Brandon9000 wrote:Setanta wrote:Brandon9000 wrote:Setanta wrote:Brandon9000 wrote:It's one thing to criticize policy within your own country. It's quite another thing to annouce to other countries, friend and foe alike, that you disavow your president.
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."
-- Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.,
The Kansas City Star, May, 1918
You have ignored my
entire point, which is that there is a difference between criticism or derision of the government among ourselves, as opposed to such criticism or derision for foreign consumption.
You completely fabricate a scenario in which we could criticize the President and it
wouldn't be known outside our borders. Grow up.
To say that you disavow your government's decisions, with the specific intent of speaking for foreign consumption, must surely qualify as giving aid and comfort to the enemy. You seem to be rejecting in its entirety the idea of telling your countrymen that they're idiots, but putting up some kind of a front of solidarity in a situation in which the country's would-be destroyers can see.
You seem to be saying that those with whom you discuss this topic knowingly, and with malice aforethought, trumpet criticism of this administration to "foreigners." (Considering the demographics of immigration, legal and illegal, in the United States for 200+ years, i am always hilariously amused by references to "foreigners.")
You're peddling a strawman here. There might be a lunatic fringe in this country, as would be true anywhere in the world, who are sympathetic to our enemies--but fringe is the operative word in that description. To claim that there is any siginificant proportion of the population who criticize the administration because of a compelling need to suck up to foreigners just points up the absurd hysteria in which you are willing to indulge for sake of argument.
Tell me again how anyone is to publicly criticizde the administration without it being known outside our borders. The criticisms of the Clinton administration were strident and hysterical by rightwingers from the very beginning of his term. The first attack on the WTC was in 1993. Therefore, by the witless criterion you are trying to peddle here, rightwing critics of the Clinton administration gave aid and comfort to al Qaeda which directly resulted in the attacks on the embassies in Africa and on
USS Cole.
But your contention is witless. Criticizing the government's policies does not give aid and comfort to the enemy. Giving them money, giving them classified intelligence and/or military information, giving them materials of war or food or medicine constitute aid and comfort. Perhaps you are so naive as to believe that if no one ever publicly criticized the President, all terrorists would believe that all Americans supported the "war on terror" 100% as it is being prosecuted by the dipshit on Pennsylvania Avenue, and would quake in their boots. You're about the only person i've ever known of who was that simple-minded, it that is the case. You can bet that terrorists aren't that stupid, and that they don't give a rat's ass whether or not we support the lamebrain in the oval office. They're coming for you Brandon, no matter what you say, and they're going to saw your head off while you scream.
