Do you agree with Obama's decision to start killing more people? Then why do you support him?

Secondly, I do not think he is a warmonger. I think that you are using that term gratuitously to scorn those who will choose to vote for Obama despite the fact that he has not been perfect in office.

Frank Apisa wrote:

Secondly, I do not think he is a warmonger. I think that you are using that term gratuitously to scorn those who will choose to vote for Obama despite the fact that he has not been perfect in office.

I disagree both with the notion that he is not a warmonger as well as the risible notion that I say that he is just to scorn Obama voters (whom I don't give a flying **** about one way or the other).

A warmonger is a pejorative[1] term that is used to describe someone who is eager to encourage a people or nation to go to war.

That doesn't describe Obama at all.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

That doesn't describe Obama at all.

If you cherry pick the harshest definitions it might not, but the term literally means "war seller" and is synonymous with bellicist and militarist, which I think is appropriate.

So tell me, after 9/11, what would have been your response to AQ and other militants groups of similar goals to deal with it? Apologize for any wrong doing on the part of the US and sit back and do nothing?

I am not exaggerating for effect, I find militarism to be a relative thing and relative to other world leaders how many can you name who are more militarist than he? And if militarism isn't warmongering then it's a largely useless pejoration.

revelette wrote:

So tell me, after 9/11, what would have been your response to AQ and other militants groups of similar goals to deal with it? Apologize for any wrong doing on the part of the US and sit back and do nothing?

This is a perfectly insipid question. I have been advocating a withdrawal from Afghanistan for the last few years (mind you, it'd been a decade since 9/11), and your idiotic argument is to ask if I wanted the US to have apologized to Al Qaeda after 9/11? Go fly a kite!

This is the kind of abject stupidity that makes open debate frustrating, the profundity of which I fear might make it contagious.

Obama inherited two different wars - what did you want him to do? Quit on both of them immediately and send everyone home the minute he got into office?

I think the fact is that since he took over the reigns, the numbers of those killed offensively by US soldiers has decreased;

Let us examine the current Iranian rumblings; is Obama advocating that we use military force to stop them? No, he is not.

Is he promising to bomb their sites in order to prevent them from getting a bomb? Nope.

But a Warmonger would be doing exactly that. The GOP candidates are pretty much all doing exactly that (with the exception of Ron Paul).

You can't just use terms however you want.

Rev may not have been aware that this is what you've been advocating for years. Don't let that stop you from calling her question 'abject stupidity' though.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

You can't just use terms however you want.

I actually can, and you can disagree with the validity of the use if you wish ...

Campaigning isn't diplospeak, they would not say those things the same way they do in office. They'd say it like Obama is saying it.

I actually can, and you can disagree with the validity of the use if you wish but we'll have to agree to disagree about it.

How's your list of current world leaders with more blood on their hands coming?

You invariably mistake pithiness for wisdom.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Rev may not have been aware that this is what you've been advocating for years. Don't let that stop you from calling her question 'abject stupidity' though.

It's stupid not because of my historical positions make it so but because of the idiotic notion that if I do not like one course of action that a deliberately absurd "do nothing and apologize" is the alternative I must be proposing.

It's a completely stupid way to argue. Just because I argue that we should now be killing fewer people and winding this down earlier does not mean that I advocated no response at all to 9/11 and wanted to apologize to Al Qaeda.

That is perfectly insipid and deserved being labeled as such.

This is a perfectly insipid question. I have been advocating a withdrawal from Afghanistan for the last few years (mind you, it'd been a decade since 9/11), and your idiotic argument is to ask if I wanted the US to have apologized to Al Qaeda after 9/11? Go fly a kite!

This is the kind of abject stupidity that makes open debate frustrating, the profundity of which I fear might make it contagious.

It was actually a request for you to elucidate what you would have done differently. But you didn't take her up on it, preferring instead to hurl slings and arrows. Was greater enlightenment achieved by this?

Oh, well, when you can just wave away examples of ACTUAL warmongering, I guess you can make any 'ol argument you like, right?

Fortunately for my position, dictionaries and other sources for definitions of words clearly agree with me and disagree with you.

Naturally, you can say whatever you like, but don't expect to find much agreement.

Why is it that Obama's domestic opponents are allowed to say things and have their meanings be something else - but Obama is not?

You know as well as I do that he cannot state 'I will take military options off the table for dealing with a nuclearized Iran.' It would be used against him endlessly domestically. So, where's the slack for him, that you are willing to cut others?

There aren't many, in large part b/c most countries replace their leaders every few years, and we're the only real country at war with another one right now. It was a carefully constructed question on your part, but not one which leads to any real enlightenment regarding Obama's character.

Why don't you compare him to leaders within the last 50 years and see where he falls? He wouldn't even make the list of warmongers.