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  • From: "Don Rua" <rua AT mindspring.com>
  • To: "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] immediate reactions
  • Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2004 23:57:34 -0400

Immediate reaction: Kerry stumbled less, looked 'okay'. Still looks like
Herman Munster with the personality of a popcycle stick to me. Bush stumbled
in the second half. I don't think Bush lost any voters, but Kerry may have
picked up a few undecided. I really don't think he was good enough to pick
up much, but when every news outlet coast to coast tells the undecided
viewers: "Kerry did great, Bush sucked", it can be more powerful than the
debated itself.

Second reaction: I'm not a fan of either one, and I still doubt I'll vote
for either, but it does bug me that Kerry continues to say he'll solve every
problem like a magician. He'll get us out of Iraq in record time, he'll do
it so the Iraq people will be free and safe, he'll defeat terrorism, he'll
give us healthcare and education without raising the budget, he'll get a
coalition of every country plus Neptune and Pluto, etc. It's easy for him to
say he will do all those things, when he hasn't been there. Something about
how he acts like it will all be so simple worries me.

Several responders wrote about two points, "Bush knowing God's will" and
"admitting Iraq was/is an error", to which I respond:

>>>"Freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world, And
as the greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to
help spread that freedom."

- So, if he proclaims this inspiration is from a god, Christian or
otherwise, does it negate the value of spreading freedom? What does it
matter if he thinks he has a mandate from God, his own conscious, Plato, or
from Ray Bradbury's undiscovered short fiction? The issue is: "Is freedom
worth fighting for?" Thomas Jefferson, on supporting the fight for freedom
in other countries: "The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the
issue of that contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little blood?
My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this
cause, but rather than it should have failed I would rather have seen half
the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and Eve left in every country,
and left free, it would be better than it is now."

-I didn't see any specification that Bush knows exactly what God wants. He
was merely repeating variations of what so many folks say in church, that
'God has a plan.' That's not groundbreaking or new as far as I can tell. If
he believes God has a plan for the world, and he's the leader of the world's
most powerful nation, I would think it a bit silly to think he's not part of
the plan somewhere. Mind you, I'm agnostic, but I can't fault a Christian
for coming to that conclusion. My goodness, he was in place on one of the
most horrific days in our history. At least PearlHarbor was mostly
servicemen attacked. How could any Christian President NOT get a sense that
God has work for them to do? If you don't want to elect someone because they
are Christian, that's yer bidness, but I wouldn't ask him to be blind to the
potential he's been told in church for 40 years. Every time I've visited
I've heard "God has a plan for you.". What's new?

>>At the very least he is so arrogant that he can't admit an error. I
really liked where he said "I know how the world works." I think that is
pretty
>>damned arrogant and ignorant.

If he refuses to admit to a known mistake, his refusal to admit such 'could'
be arrogant. (It could also be strategic for numerous audiences, i.e.
terrorists, troops, domestic, global alliances, etc Strong Presidents often
must sacrifice popularity to achieve worthwhile goals). If he did NOT make
an error, sticking to his story is not arrogant or ignorant, and there is no
way you can state without error yourself that he made a mistake. In 20 or 50
years, we may come to a good sense of whether it was a mistake or not, and
even then idealogues may disagree. It does not add up to say he is arrogant
for refusing to admit to something that may not be true. When G.Washington
made some of his decisions, they were amazingly ridiculed and opposed,
sometimes by a vast majority, but have in the course of time proved
profoundly wise and strategic. The same can be said for numerous presidents
at different times. If you want to believe he's arrogant, go right ahead,
but you can't know the war is a mistake at this point in history, and thus
his support of it can quite easily and obviously be something other than
arrogance.

Additionally: Plenty are calling the reconstruction effort, and the war in
general, a failure after 12 months. I cannot fathom how anyone can have read
more than two historical novels of detail and substance in their life, and
imagine they can judge the current situation in Iraq as a failure after 12
months. Of course you can have some opinion, if you must, but I think it
should carry a 75% margin of error for judging history just 12 months after
initiative. I'm not saying it's a success or failure, and put that call at
about as accurate is saying definitively whether there is a supreme being.
At what time in history has anyone ever been able to do what Bush is
attempting to do with a complete happy-happy-joy-joy resolution in 12
months? Where is the consistent example of how others have shifted global
paradigms and power structures in such a small amount of time, or without
resistance? Since the Islamic Revolution in Iran in the 80's, we've seen
Pakistan, Afghan, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Europe, Indonesia, and a
host of other areas grow in terrorist support or activity.
Is Iraq a mess? Heck yes. Is the total amount of casualties since we
landed there less than predicted just in the first three months? By a long
shot by my estimate. I thought we would lose 1000 before we even set foot in
Baghdad. Bush told the public, repeatedly, that this was a long, hard
process. Every press agency was given plenty of lead to ask questions about
that, and Bush never sought popular support by minimizing the seriousness
and difficulty of the task. He always said it would be hard, and yet people
are claiming it a failure in a fourth of the time it takes to get a Liberal
Arts degree. This is serious long-term chess playing to forestall a huge
clash of ideologies. You should feel the coming jihad when terrorists are
threatening to behead truck-drivers in Iraq if France doesn't change a minor
headdress law, in FRANCE. As Abbas Mussawi, the former leader of Hizbullah,
put it, "We are not fighting so that the enemy recognizes us and offers us
something. We are fighting to wipe out the enemy."

As for knowing how the world works, I would put good money on him knowing
more about it than Kerry. Despite the jokes, he comes from decent stock and
I believe he's an above average intelligence. Take that, and then have him
grow up with his father serving under Reagan, and then his father's term,
and now his own four years in. I would think he has as good of an
understanding of the world political landscape and coalitions as any
individual you could find. I assume you know how your job and industry
works, and I believe I know how my job works, and he's had more exposure to
the world leader role than just about anyone around. The coalition in
Afghanistan, and the coalition for the first Iraq war under his father, were
two of the greatest coalition efforts I've ever seen or read about in
history. If anyone has access or knowledge about how those coalitions came
about, he does.

Don







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