<p>" never hear liberals themselves say the kind of things that the pro-war folks attribute to them. It’s always some other guy saying a liberal said it."</p>
<p>I respect that, but I’m telling you that I hear this stuff all the time. On a regular basis, with my own ears. There is a subset of the liberal community that was positively gleeful about the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Again, personal experience. However, I don’t view this as the viewpoint of most liberals, but it is super-common in New York City.</p>
<p>Let’s assume that there are plenty of liberal and conservative idiots. (Glad not to be either! though idiot is in the eye of the beholder…takes one to…;)) What are YOU doing to support the troops?</p>
<p>Dot, there must be members of the Young Republican Club at Dar…um…Oxford who are willing to join up with you! Not a geezer or slacker among you!:D</p>
<p>Zoosermom, I think you have a good point about New Yorkers being disconnected from the military. I looked up New York state’s per capita mobilization rate for National Guard and Reservists.</p>
<p>I was surprised to discover that New York is 46th in the nation. Their rate is about 1/3rd the rate of Louisiana and about 1/10th the rate of Hawaii and Vermont, who lead the nation.</p>
<p>DPX, do you have an excuse prepared for each of the 25 states that’s below the median? </p>
<p>Your excuse for Arizona doesn’t hold water. Their percent of folks 65 and over is at the median (they’re 26th); so having retired folks doesn’t explain why they’re in the bottom 2-3 in the mobilization stakes. </p>
<p>It’s even less of an excuse for Texas, home of the Bush family: Texas is also in the bottom 5 for mobilization, and has one of the lowest % of people over 65 in the country. </p>
<p>Hawaii, on the other hand, has a high % of elderly people, and a high mobilization rate. Makes the call to duty of their young people even more significant.</p>
<p>Mini, if you’re asking me, I (along with Zoosergirl) ran a back to school clothing drive for military kids (new backpacks were donated as well), worked with a toy drive at holiday time and a toiletries-for-troops drive at the same time. I have volunteered at the local VA hospital for years, though, but not because of the war. My dad was a veteran who was injured in WWII so we’ve always dealt with the VA hospitals, so that predates the war by many years for me. Perhaps I should add things to my list specifically for the war, but I’ve volunteered with the VA since adolescence and with Habitat for Humanity and the Coffeepot Ministry since early adulthood.</p>
<p>I understand. Our standing military was not made to occuppy anything. That really isn’t their role now that a defined army to fight isn’t there. I think the closest thing out there to what’s going on in iraq is Northern Ireland. </p>
<p>I think we would have been better served letting the english work the cities and our troops sealing the border to syria and Iran. The english have decades of experience in occupation in an area where relgious zeal is the norm. </p>
<p>If we used the manpower to restrict outside entry and use the English tactics intercity, we might have a different result. </p>
<p>“Rumsfeld and others made the mistake of thinking that the US forces would be welcomed with open arms after they destroyed the Iraqi army’s ability to resist”</p>
<p>Since we got on the topic of how regions are disproportionately affected:</p>
<p>Most casualties in Iraq have been soldiers from rural areas. However, when a soldier is killed in action, the military will fly the body only to the nearest major airport. In Louisiana, that can be four hours or more away. I’d imagine that in parts of Mississippi, it’s even further. The burden is on the family to get their son or daughter’s body the rest of the way home.</p>
<p>“Mini, if you’re asking me, I (along with Zoosergirl) ran a back to school clothing drive for military kids (new backpacks were donated as well), worked with a toy drive at holiday time and a toiletries-for-troops drive at the same time.”</p>
<p>That’s wonderful!</p>
<p>We all need to be doing more. (Isn’t it ironic that the government can send soldiers to have their lives “wasted” (thank you, John MCain) but their families can’t afford clothes to send the kids to school? What kind of Mafia-ring of a country is this?</p>
<p>Well, before you type it any more times, I suggest that you get some facts besides your normal left-wing sources. The facts are that Cheney has assigned all profits from any stock options that he has in Halliburton as well as other holdings to charity. This has been documeneted by Annenberg which even includes a copy of the legal document.<br>
<p>Of course this has been posted before by me and I know you follow these threads pretty closely, so one has to wonder whether what we have is a case of willful ignorance on your part here. But I guess facts should never get in the way of good political sniping.</p>
Yeah sure, if you start your polling after 10 years. However, just ask the boat people how swell things were as they tried to flee from the slaughter as the “nationalists” from up north did a little “house cleaning” in the south. Of course, by then the swarms of US journalists had gone on to other things so the carnage didn’t show up on Uncle Walter’s nightly report.</p>
<p>“What kind of Mafia-ring of a country is this?” </p>
<p>I have to take exception to this statement. You can feel free to loathe the administration, but I think the word “country” encompasses much more than that, including the administration’s most ardent critics, me, my children, our collective history and values. Many of those things are precious, valuable and have nothing to do with the current administration.</p>
<p>"The facts are that Cheney has assigned all profits from any stock options that he has in Halliburton as well as other holdings to charity. "</p>
<p>Can those of us on the right complain about the fact that Soros has purchased about $60 million of Halliburton stock? Either the company is not the cause of all the ills in the world or Mr. Soros (whom I have met personally several times) is a hypocrite.</p>
<p>I don’t think staying in Iraq another 10 years is going to stop this from happening when we leave, if all we do is more of the same thing we’re doing now.</p>
<p>“Can those of us on the right complain about the fact that Soros has purchased about $60 million of Halliburton stock? Either the company is not the cause of all the ills in the world or Mr. Soros (whom I have met personally several times) is a hypocrite.”</p>
<p>Yes, you can! And my pension fund has Halliburton stock too! I’m a hypocrite, and I know it. </p>
<p>“You can feel free to loathe the administration, but I think the word “country” encompasses much more than that, including the administration’s most ardent critics, me, my children, our collective history and values. Many of those things are precious, valuable and have nothing to do with the current administration.”</p>
<p>A country which extracts resources from the many for the benefit of the few, enforces its will through the power of a gun, and can’t provide school clothing for children of those whose lives are “wasted” at their beck and call is a Mafia ring, pure and simple.</p>
<p>Except (from the little I know from having grown up in NewYork, and having worked in a Mafia-run restaurant), the Mafia provided well for the children of their workers.</p>
<p>If they do not reflect your values, make your voice heard!</p>
<p>I didn’t forget the boat people. Wars are tragic, and there was lots of tragedy to go around, there. It was covered extensively in the media at the time. We abandoned many of the little people who helped us, and that was one of the most wrenching things about the end of the Vietnam War. None of them deserved that. But what I remember – without looking anything up – is that the North Vietnamese did not engage in “Killing Field” mass slaughter, although many feared that they would, and that their re-education camps, while undoubtedly harsh, were temporary and transitional (certainly more temporary and transitional than our “camp” at Guantanamo has turned out to be). People were released and re-integrated. Many of them left; many have stayed.</p>
<p>But none of the Vietnamese deserved to live in a country permanently at war, governed by military dictators on both sides, bombed, napalmed, booby-trapped, defoliated, fortified, tunneled, press-ganged, Phoenixed, etc., either. The choice wasn’t a paradise of peace and prosperity vs. how the war actually ended. It was how to end the war. We couldn’t end it by winning it, and by staying and not winning it we prolonged it and deepened its savagery considerably, while suffering considerable domestic division, economic stagnation, and international opprobium. And, of course, casualties.</p>
<p>“A country which extracts resources from the many for the benefit of the few, enforces its will through the power of a gun, and can’t provide school clothing for children of those whose lives are “wasted” at their beck and call is a Mafia ring, pure and simple.”</p>
<p>I dispute that the administration does, but you are certainly entitled to your opinion, but the COUNTRY doesn’t do any of those things.</p>