So What Shall We Talk About?

[pinkfloyd1973]

Mac sez: That is the abortion I am talking about.

 

 

 

No one I know does that. But if it were true that there are women that abort their babies because it is more convenience to them, it IS still a woman's right to choose but an unfortunate thing because they're obviously too stupid to use some kind of contraception to prevent it in the first place. Even stupider are the men who don't either

 

 

Robin

"Desert Moon"

[Mac Knew]

Yes Robin that is exactly what I mean both people the father and the mother are too stupid to use normal contraceptives so should the woman get pregnant then they should just have to deal with it, not kill it.

 

Mac

[Oct31PM]

Like I said this all about the party. Had Al Gore been the one to lead us into this war right now Alan and I would be in agreement instead of disagreement as far as the war goes.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I understand that one of the Right's favorite tools is to simply keep repeating something until people start to believe it, but no matter how many times you make this claim, it will never be true. I do not oppose war because I'm a Democrat. One of the many reasons that I am a Democrat is that I oppose war in anything but the most unavoidable circumstances. An unjust, unneccessary war is going to be just that, no matter which party got us into it. It seems like you need to find a simple clear cut answer as to why people oppose this President and just dismissing all critiques as partisan allows you not to have to question what the President may have done to actually get so many people angry with him.

 

Mac says: <About Homeosexual marriages? They are immoral,sick, and just plain wrong. God himself is the one who condems the homosexual lifestyle. It is god that homosexuals will have to and he already said they will go to hell. Since God said it I believe it.

 

Fine. Then let God worry about dealing with them later and give them the same basic human rights that you enjoy while they're here on Earth. If God has the issue with homosexuality (a conclusion that is far from unanimously arrived at among Christians anyway), then that is an issue for His domain, not for ours. You're not going to stop anyone from being gay by denying them the right to marry so what is it that you think this discrimination is accomplishing?

 

Mac says: <You all want to know why we went to Iraq? Because people like Kerry put alot of pressure on the President to do so.>

 

Uh, you mean "people like Kerry" such as Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Karl Rove, Donald Rusmfeld, and the rest of the neo-con gang? Please show me where Kerry "pressured" the President into invading Iraq.

 

Mac says: < Like I said had he not invaded Iraq, then right the argument would be that he did not even attempt to remove Saddam, Saddam could have W.O.M.D, and so on. >

 

I think not. The reasons that people are questioning Bush's pre-9/11 decisions are because we were attacked. There is no evidence to suggest that a failure to invade Iraq would have resulted in an attack on America.

 

Mac says: <Last December John Kerry said Saddam needing to be overthrown and anybody that did not agree with that did not deserve to be elected President. Now he is saying had he been in office he would not have over thrown Saddam. >''

 

Thank God John Kerry is showing that he can LEARN from his mistakes! What a refreshing quality that would be to have in a president! At least he's finally got it right now!

 

Best wishes,

 

Alan

[Oct31PM]

Robin says: <Man, we gotta quit agreeing like this But I do have to say one thing; we don't intentionally kill pregnant women in Iraq, accidents do happen >

 

I think you've hit the nail on the head here, Robin. When you drop a bomb on a populatated area, can it really be called an "accident" if you kill someone that you didn't intend to? Especially if you really had no way of knowing who you were bombing to begin with. If I fire shots into a McDonald's and I kill someone that I happen to like because I didn't know they were there, that's NOT an "accident."

 

In war, civillain casualties are unavoidable. I think we can all agree that murdering innocent civillians is an evil thing. We certainly thought so when the terrorists brought down the World Trade Center. So war is an inherently evil thing, because it cannot AVOID killing innocent people who did not deserve to die.

 

Is it sometimes a neccessary evil? Perhaps so but it should never be used as anything but an absolute last resort, when all other options have failed. Iraq was an invasion of choice, pure and simple, which our government knew would kill innocent civillians. That makes it unconscionable.

 

Best wishes,

 

Alan

[pinkfloyd1973]

Mac sez: Yes Robin that is exactly what I mean both people the father and the mother are too stupid to use normal contraceptives so should the woman get pregnant then they should just have to deal with it, not kill it.

 

 

 

 

So now we have stupid people raising kids . But seriously, it's not that plain and simple. Usually it's only the woman who has to deal with it, I lucked out because I had someone who cared about me when I became pregnant at 24 and didn't know if I wanted to keep it. A lot of women don't have someone because the fathers skip out on their reponsibility. If it were easier to have the child adopted and not unwanted in the world and the world was a safer place, there would probably be no abortion, but like I said it's not that plain and simple. And BTW abortions are done in the first trimester and not by the way you describe it, we don't know if the embryo feels pain, I firmly believe that they only feel pain when they're in the second or third trimester as a fetus, when they're viable and abortion is NOT an option.

 

 

Robin

"Desert Moon"

[pinkfloyd1973]

I think you've hit the nail on the head here, Robin. When you drop a bomb on a populatated area, can it really be called an "accident" if you kill someone that you didn't intend to? Especially if you really had no way of knowing who you were bombing to begin with. If I fire shots into a McDonald's and I kill someone that I happen to like because I didn't know they were there, that's NOT an "accident."

 

 

 

I think most of the places we bombed were unpopulated where we thought insurgents were, you're making it as if we're doing it on purpose to kill innocents.

 

In war, civillain casualties are unavoidable. I think we can all agree that murdering innocent civillians is an evil thing. We certainly thought so when the terrorists brought down the World Trade Center. So war is an inherently evil thing, because it cannot AVOID killing innocent people who did not deserve to die.

 

 

Exactly.

 

 

Is it sometimes a neccessary evil? Perhaps so but it should never be used as anything but an absolute last resort, when all other options have failed. Iraq was an invasion of choice, pure and simple, which our government knew would kill innocent civillians. That makes it unconscionable.

 

 

 

 

I dunno ask the insurgents who set off car bombs often killing innocent people, if we killed anyone, it was by accident. Yes it was necessary, ask the thousands of civilians and Kurds who family members were gassed, they'll tell you.

 

 

 

Robin

"Desert Moon"

[Oct31PM]

Robyn says: I think most of the places we bombed were unpopulated where we thought insurgents were, you're making it as if we're doing it on purpose to kill innocents.

 

We are dropping bombs on places where there are human beings. It's hard to see how that constitutes doing it "by accident." Over ten thousand Iraqi civillian deaths would suggest perhaps we haven't been "careful" enough.

 

Alan said: So war is an inherently evil thing, because it cannot AVOID killing innocent people who did not deserve to die.

 

And Robyn replied: Exactly.

 

I am glad to see that we're in agreement here. Acknowledging the inherent evil of war is an absolutely neccessary first step to finding ways to prevent it.

 

Robyn said: I dunno ask the insurgents who set off car bombs often killing innocent people, if we killed anyone, it was by accident..

 

In my opinion, this is not really a valid argument. As I'm sure your parents taught you, two wrongs don't make a right. And since, in this case, WE committed the FIRST wrong, it's hard to use the insurgents who are fighting an occupying army as validation. Would we do differently if it were OUR nation that had been invaded by a foreign power? I don't approve of what the insurgents are doing but it's a horrendous situation that the U.S. created and we certainly can't use THEIR violence to justify the violence that we inflicted on them to begin with.

 

Robyn says: Yes it was necessary, ask the thousands of civilians and Kurds who family members were gassed, they'll tell you...

 

You're talking about an action that took place nearly two decades ago, more or less with our blessing since Reagan and then the elder Bush wouldn't have wanted to upset our good ally Saddam when he was so helpfully opposing our enemies in Iran. Since we actually went to war with Saddam a few years later for invading Kuwait, don't you think maybe THAT would have been the time to do something in retaliation for the gassing if we were going to? But George Sr. decided not to. So what suddenly made it "neccessary" twelve years later when Saddam had been systematically disarmed and Iraq was suffering heavily under a decade of sanctions? Why was this suddenly urgent enough that we needed to sacrifice over 1000 American lives (and counting) and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives just to put Saddam behind bars, especially at a time when we were recovering from attacks on our shores from an ACTUAL enemy - someone who WAS still a danger to us and who hadn't yet been caught?

 

The main rational reason for going to war is that more lives will be lost if you DON'T than if you do. I seem no compelling evidence that this was even remotely true in the case of Iraq.

 

Best wishes,

 

Alan

[Mac Knew]

Alan said:Acknowledging the inherent evil of war is an absolutely neccessary first step to finding ways to prevent it.

 

And the war is nowhere as evil as Saddam was, and in this war nowhere near as many innocent people died as they did living under Saddam. People say we caused all these deaths and such but we really saved more than we caused.

 

What ways are there to prevent war? To just sit around knowing there is a serious problem out there, but just hope that it goes away?

 

It is funny that we are sitting here talking about innocent people being killed while the same people saying that are out supporting innoncent unborn children being murdered just because the mother don't want children right now and calling that a Womans right to choose. If I get tired of being married to my wife do I have the right to choose to murder her? No, but if I felt that way I could divorce her. If a woman gets pregnant but don't want the child or is unable to take care of the child then she could easily let somebody adopt it not murder it! That is the real innocent people dying and it is right here on our own soil.

 

 

Mac

[Oct31PM]

Mac said:

And the war is nowhere as evil as Saddam was, and in this war nowhere near as many innocent people died as they did living under Saddam.  People say we caused all these deaths and such but we really saved more than we caused.

 

The support for the idea that we saved more lives than we took needs to be based on recent history. What was Saddam's rate of murder among his countrymen (and women) over the past few years? Revenge for deaths committed over a decade ago is not a good enough reason to get our troops killed. One report I found indicated that the death rate had tripled since the war began which would seem to contadict the notion that Saddam was killing off more Iraqis than the war is.

 

The real litmus test to decide whether the war was "worth it" is as follows. This is a hypothetical question so there is no logical reason this situation would exist but, if it did... Imagine, Mac or Robyn or anyone, that Bush had come to you before the war and said, "We can invade Iraq and remove Saddam from power. But here's the catch. In order for it to work, I have to kill YOUR family first. I need to drop a bomb on your house and take out your parents, your spouse, your siblings, and your kids." Would it still be worth it to you if THAT were the price? Do you think George W. would have invaded if the price had been that HIS wife and kids would have to die?

 

If the answer to either or both of these questions is "no", then why do you think it was okay to wipe out the families of innocent Iraqi's in order to "liberate" them from Saddam? I'm pretty sure if most of the survivors of those attacks had been given a choice, they would have said it was not worth the death of their loved ones either.

 

Mac said:

What ways are there to prevent war?  To just sit around knowing there is a serious problem out there, but just hope that it goes away? 

 

We'd found a couple of good ways. Both sanctions and weapons inspections were highly effective in severely reducing Saddam's ability to be a danger to anyone. The question is, in the wake of Iraq's disarmament by the weapons inspectors, just how "serious a problem" WAS out there?

 

Mac said:

It is funny that we are sitting here talking about innocent people being killed while the same people saying that are out supporting innoncent unborn children being murdered just because the mother don't want children right now and calling that a  Womans right to choose.

 

That, of course, is the reason that we get charges of hypocracy from both sides. Conservatives seem deeply concerned about tiny unformed fetus's but not terribly concerned about the deaths of living, breathing humans in the world. Liberals seem to be the reverse. I think abortion is one of the trickiest of all the "wedge" issues. Unlike gay marriage, which is a clear cut civil rights issue, there are valid arguments on both sides of the abortion issue. In the end, it's a question of whose right is greater- the mother who is already a citizen of the world and who's life will be irrevocably affected by having to carry a child to term and give birth or the rights of the tiny unformed fetus? In a perfect world, nobody would want an abortion, but we're not in a perfect world and we've seen the ugly effects of illegal abortion. In the end, we must keep it a legal option for those who truly cannot handle bringing a baby into this world.

 

Best wishes,

 

Alan

[Mac Knew]

The war was worth it with Saddam out of power the whole world is a better and safer place. You seemed concerned over innocent people dying so with Saddam gone alot less innocent people will have to die. A couple people get hit with our bombs and everybody goes crazy, but when Saddam ties somebody's hands around their back and pushes them off of a building it is ok? I guess that was Saddams version of a right to choose.

 

Yes, conservatives are concerned about a tiny unborn fetus. It is still human and anybody that ever see's the video of a baby being sucked apart piece by piece kicking and fighting for his life would be to unless they are just heartless. Everybody keeps holloring right to choose, right to this, right to that, but never ever think about that poor innocent unborn childs right to life. They are too busy worrying about the rights of the selfish mother.

 

I guess we all saw Kerry blast the new Iraqi prime minister just because the he thanked the President for helping his country. If Kerry is gonna be like that then has no business being President blasting our allys. It even almost shows if Kerry were elected, Saddam would be released to return to power. But we don't have to worry because things are looking worse and worse for Kerry all the time. After the blasting of the Iraqi Prime minister, states leaning Kerry all of a sudden started leaning for Bush. Kerry might as well concede now and get it over with. Bush could very well win as well as Reagan did 20 years ago.

 

Mac