I'll know I've recovered from the Bush administration when I stop enjoying pieces like this. No luck so far, though:
Monday, August 11, 2008
Bush Tours America
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9 comments:
Just out of curiosity, just how has bush damaged you personally?
How did Saddam Hussein effect you personally?
I keep getting confused.
I talk about Obama and the election, and peple keep talking about how horrible Bush is.
I watch a video satiring how Bush has harmed everyone irrevocably (or so I thought), but apparently it was comparing Bush to Saddam Hussein.
I just can't keep anything straight. I will watch the video again to see if it references Saddam Hussein.
Bob, you are just baiting here, and it isn't worth any kind of serious response.
Nonetheless, Bush hasn't damaged me personally, other than destroying my faith in my country and in democracy in general. If your criteria for opposing someone is that they harm you personally, then I guess Germans were justified for supporting Hitler back in the 30s (well, the non-jew germans, anyway).
Fingtree's has a great point. Saddam didn't do anything to you, so why are against him?
Also, you brought up Obama, not us.
Dan,
You are right, Saddam didn't hurt me personally either, just as Hitler didn't. Tell me, just what was different about Hitler's systematic execution of Jews, and Saddam's systemic exicution of Kurds?
Ah, so you are agreeing that someone doesn't have to damage you personally for them to have created mass destruction and suffering in the world? Good, I'm glad we agree on something :)
Hitler and Saddam. Let's see, they were both evil dictators. They both dressed ridiculously.
I'd have to say one difference though is that Hitler was in the middle of exterminating 6 million Jews in concentration camps when we invaded, while Saddam had gassed 5,000 Kurds in 1988 using chemicals and technology that we sold to him, since he was our ally at the time, and remained so for another 3 years after that.
Actually, Dan, Hitler hadn't started exterminating the Jews by 1941. Moreover, FDR had bad intelligence that Germany was working on nuclear weapons, which was part of the reason we went to war with them. Sound familiar? Do you have the same hatred for FDR as for Bush?
Moreover, it is estimated Saddam killed 100,000 Kurds and 100,000 Shi'ites. But this begs the question. If 200,000 isn't enough to act, and 6,000,000 is, just how many people have to die before you care?
Ah yes, a discussion of Bush isn't complete until a conservative compares Saddam to Hitler, and then accuses liberals of not caring about injustice.
Saddam was not in the middle of any kind of genocide, nor was he in danger of invading other countries. As bad as his crimes were, he was not systematically killing an entire race of people. He was no Hitler.
We did not invade Iraq for humanitarians reasons, but because 9/11 made it politically possible to control Iraqis oilfields. The intelligence wasn't "bad" - our good intelligence was ignored, and the nuclear weapon intelligence was cooked.
Plus, our invasion has caused more damage and lost life in a few years than Saddam caused in a few decades. How many people have to die before *you* care about ending this war?
If anyone cares...
I don't think Bush is as bad, nor was Saddam as cuddly as liberals portray them. On the other hand, Bush is worse and Saddam was not as dangerous as conservatives portray them.
That's the problem with choosing sides. The "us" vs. "them" mentality that causes us to lose a more objective view of the "truth" (whatever that is, because as Obi-wan said "many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own points of view," a very sci-fi geeky, but appropriate observation)
So as keeper and sole proprieter of eternal truth, I, hereby declare that both sides are both wrong and right (and left).
Amen.
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