al gore.... WHY oh WHY???

[xfer]

eh, i think if Gore had won, everyone would be saying "i think anyone could do a better job than gore!" not that they'd be entirely wrong.

i'm glad Gore cleared the brush out of the way so maybe in six or eight years the democrats will finally run someone worth voting for, instead of fourteen to sixteen years down the road.

 

[avi]

Gore is smart guy, but he's just not a leader. Dude has a track record for getting bogged down in semantics and little details and never actually getting things done.

 

[xfer]

he's also liable to change his stance for even a 2-point bump in the polls. I spent the last decade hatin' on Gore because of his Iraq hawkishness, and now (post-1999) that shit is getting really bad and Iraq hawkishness is starting to make more sense, the fucker reverses his view (obviously solely to greed some of the antiwar sympathy votes). GRRR.

 

[xfer]

btw: despite my gore disappointment, i don't think he was inaccurate when he made his i-invented-the-internet comment.

 

[XzanderX]

 

[xfer]

haha nice!

i would vote for avi, if only so the phrase SUP SLUTS could forever be immortalized in the presidential papers of this country.

 

[FalseTodd]

I dont' think Gore would have been president of the century, but at the very least we hopefully wouldn't be threatening the world with nuclear weapons in a first-strike capacity. That's unconscienable.

"We already have huge bombs controlled by Nintendo controllers to drop on you, and the highest-trained most insane military in history, but we thought we'd also vaporize your citizens and ruin your land, too, just in case you ever thought of fucking with us."

 

[xfer]

umm, i'm pondering that one. first, i'm fully pro-world-disarmament if we can figure out how to pull that off, right. but while nukes are in place, isn't it more unconscionable not to threaten to use them in any capacity?

here's my logic...you ever see Dr. Strangelove? the americans accidentally launch a nuclear strike against the USSR, only to discover that the USSR has a secret, un-shut-offable "doomsday device" that will annihilate the world if the USSR is nuked. the americans start screaming at the russian ambassador:

Dr. Strangelove: "...the whole point of the Doomsday Machine...is lost...if you keep it a secret. Why didn't you tell the world, eh?"

the absurdity of having a device described as THE ULTIMATE DETERRENT...yet NEVER REVEALED, thus rendering its deterrent effect entirely worthless...is one of the key themes of the film.

if we take it as a given that right now the U.S. has nukes...yet we vow not to use them until shit is already fucked up...that kind of shatters the doctrine of deterrence (which i think is a shitty doctrine anyway, which is why i support missile defence, but which is better than having neither deterrence nor missile defence, i guess).

 

[azal]

Originally posted by XzanderX
so you rather have a clown with no knowledge what so ever than al gore?

are you thinking what I'm thinking????

"McDonald in 2004!!!"

the troops are rallying

 

[xfer]

i won't even eat that dude's food, much less give him my oh-so-precious vote.

 

[FalseTodd]

OK, but we're threatening to use them against countries that a) have no nuclear capacity, and b) have little to no capacity to strike the US *at all* aside from foreign interests and allies, or acts of terrorism. And I don't think that nuclear weaponry is any kind of an effective deterrent towards terrorists, being as how they (nuclear weapons) are primarily scary to large, concentrated populations, which terrorist organizations aren't.

And this is not to say that we should leave Israel or other allies hanging in the wind - but in light of recent leadership and actions, Israel is pretty hard to love right now, and not a country I'd like to see entering into a nuclear war over.

Nukes haven't been used since Hiroshima and Nagasaki for a reason - they're horrendous, sickening weapons which threaten the safety of the planet. Loose talk about the use of them is tremendously dangerous and doesn't do much good for United States PR in the rest of the world, something that I think is desperately needed. The "Fuck the world and the UN let's just do what we see fit" philosophy of many conservatives is disturbing in the extreme.

 

[azal]

Originally posted by XzanderX
I don't want a comedian as my leader, I want someone that is gonna do a good job.


just sayin'

this statement conjured up the scariest image....

 

[xfer]

OK, but nukes aren't *supposed* to deter terrorists. They're supposed to scare the crap out of governments that support terrorists within their borders (such as Afghanistan's Taliban supporting Al-Qaeda, Syria/Lebanon's support of Hezbollah, or Pakistan's support of the myriad of Kashmir-oriented terror groups). The message is "if we suffer from groups that you allow to exist, then you will suffer", which causes the states to crack down on and expel those groups, which makes everyone happy and love puppy dogs. Of course, in PRACTISE, it's a sliding scale, as you can never fully eliminate terrorism and terror groups with the funding most of these countries have. but you can do a fuckofalot better than most of them are doing.

My problem with the nuke thing is that it's isolationist. We can sit in our country, let despots rule, act surprised when the people they've brainwashed into hate do something awful, and nuke from afar...or we can send in troops, use sanctions, do whatever it takes to topple anti-human-rights, anti-democratic, anti-Western governments, and cut off the terror at the roots. But that costs money and American lives, so Bush shies away from it...

I think the US shouldn't say "fuck the UN" across the board, but it should certainly make case-by-case decisions. When a nation like SYRIA sits on its human-rights board, you can't always listen to what the UN has to say.

 

[xfer]

bill maher is one of the biggest, most selfish assholes i've ever seen. but he IS funny.

 

[FalseTodd]

>OK, but nukes aren't *supposed* to deter terrorists.

OK, I concede that. I just think that the looming threat of a nuclear war is far the right way to go about things. There are better ways to do this, which you go on to point out.

>My problem with the nuke thing is that it's isolationist. We can
>sit in our country, let despots rule, act surprised when the
>people they've brainwashed into hate do something awful, and
>nuke from afar...

Yes, I agree that it's isolationist - and that's hardly an accurate assessment of the US involvement in middle eastern affairs, of course

I just think Bush's "frontier justice" thing is sickening to watch. More sickening is the timing of this whole thing. I agree that Saddam Hussein is a maniac, and needs to be put out of power. But the entire nation is suddenly up-in-arms over something they didn't even *think* about during the Clinton administration. And if I hear one more person talk about what an imperative it is that we "support the president" during this "time of crisis"...lord.

This is the first time in my life I've ever seriously considered moving to another country, based solely on the government.

 

[xfer]

Well, just because people made the mistake of not being conscious of other evils in the world during the Clinton administration doesn't mean it becomes right to make the same mistake during the Bush II administration, solely for the sake of consistency. A cop who stops a kidnapper climbing in my window because he wants to make detective still stopped my kids from getting kidnapped.

I think the whole nuclear situation is sick. I don't think the U.S. announcing it won't use its nukes is especially helpful, though. I think that once the U.S. has a missile shield and the Chinese, Russian, and North Korean threats are largely neutralized, something needs to be done about the suitcase-nukers (probably the end-to-the-despots thing, in some fashion), and once THAT'S done, the U.S. would be free to disarm--in fact, would be morally compelled to.

 

[FalseTodd]

>A cop who stops a kidnapper climbing in my window because he
>wants to make detective still stopped my kids from getting
>kidnapped.

I get your point, but ol Saddam hasn't been proven to be climbing in any windows as of yet. Against his own people perhaps, but the US is hardly threatening to bomb every despot who mistreats the people of his country. Maybe the Bush administration does have the proof they claim to, but it seems like the American public is all too willing to take this on faith.

And on the nuke thing, There have got to be more subtle gradations of when to use nukes between "first-strike" and "last resort". The new doctrine states that nukes are considered an acceptable first-strike/preemptive strike weapon - which is lunacy. Considering the administration's apparent war-readiness, this strikes me as fairly terrifying. I'm amazed they even conceded to having the UN inspectors go back into the country. The government is already talking down their efforts, saying that these inspections are ineffectual. It's just a matter of time before the US declares the weapons inspections as invalid and incomplete - and that they (the US) have enough proof to start blowing people up. It makes me extremely sad.

 

[xfer]

Originally posted by FalseTodd
Against his own people perhaps, but the US is hardly threatening to bomb every despot who mistreats the people of his country. Maybe the Bush administration does have the proof they claim to, but it seems like the American public is all too willing to take this on faith.

Well, I don't think Bush feels he can threaten countries like Saudi Arabia until Iraq is taken care of, even if they ARE next on the list. They should be, anyway. I do think the best thing would be for the U.S. to announce that they are no longer tolerating the evillest regimes anywhere, period, give an ultimatum for change, and if there's any violation, come down hard (not necessarily militarily). BUT the United Nations would have a shit-fit (partially because half of its constituency is intolerably evil). So isn't it better to use politics and diplomacy, perhaps remove Iraq first and see if that scares the next couple of autocracies enough to make meaningful change, before making enemies of 90% of the Arab world with one declaration (remember the shitstorm when Bush did that to Iran..."now they will never be our friends, how could you call them axis of evil, etc etc")?

I doubt the Bush Administration has proof Saddam is trying to strike at the heart of America, but I don't think they need it. I've said this before, but I think that that's just what they need to say to get Americans behind the war (this fib isn't aimed at the rest of the world, but at US). Americans are pretty selfish creatures (ok, admittedly, in the global and subjective sense, they're more altruistic than most everyone, but let's talk objectively for a moment), and unless the threat is against their families or friends or country, they're hesitant to get involved.

So Bush is lying to get the public behind something they ought to be behind anyway. Pretty cynical of him, and I'm not really down with supporting untruths, but I guess if it came down to either exaggerating the threat to Americans or letting the Iraqi people hang in the wind, I'd feel pretty bad choosing the former just because I don't want to be lied to. My qualm is that maybe the lying is not necessary--maybe Americans would be behind regime change if Bush simply talked about what was happening to the Iraqis & other Arab people suffering. But really, I can no longer blame anyone for being cynical about humans.

The problem with the nuke thing isn't the Bush administration's policy, I think. It's entirely consistent with the terrible doctrine of "deterrence" we've followed for decades. Deterrence is about making horrendous threats, making everyone believe you will carry them out, and then never actually carrying them out (my God, the USSR and the US had the unspoken threat to destroy the planet hovering in the air between them. That's far worse than any first-nuclear-strike-against-Iraq threat). I think that doctrine is horrible, and I think it should be changed immediately if not sooner, but while we are operating under it, I don't think it should be done half-assed.

 

[minxnim]

when will people figure out that looming horrible threats hardly work on people who are inherently bent on doing bad, or who are fanatical, or who for right reasons, dont trust a fucking thing we say anyway? ie, the death penalty as a Deterrent.

 

[xfer]

well, like i said, i think the deterrence is aimed at the governments of countries that support terrorists, not at the terrorists themselves...

but my big problem with deterrence is that I don't think you should threaten anything you can't or won't carry out if someone calls you on it. and morally you just CAN'T carry out a worldwide nuclear war! so you shouldn't threaten it. but they do anyway!