Talking Fairness

Barack Obama answers Larry King’s questions, sporting the Larry King Live 2008 red tie; round two. 

Talking about Iraq, Obama:

<blockquote>John McCain, who supported the war from the start, said we’d be greeted as liberators, has really focused on the tactical issues in Iraq. And the surge has no doubt reduced violence. And I think all Americans are thrilled by that.

But what George Bush and John McCain have missed consistently from the start of this process is the broader strategy.

You know, was it a wise thing to go in there and what are the costs and benefits of staying there indefinitely?

We’re spending $10 billion a month there. We’ve spent $200 billion since the surge began. Meanwhile, the situation where — you know, where the central front against terrorism should be taking place, in Afghanistan, the situation has deteriorated. And we had this brazen attack on a U.S. base where nine servicemen were killed.

And we’ve got to recognize that perpetuating the strategy that we have in Iraq is costing us elsewhere, not only in Afghanistan, but also investments that we could be making here at home. </blockquote>

A) We were greeted as liberators.
B) Be consistent and ask, what are the costs and benefits of the Afghanistan War?
C) If you’re going to ask a question and then answer it, please humbly answer it fully. You gave a detailed response to the costs of Iraq, where are the benefits?

<blockquote>Imagine what we could have done with $200 billion invested in clean energy technology and figuring out how we’re going to raise.</blockquote>

I do not have to imagine, actually.  and it was as wasted as you think it has been wasted in Iraq. The world invested just over that amount; 200 billion dollars. It’s expected to grow greatly over the next decades. But did new wind technology, more efficient or anything, come out of 2007, half way through 2008? Not that the American public knows about. And if it’s simply about building wind plants, that’s uterly stupid.

<blockquote>Where Senator McCain I think is confused is the difference between tactics and strategy. I am absolutely convinced that, strategically, it is time for us to bring this war to an end.</blockquote>

The second sentence compares to Obama’s January 10, 2007 statement, “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going solve the secartarian violence and in fact I think it’ll do the reverse.”  
When he’s not persuaded, he couldn’t have been more wrong, but now he’s absolutely convinced… Of course, what would be strategically best, will actually never come into light, as whether or not the world is better off without Saddam ruling Iraq.

   In conclusion, Obama continues to politicize the Iraq War by over playing the negatives of any war while downplaying the success of the specific war, simultaneously treating the Afghanistan War with reality based outlooks, expressing what he thinks is best regardless of financial costs or strain on the military. And on energy, the economy, he continues the long used Democratic strategy of saying to do what’s already being done by President Bush or by the country without government aid. That is, we’re investing huge amounts of money into solar, wind, and even bio fuels; basically Obama says to through more money at it and this is not really a policy. He says about the part of the broken economy he actually has a solution for,
<blockquote>And so much of this could have been prevented if we had had stronger oversight on the subprime lending market, if we had implemented some simple reforms around Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, if we had had some serious efforts to curb predatory lending, a lot of these problems that we’ve seen could have been prevented.</blockquote> 
I’d have to research it, but how many times over the last four years has Democratic Congressional official attempt to pass laws to prevent the current crisis? I know how many they passed since taking control of Congress in 2007; 0. A new kind of politician, change the way Washington works, thousands of words, zero action.

Study: Bush led U.S. to war on ‘false pretenses’

According to this, there was a study realeased Tuesday, January 21, that measured the amount of times President Bush and his administration, “stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.” Now, I do not know the quality of this, but the country has gone through the facts and it’s pretty well accepted by the people who cannot simply say what they wish to that the intelligence was faulty and not that the government lied. That is to say that from the quote I used, the bulk of what the administration said (529/532 times) was most likely inclusive of the “was trying to produce or obtain Weapons of mass destruction,” and they said that based on the intel they were receiving.

    I don’t remember exactly what Bush and his administration were saying in 2002, but I do remember very well discussing the issue with my father when they were all over the news talking about Iraq. And never did we discern from what we read and saw that Saddam had nuclear capabilities; it never came up. We knew he didn’t. I figured he probably had chemical weapons because of his history with those, so I didn’t need any convincing that he had them again.  Now toward a connection with al-qaida, I don’t know how much Bush actually used this, if they even did… Again the article on the study is ambiguious on whether the study says Bush said something was or if he said it possibly was. Nonetheless Saddam did have connections with them. It was very weak, and had nothing to do with September 11, but there is evidence of meetings, and Saddam said on public news that he would give money to the families of sucide bombers against Israel. So, he publicly established himself with terrorism and evidently was in some degree of communication with al-Qaida.

   My conclusion, unchanging from years ago, the Iraq War is undoubtedly the first preemptive war the US has ever fought, and in that context the actual danger we preemptived will never be known, however, to those who say the US was led on false pretenses are just ignorant of the history of the Saddam Hussein regime. Barely a year into power he, for example started an eight year war with his neighboring nation Iran, which hadn’t even been ended with a cease-fire when he invaded another of his neighbors, Kuwait. He wasn’t, no matter what anyone wants to believe, simply sitting idly by because he has lost his will to conquer. A man like he is always a threat when that much power and that much wealth is at his disposal.

So, although the overthrow of that regime was overdue, doing so in the midst of apex of terror was very poor timing. Because Iraq may have had terror connections, they were minute compared to the uncontroversial sponsorship given by Iran. The Iraq War was too political for me to “agree” with it, in two ways: First, clearly Bush didn’t send enough troops there to begin with, and I believe he didn’t due to the expense he knew it would be even with the amount he did in fact send, and he didn’t want the cost to be as bad as it should have been. But also, Rumsfield wanted to fight a certain type of war, which hadn’t been fought previously, which centered on tactics and intel, with smaller amount of troops. Secondly, if one only looks at the justification and leaves out the politics of how the invasion and thereafter would play out, we would have not hesitated to go to war with Iran, in place of Iraq, for reasons afore mentioned. As controversial as it may be to say, I would rather have a Saddam ruled Iraq and have the US fighting the regime in Iran and have 10,000 dead and trillions more spent, and not have to worry about a nuclear terrorist sponsoring nation existing.