Democrats attack the West’s ability to wage war (again)

Have you been drafted, Mark? Otherwise, why bring that up?

Because it’s a temporary freedom-restricting measure instituted during wartime that never went away. Because it, like the income tax, is a good example about how freedom is more easily lost than gained.

Safety in the obvious way; freedom in the less obvious way of making us adopt more and more cowering stances as they demand more and more from us.

The freedom lost would be our doing, as I said before. We would be the ones cowering (I’m assuming that’s the left-wing response) or voluntarily restricting our freedom to fight them (right-wing response). That’s on us. We don’t have to follow one of those paths. We can fight them and retain our system of values.

I realize their goals. I don’t think they can achieve them, but even if they could, I’ll go down shooting before I let them take my freedom away. You’ve seen how vigorously I’ve protested the curtailing of freedoms by my fellow citizens, just imagine how hard I’ll fight when it’s foreign fighters trying to control this country.

it’s worth noting that whenever we do have a US official who stands up and says “Make ‘em pay!” the Dems go nuts about all the “cowboy talk.” The Dems hate Rumsfeld and Bolton for that very reason–they’re too much in the punitive mode. The Dems have, unfortunately, dragged quite a few in the middle toward their weak-kneed point of view.

That was probably the primary reason why I voted for Bush in 2004. Just because some of my talking points run parallel to the Democrats, don’t think for a minute that my big picture is the same. I favored invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (obviously Afghanistan more than Iraq, because it was much more related the the immediate goal of crippling al Qaeda). If I didn’t think that it would cost me the woman of my dreams (and now, future wife), I would have joined the military after 9/11. Although I think our national policy should be more closely aligned with justice than revenge, my personal motivation wouldn’t be so moral. I support (on a case-by-case basis, of course) the theory of pre-emption against foreign threats. If it doesn’t affect American civil rights, and it’ll help kill or catch some terrorists… I’m on board.

I just don’t like when military-style tactics are used domestically… when the privacy of my phone calls and phone records can hinge on a single person’s unaccountable opinion… an order coming down from a Commander. We should be fighting the ware “over there,” not here. The war in Iraq is interesting because for all of the Bush administration’s claims of relation to the war on terror, it really had little to do with it at first. Saddam had a few ties to terrorist organizations, sure, but nothing like Iran, Syria or Saudi Arabia. Iraq had one thing that these other countries didn’t have: a ceasefire agreement with us that was being actively breached, giving us explicit authority to resume a U.N.-sanctioned war against a brutal dictator with dreams of regional domination. Add in a little scare-mongering talk about mushroom clouds and nuclear weapons and the public is on board. Once we were there, all we had to do was stay there and the terrorists would come to us. It’s brilliant, actually. It’s probably a big part of why we haven’t been attacked again. Why spent half a million dollars (9/11 budget) to kill Americans halfway around the world when you can hop in a pickup, drive 1000 miles, and throw a grenade at an American tank? It even results in a deeper purging of terrorists… the barrier to entry is lower, so more flies come buzzing to the paper.

Mark Jaquith on September 7, 2006 at 6:00 PM