Thanks, CMC, for gettin' down to the nitty gritty and talking like the honest broker we all know you are. No one but a lily-livered pansy could argue the fact that we need to slap down these terrorists like a bunch of spoiled teenagers- the stakes in this game are Civilization itself, make no mistake. I still maintain, however, that Bush is not the man for the job. He's technically retarded, he's deep in the pocket of the worst corporate fascists I've ever heard of, and his attitude sucks. He's a public relations disaster for the U.S., and I have no problem voting him out even in the middle of a war- provided, of course, that my vote is counted.
You're definitely a voice worth listening to- brutality in one's life has a way of opening your eyes. I've had maybe a tenth of your hardships (heroin in the family, suicide, abuse of one form or another) so I can dig it, at least a little bit. And you're on the money when you call all these whiners on the carpet and insist that they start identifying as Americans, rather than separating themselves in the name of dubious identity movements.
But a fight for our lives needs to be conducted in a far more serious manner than what we're doing now. What we're doing in Iraq is totally half-assed (as a former Squid, you know that), and would have been accomplished handily by a Democratic president- with a greater emphasis on covert and Special operations, a more tailored approach. When a president must appear less warlike to his constituents, the path left available to conduct the necessities of realpolitik is covert ops, and that is nearly always more efficient.
But this is really arguing over trifles. I contend that 9/11 would not have happened if Gore were in office at the time. The Shrub's cabinet just wasn't thinking about the world in the way they should have been. It's a failure of imagination on their part, and we need leaders with imagination.
