How Dare We Call It a War!

trespassers will wrote:

Lola wrote:
It's these kinds of statements, "you're either for us or against us" that demonstrate the simple minded concrete thinking that will always be associated with GW. This will be his legacy.

Let's explore this for a moment, Lola.

The context of the statement in question was regarding the fight against terrorism. Within that context I see an absolute need for decisive, unequivocal language such as Bush chose.

COMMENTS:

Bullschidt!

At least your explanation of it is, Tresspasser.

One could be four square against Terrorism -- and against Saddam Hussein, for that matter, and still not be "for" Bush and his tactics.

I am not against fighting terrorism. I am not even against trying to depose people like Saddam Hussein.

BUT I DO NOT LIKE BUSH'S TACTICS.

I do not like taking shortcuts -- undermining the Security Council by deciding unilaterally or in concert with a few abettors matters that only the Security Council should have been able to decide.

I do not like our country deciding to invade a country that has not invaded us first. I don't agree with this preemptive nonsense -- and I see it as a cancer that will metastasize and eventually do us, and the rest of the world, great harm.

Bush's statement "you're either for us or against us" attempts to preempt a person's right to be unequivocally against terrorism -- yet decidedly not "for" the kind of ill-conceived solutions that Bush's handlers have come up with.

In effect, it attempts to paint people who are not "for" them -- as people who are "for" terrorism and "for" miserable human beings like Saddam Hussein.

I'm glad Craven saw this bit on nonsense on the part of Bush -- and your defense of it -- for what it is. BULL!

Lola -- thanks for bringing the subject up.

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Now, I don't like Bush The Younger's tactics either. I don't recall the word string: "You are either for us or against us" to have occurred in any statement of his, however.

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Quote:

Consider the awkward position President Bush finds himself in as a result of the statement he made last September: "You're either with us . . . or with the terrorists."

At the time, it sounded great -- the leader of the most powerful nation on earth warning other countries that they must do their part to rid the world of terrorism. Fearing U.S. opprobrium or worse, even hostile governments like Iran's quickly condemned the Sept. 11 attacks.

St. Petersburg Times

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In his first address after the attack, Bush said that other nations "are either for us or on the side of the terrorists.

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timber

Ain't no one going to let you get away with that little memory dump.

It is simply a false dilemma, and as we don't teach logic in schools, it slips by too many without setting off the alarm bells. Two simplistic opposing positions presented under the pretence that they are it, option-wise.

There is a wonderful circularity to the nationalist's position here too. Country X (in this case, America) simply cannot be too wrong because she is America. Or, we trust the President because he's the President.

Of course, such circularity can be worked in reverse, as in 'we DON'T trust the American president because he's the American president'.

I've personally been indicted more than a few times for being 'anti-American'. That's ok, I know that my mother can beat up those speakers' mothers, so my self esteem remains intact.

It is these broad, and undiscerning, brush strokes which make for lousy and idiotic thinking, wherever on the spectrum they occur.

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Bush is a controlling, evil bastard in my opinion and I don't expect that to change.

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amen Gezzy

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Plaudits to Lola, Craven and Gezzy Exclamation

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Posting this (whole) Maureen Dowd piece in response to a request for a link from Lola because I think it may interest all those who didn't catch it in 4/2 New York Times.

April 2, 2003
Warring Tribes, Here and There
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
The president and his war council did not expect so much heavy guerrilla resistance in Iraq. And they really did not expect so much heavy guerrilla resistance at home.
But you can't have transformation without provocation.
This was a war designed to change the nature of American foreign policy, military policy and even the national character ?- flushing out ambivalence and embracing absolutism.
As two members of the pre-emptive Bush doctrine's neo-con brain trust, Bill Kristol and Lawrence Kaplan, argued in a book-length call for battle, "The War Over Iraq": "Well, what is wrong with dominance, in the service of sound principles and high ideals?"
So it should not be a surprise that the troubled opening phase of the war has exacerbated territorial and ideological fissures in the administration and the Republican Party.
Democrats are muter than mute. But a dozen days of real war in the desert has turned the usually disciplined Bush crowd into a bunch of schismatics: there is internecine warfare between the "hold out a hand" Bush I team and the "back of the hand" Bush II team. There's a feud between Donald Rumsfeld and some of his generals and ex-generals, and animosity between the Pentagon ?- where Rummy, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith spin schemes for intimidating the world and remodeling the Middle East ?- and the State Department. Colin Powell and his deputies wince as old alliances shatter and the Arab world seethes, and mutter that there had to be a way to get rid of Saddam without making everyone on the planet despise America.
The Washington Post reported on Monday that moderate Republicans were trying to do an intervention with the president to show him that hawks were giving him "bum advice."
The article was clearly referring to the Bush I realpolitik crowd of James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, Lawrence Eagleburger and Mr. Powell and his acolytes at State. These pals of Poppy Bush are alarmed that the Hobbesian Dick Cheney ?- who has been down in his undisclosed locations reading books about how war is the natural state of mankind ?- the flamboyantly belligerent Rummy and the crusading neo-cons have mesmerized the president with their macho schemes.
"There is a behind-the-scenes effort by former senior Republican government officials and party leaders to convince President Bush that the advice he has received from Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz . . . has been wrong and even dangerous to long-term U.S. national interests," The Post said.
One former senior Republican official noted: "The only one who can reach the president is his father. But it is not timely yet to talk to him." This raised the odd specter of the president's being dragged off from running a war and taken to Kennebunkport for a Metternichian outing in the family cigarette boat. Mr. Scowcroft and Mr. Eagleburger could pin W. down while Bar steered and Poppy explained the facts of international life.
The Oedipal struggle of the Bushes ?- a father who was an ambassador to the U.N. and an envoy to China, a globe-trotting vice president and an internationalist president, and a son who was a Texas governor with little knowledge of the world ?- was bound to be aggravated by an invasion of Iraq not sanctioned by the U.N.
Here was a son acting to correct his father's "mistakes" in the first gulf war, when his father did not think he had made a mistake, but rather a great contribution to history.
The neo-cons egged on 43 to war in Iraq by writing, as Mr. Kristol and Mr. Kaplan did, that 41's foreign policy was "defective" and that Bush senior had urged Iraqi Shiites and Kurds to revolt and then, afraid that Iraq would break up, turned "a blind eye" when they did that after the war and were slaughtered by Saddam.
When the Iraqi Shiites did not greet U.S. soldiers with flowers and hugs last week, as the hawks had promised, the stung warriors once more blamed Bush 41. "We bear a certain responsibility for what we didn't do in 1991," a senior U.S. military commander at Central Command in Qatar told reporters. "We let them down once. We're not going to do it again."
Bush 43 is busy trying to do something his dad thought he'd done. The title of Bush 41's book: "A World Transformed."

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Blatham, I don't think asking for documentation of the Bush-uttered wordstring: "You are either for us or against us" as painting with a broad brush. Either he said those exact words or he didn't. To base any part of a criticism of one on an unverifiable supposition or assertion is rather broadly bruching aside certain principles.

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blatham wrote:

timber

Ain't no one going to let you get away with that little memory dump.

It is simply a false dilemma, and as we don't teach logic in schools, it slips by too many without setting off the alarm bells. Two simplistic opposing positions presented under the pretence that they are it, option-wise.

COMMENT:

Reminds me of those bumper stickers a few years back:

I'D RATHER BE DEAD THAN RED!

My reaction always was: Jeez, aren't there any other choices?

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Frank Apisa wrote:

Bullschidt!
...

Bush's statement "you're either for us or against us" attempts to preempt a person's right to be unequivocally against terrorism -- yet decidedly not "for" the kind of ill-conceived solutions that Bush's handlers have come up with.

Frank - I like your passion, even if it seems forever misplaced.

Your comments here would be valid, IF Bush had been speaking to US citizens at the time. He was not. He was speaking to other nations and NGOs around the world. As such, his statement had nothing to do with "a person's right" to anything. It has to do with the behavior of other nations and NGOs as pertains to terrorism. If you are not tracking down and prosecuting terrorists, you are enabling them. If you are not cutting their financial strings, you are enabling them. If you are not actively fighting terrorism, you are actively tolerating it, which means you are against the global coalition of governments who are actively fighting terrorism.

Okay, now I believe it is time for you to tell everyone that I never admit when I am wrong. Very Happy

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Tress - I did not take the statements by Bush as "for us" or "agin us" to be soley directed at "other" nations. To me this was a deadly ominous simplistic phrase that that could justify any means to any ends that HE and HIS US administrative team desired! I will never forget this statement as I listened to "our fearless Leader" (cobalt is dripping with sarcasm at present, understand..). Right then and there I knew we as in WE Americans and WE as human beings of the world - well I knew WE were in DEEP DEEP ****! Was I wrong? I think not!

PS. If you have not done so, please read the signature line I am presently using. And, you might take a look at my current avatar... I do not have a tendency to accept mere "words" at face value.

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Bush has often referred to the conflict as an 'Regime change'.
By planning to install a US commander of the US's choosing, I think 'invasion' is the only thing it can be called.

from dictionary.com:
War - "A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties."
Attack - "To set upon with violent force."
Invasion - "The act of entering by force in order to conquer or pillage, especially the entrance of an armed force into a territory to conquer."

Based on that, each definition is valid.

Although the second definition of invasion is perhaps the most potent:
"A large-scale onset of something injurious or harmful, such as a disease."

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trespassers will wrote:

Frank - I like your passion, even if it seems forever misplaced.

Your comments here would be valid, IF Bush had been speaking to US citizens at the time. He was not. He was speaking to other nations and NGOs around the world. As such, his statement had nothing to do with "a person's right" to anything. It has to do with the behavior of other nations and NGOs as pertains to terrorism. If you are not tracking down and prosecuting terrorists, you are enabling them. If you are not cutting their financial strings, you are enabling them. If you are not actively fighting terrorism, you are actively tolerating it, which means you are against the global coalition of governments who are actively fighting terrorism.

Okay, now I believe it is time for you to tell everyone that I never admit when I am wrong.

COMMENT:

My comments are valid whether Bush was speaking to American citizens or to citizens from other countries. Your assertion that they would only be valid if he were speaking to Americans is absurd.

Are you suggesting that citizens from other countries cannot be against terrorism and at the same time not want to be "with" George Bush in his harebrained attempts at dealing with that kind of thing?

Why do you suppose people from other countries -- in order not to be "with terrorist" -- would have to endorse George Bush's absurd, inhumane, most likely counterproductive solution.

That line of thought, Tresspasser, makes even less sense than what I've come to expect of you.

As for the fact that you never seem willing to acknowledge when your are wrong -- you have already mentioned it, so I won't.

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timber

I'm sorry. I've written unclearly and two separate points got conflated. The 'broad brush strokes' complaint was not directed at you personally, but elsewhere.

First, I thought surely you'd remember the speech where Bush uttered the sentence (and it was followed up by Ari saying the same thing more than thrice, and Cheney...all followed by lots of commentary in the press, etc...'Either you're with us, or against us" were the words...tons on google to be found).

My reference to 'broad brush strokes' related to the simplistic formulations of which a 'false dilemma' is a perfect example. No greys, just black/white, good/evil, them/us, pro-American/anti-American, etc.

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I stand reaprised blatham. Thanks. But then again, I freely admit my ex-wife was not my only mistake.

dafdaf ... howdy. Welcome to A2K. If you'd like any help figuring out the bells and whistles around here, just holler. Down at the bottom of all of my posts are color-formated links to our FAQ page and our Help Forum. Please wade in and prowl around. I hope to see lots more from you out on the boards.

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That comment was memorable, one of the most memorable quotes of the decade.

http://www.google.com/search?q=bush+quote+you+are+either+for+us+or+against+us&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

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Craven<

Thank you for the Google link.

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http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/04/03/sprj.irq.woolsey.world.war/

This link is to a CNN story on James Woolsey's (former CIA, future assistant in the "reconstruction" of Iraq) scenario for WW4. I found his remarks really troubling. Wonder if anyone else sees them the same way?

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How Dare We Call It a War!

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