I will try to answer your questions.
I am quoting myself here. "I for one, am for attempting to pacify Baghdad."
I would like to get our troops home quickly, and would also like the Iraqis to have the best chance possible to repair the damage we've done to their country.
I would have liked our troops to be used where they should have been in the first place, in Afganistan. I want a large man named Roy, from Oklahoma, to grab Osama Bin Laden by his filthy beard, drag him out of his hole, and to help him redefine the meaning of fear.
I'm not upset by Boxer's comments, seems like she was just trying to make a point. Maybe taken out of context, I'm not getting the full story, so I'll read that interview later. It's certainly not front page news.
I'm not sure that Iran wants Iraq to be left in a state of civil war. I might be wrong, and certain elements of Iranian society certainly want us gone. But I imagine that a stable Iraq is in Iran's best interest, a soon to be mutual hatred of America not withstanding.
I'm not advocating a complete pullout, as in Saigon. I do find it odd that now you're using Iraq = Vietnam to make your point, completely reversing your position from earlier. See, here's you "yet you make the very shortsighted & incorrect leap of faith that Iraq = Vietnam"
I fail to see how a few thousand more troops will solve this mess, and I do hope I am wrong. I have zero confidence in our Commander in Chief, and find it hard to fathom that 26% of the population still does. It's also obvious that the foreign policy that shaped this war is flawed beyond repair, and it's time to find new leaders, and attempt to clean up this mess.
Bush's plan isn't a meaningful change. Here's some evidence that leads me to think that way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Forward_Together
I'm going to end once and for all, the idea that I somehow want America less safe and secure. Despite the logical inconsistencies in that argument that are obvious to all but the most fervent Neo-McCarthyist Republicans.
I love the United States of America. I certainly don't want to have another terrorist attack on our soil, or anyone else's soil for that matter.
I am proud to be a Democrat. Nothing you say can take away the pride I have in the only party to consistently advocate for the common good.
It's fairly obvious that we've made the world a more dangerous place Because our actions in Iraq, the continued failure of the Republican party to conduct marginally coherent and effective foreign policy, and the American peoples unwillingness to stand up and reject the fear, and the tired dogma that's still being used to stifle debate.
Frankly, it is time to end this unjust war, but I really don't know how to gracefully end an unjust war, while accounting for the needs of the Iraqi people. Or whether or if that's even possible, given the President's absolute failure as a leader. I'm also not in a position of leadership, so I do my part by engaging in debate, and trying to learn as much as I can about the world around me.
Hopefully, the new Democratic majority in congress will help to stabilize the ship until the time comes when we replace the incompetents that now walk the halls of the White House. At this pace, we'll have more meaningful legislation done in the first 100 hours, than the 109th "can we do less than nothing?" congress did in a couple of years worth of three day work weeks.
Hopefully, in 2007, we can rachet down the escalating civil war in Iraq, and prove to the Iraqi people that we are all the same. Kurds and Sunnis, Shi'ites and Iranians, Democrats and Republicans. At the end of the day, we as humans share more commonalities, than we do differences. It seems this is a profound difference between you and I, and how we view the world around us.
You ask me why I have a chip on my shoulder? Why I fight back, rather than swallow another insult. Because I do. Because I must.
It's clear you don't understand me, or the Democratic party, and how we must all work together to achieve more than the crap we've settled for over the past 6 years.
Perhaps, here's someone who can help you understand me a bit better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNCLomrqIN8
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"If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief-I am my brother's keeper, I am my sisters' keeper-that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. "E pluribus unum." Out of many, one.
Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America-there's the United States of America.
There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States.
There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."
