Sorry,
late February
"You're right, we went to war under the wrong banner, but it's the only banner we could get people to listen to at the time. If I need to lie a little to get someone to do the right thing, then personally I think that's ok."
You're counting on the means justifying the ends here.
I'm sure the President marketing this war as a short-term, inexpensive, and unrealistically painless conflict is worth the President having an approval rating in lower 30's and Congress (a Republican Congress no less) trying to bring our troops back from Iraq now. (Well, maybe it is, as long as the Democrats inexplicably remain inept).
I'm sure him deceiving Americans couldn't possibly have alienated Americans who would have supported (or at least tolerated) the war on more modest but irrefutable grounds. [In terms of international support, Germany's main contention isn't that we are using our military, but that we've been insincere about it.]
I'm sure Bush having to come up with new reasons for us invading Iraq doesn't compel Americans to suspect a darker motive: that are were invading in order to support Bush's and Cheney's buddies (instability in Iraq causes oil prices to go up and increase profits on gas, and Iraq provides new opportunities to give contracts, sometimes no-bid, to defense and/or construction, not unlike Halliburton in Afghanistan). I'm sure no one will relate Bush to the "political bosses" of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (Remember the credentials of who he appointed to FEMA?)
What makes this especially disturbing is that we can't trust Bush on any other issue, particularly anything involving classified evidence. Are we supposed to trust that Bush's administration is actually using wiretaps for ethical reasons when it won't even file for retroactive search warrants with a secret court?
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Another contention with the war, as I've iterated, is whether this war is actually even worth it in the first place (and of course, you are prepared to debate this point). Even if we successfully intimidate a few countries into challenging us, we're doing nothing to slow Iran (oh right, attacking Iran wouldn't have driven up oil prices so much), a much more serious threat in the region. Furthermore, by exaggerating the danger of Iraq, we're starving social programs from getting proper consideration and funding. By committing so many resources to Iraq, you don't give the American people and/or Congress the opportunity to weigh merits of the war against other policy that, from my POV, needs that money more. This is not to say that Iraq isn't/wasn't a problem, but rather there are social matters even more important (and cost-effective), and Bush denied us that debate. Hell, let's just make him our elected dictator while we're at it.
This is the kind of person that's supposed to be a role model? Isn't the President someone we should look at to emulate? Bush has manipulated the emotions of the American people (particularly with the marketing of Iraq, but post-9/11 matters here as well), and it's naive to not think that people won't emulate that behavior. We shouldn't care about the opinions of others; we are going to do whatever it takes to advance our goals, because *we* must be right no matter what everyone else thinks. We should feel free to use others in any capacity, even when it violates the law or costs lives, as long as it brings about the kind of change we want.
Wow, this attitude seems even more sinister than those Mac commercials.
(had to make a weak attempt at getting back on topic, heh)
Reality as we hear (be it from the "liberal media", or Bush and Fox News) is just fantasy, isn't it? Only through investigation and our imagination can we hope to establish what is true and real.
Jeeze, we really needed to find a better thread for this.
