a "just war", an "honorable war", that's all crap designed to - hey - win at the ballot box.

And if the Dems had won the gambit, you could bet your ass that you would see a flood of legislation choking off any force authorizations that Bush had gotten already - if not stopping the troops from going, then checking their mandate, limiting their tour, any number of things could have happened.

Unless it was politically difficult.

Yeah, right. And just what language do you think we'd be speaking, without it? That's if the masters would allow us to speak at all.
:violin:

I don't know who the hell the Democrats are anymore...for that matter, I don't know who the hell the Republicans are anymore either. It used to be easy to tell them apart, but now...

They are both busy reforming around different issues. It's fascinating!

Uh, English? Or French if you really stopped to think about it. A dialect of Amerindian is possible too, of course.

UT, this is because (if people like me are responding) we don't know if we'll actually go after the enemy, or risk getting our head shot off as we stop in a store for some Skittles in Baghdad. After 9/11, I was all ready to go to Afghanistan if they called on me. I'm not as fervently wanting to go now, but I won't drag out my sheet music to "O Canada" and start practicing as I would for anything else. My family has a long proud tradition of not, you know, being shot. It's fallen to me to continue this tradition as best I can. But al-Qaeda put a multi-square acre hole in the middle of my city, they came damn close to killing my father, my cousin, God only knows how many other members of my family on that day. I have a beef with these people.

But the question is - were I to be called up, would I go against someone who attacked us, or take part in an ego-salve operation because the strongest and skilled army in the world was head-faked by some yutz in a pickup truck and a cell phone on the Afghan-Pakistan border going "Hey, look, a seagull!"

Bruce's insinuation is that we'd be speaking German, of course.

There <b>are</b> just wars. Israel's Six Day War was just, for instance. As was our effort to stop Nazi Germany.

Our effort to stop Nazi Germany that we spent two years attempting to ignore and postpone? Yes we did something valuable in stopping Hitler, but if you think for one second that it was an entirely unselfish act, my friend, you need to sit down and think for a moment.

And the Six-Day War? You mean this Six-Day War -->

If the Israelis just went after Syria, that would be understandable - they were the then-equivalent of Afghanistan, aiding and abetting the Palestinians. But Israel started with Egypt, then Jordan, THEN Syria. The nation they had the most visible cause to attack was near the bottom of the target list!

The Israelis withdrew from the Sinai in 1982, and the Golan in 2000, but they still have Jerusalem to this day. If this was a "just war", would they have struck first AND waited just over 30 years to give territory back? And even then, just 2/3 of it?

*cough* 911 Saudi Arabia *cough*

It's so cute how you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

Israel fired the first shots, but they didn't start the war. Egypt illegaly closed the Straits of Tiran by military force - this was recognized internationally to be an act of war. Nasser said "We knew the closing of the Gulf of Aqaba meant war with Israel... the objective will be Israel's destruction." The Egyptian commander of of Sharm al-Shekh, from where Egypt warned they would shoot at any Israeli ship that attempted to pass, acknowledged that "the closing of the straits was a declaration of war." Nasser admitted that the war was not over the straits but over Israel's existance.

Egyptian war plans included the massacre of Tel Aviv's civilian population. Damascus Radio broadcasted the following: "Arab masses, this is your day. Rush to the battlefield... Let them know that we shall hang the last imperialist soldier with the entrails of the last Zionist." Hafiz al-Assad gave orders to "strike the enemy's settlements, turn them into dust, pave the Arab roads with the skulls of Jews. Strike them without mercy." He also called their forthcoming attack "a battle of annihilation." The Egyptian army was equipped with poison gas, long illegal in war time.

Israel would not have survived had it lost. The goal of the Arab armies was the complete decimation of the population of Israel. We're talking war crimes.

Israel attacked Egyptian, Syrian and Iraqi airfields on June 5, 1967. Israel did not attack Jordan in hopes that it would stay out of the war. Israel sent messages to King Hussein in which it stressed that they would not attack Jordan unless they were attacked first. They clarified that they had no interest in taking the West Bank or even the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem unless they were attacked first. Jordan ignored the messages and began shelling <b>suburbs</b>. Over six thousand shells were fired into Israeli <b>residential areas</b>, wounding over 1,000 civilians and killing 20.

Despite this, <b>Israel did not yet respond</b>, hoping that Jordan would just fire a few opening salvos and then limit military actions. It was only after Jordan sent its air force to bomb the <b>residential neighborhoods</b> of Netanya, Kfar Sirkin and Kfar Saba that Israeli air forces attacked Jordanian military airfields.

Then - this is great - Israel accepted a UN cease fire - but Jordan kept fighting! So again, Israel responded - <b>only now</b> capturing Jerusalem and the West Bank.

As I demonstrated above, this is plainly false. Jordan was attacked last, only after it had attacked Israel.

They struck first because if their air superiority was demolished, so would be their citizens. If a man comes to you and says "I am going to kill you and your family, and I'm going to do it right now", do you wait for him to strike? Or do you eliminate the threat?

I eliminate the threat, as do most people. Israel actually <b>waited</b> until it was beyond a threat. Israel waited until Egypt and Syria started to take action! But of course, it wasn't a just war. You are either amazingly ignorant or anti-Semitic. I leave it to you to admit which.

As far as giving territory back, Israel has never withdrawn from Golan - because Syria has not made peace with Israel, which is the requirement for their withdrawal (as is stated plainly in UN Resolution 242 - why don't you read it some time?). Israel withdrew from the Sinai <b>when Egypt met the conditions set forth for withdrawal in UN Resolution 242</b>. The PLO still has not met the conditions set forth for withdrawal in UN Resolution 242 (Jordan released claim of the West Bank to the PLO a long time ago), so Gaza and the West Bank are still occupied.

Regardless, when has it even been a custom for a country that <b>fought and won a defensive war</b> to give territory back? What does that say? "Oh, you can go ahead and kill us, and you'll suffer no negative consequences! Here, have all this land back! Please attack us again!" Get real. The Arabs are lucky that Israel even accepted 242, because otherwise they are under no obligation to give the land back.

First of all, Griff, some NyQuil would really help out that nasty little cough you got going on there. Bonus points, before it knocks you out for the next 10 years, you might be healthy enough to explain what the hell you meant by that.

Dave, where'd you get all that? Before I start, I just want to say that there's no sarcasm here in this post, just honest curiosity. I wanted to throw up a reply, but I had to run off to class. I admit I'm not a foremost expert on the Six-Day War, but I wanted to learn. The first thing I thought of was encyclopedia.com, and their entry for the Six-Day War was what I quoted. Where did you get your stuff from?

I mean, you say I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, and with such a diametrically opposed viewpoint to my source, I can see how you can say such a thing. If I'm so clearly missing crucial facts on this, help me rectify that. Please?

Again, NO sarcasm. I honestly want to learn. Thank you.

Thanks for the heads up Chewey, but I'm feeling better now. I thought it was an interesting comparison. Israel going after Syria late in their conflict and Bush going after S.A. late or never even though the 911 perps were Saudis, apparently taking orders and money from a Saudi. Imperfect comparison but I'm an opportunist.

Or Japanese, or Spanish or worst of all Rebel.;)

Lots and lots of places. I don't have them all here now.

What you really need to do, however, is read books from all sides. Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens are good for your completely biased Palestinian side (no, really - read these guys - they are amazing in that they ignore reality - but they will provide a Palestinian view). Noam Chomsky is also unreal in his ability to propagandize.

I actually don't read much Israeli propaganda. I know it exists, and I read a guy the other day, but he was a fucking nutjob and I just sorta closed the browser.

As for everything I quoted above, it's all in the record if you dig deep enough.

The problem is (and I'm being honest here) many sources buy into the anti-Semitic rhetoric of people like Chomsky and Said (I haven't read enough Hitchens; I think he's just strongly misguided). It really is a bigger problem than you might realize. A good eye opener is Dershowitz's <i>The Case for Israel</i>, which is a pretty lucid overview of what's going on. It doesn't claim that Israel is perfect - it just points out the bullshit.

I responded the way I did because it's time to stamp out this bullshit. Israel isn't perfect, but it's far better than many people believe. As Dershowitz says, "It's the Jew among nations."

(By the way, I appreciate your open attitude. I'm used to people who don't have one - like tw or jaguar, for instance - and it perhaps puts a bit of nasty in my posts.)

I started this before Dave posted, so forgive me for any overlapping thought.

There are a wide variety of resources on the net and in books. But watch those sources...lots of slant, and the accounts vary. Based on what I've read, Dave's account is pretty accurate, though "Egypt, Jordan, then Syria" is mentioned by several sources, along with Soviet backing and involvement.

In the end, I would say it was a just war.

Jordan was definitely attacked last.

Man, you have no idea the level of sympathy I'm generating for you here. With the right conversion methods, I could power Oklahoma with this much sympathy. :beer:

When I get some funds (the epitaph of many a college student), I'll check out that Dershowitz and one of those Palestinian books. Maybe just take a day and see both sides at once. Thanks, Dave. 'Preciate it.

Several sources I've read say Egypt was hit first, Jordan shortly thereafter, then Syria (and Iraq) later in the day. I'll see if I can find more info when I go to the library this afternoon.

I don't have anything to add here, really, but I just noticed your user title, and so I must:

"MY NAME IS SUE! HOW DO YOU DO! NOW YOU GONNA DIE!"

Man...the central branch of the Philadelphia Free Library is huge...more on that later.

After reading at the Library and re-reading a lot of internet shit: Egypt getting its ass handed to them first is prevalent in just about everything I've read. As far as Syria, Jordan, and Iraq...it becomes muddled: most of it is either unclear, inferred by the source, or open to interpretation.

"Life ain't easy for a boy named Sue..."