1 The Iraq War. Anyone with any basic understanding of geopolitical (and historical) reality knew that
taking a stick to the hornet's nest of Iraq was a stupid, stupid, stupid thing to do.
Saddam was the cowed, castrated, de-horned, de-fanged Mayor of Baghdad. But Iraq kept Iran in check, to a degree (moreso than now!). Iranian moderates had a toe-hold that could have grown, but for this gawdawful war. Afghanistan was on the brink of normalcy and Bin Laden was about to be captured or killed . . . when Bush got all A.D.D. about Afghanistan and decided to do his monumentally stupid, terrorist-creating war in Iraq.
My position on the sheer idiocy of invading Iraq is merely an expression of
Realpolitik, to wit: geopolitical policy "based on strictly practical rather than idealistic notions, and practiced without any sentimental illusions."
This is the practical, pragmatic (and, as a bonus, Christian) grounding of argument against the uncannily moronic, extreme and radical decision to invade and occupy Iraq. The Radical and Extremist position: "Let's invade Iraq! Wooohooooo!" was senseless, useless, counterproductive and has emasculated our own military strength, damaged our credibility and standing among the ranks of nations and, as alluded to above, created a new terrorist out of every brother or son whose mom, dad, sister, wife, son or daughter has been killed by an errant U.S. bomb or rifle shot.
And never, ever, ever forget what Secretary of State Colin Powell said in Cairo, Egypt on February 25, 2001:
"We will always try to consult with our friends in the region so that they are not surprised and do everything we can to explain the purpose of our responses. We had a good discussion, the Foreign Minister and I and the President and I, had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions -- the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place, but we are always willing to review them to make sure that they are being carried out in a way that does not affect the Iraqi people but does affect the Iraqi regime's ambitions and the ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and we had a good conversation on this issue."
[Emphasis Added]
2 Domestic Politics. Extremists, Radicals seek to dismantle over 200 years of Constitutional Representative Democracy in the United States and replace that system with a Theocracy, with "President" beholden to the whims and wishes of James Dobson or Jerry Falwell at its head.
These Theocrats make up a sizable, and hugely influential. slice of today's Republican Party dearly desires and strives for. Those who fight against this wish to conserve a systems that has -- upheavals and challanges and setbacks notwithstanding -- served us pretty well.
Extremist Leader of the Radical Brownshirt Wing of the GOP (which the Administration sics on political opponents), Michael Savage, claimed just yesterday that the Southern Poverty Law Center (See also, here which instigates and supports litigation against organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, is a "terrorist" organization that must be broken. Read SPLC Founder Morris Dees' Bio here. Savage and Hannity and Limbaugh are the faces of Extremism in the United States and, along with Coulter and Ingram are doing all they can do to Radicalize their glassy-eyed followers.
On the economic front, Populism, while adopted and embraced by many sides, is, from a Today's Democratic Standpoint, somewhat very conservative: we fight against the gross hoarding of the nation's wealth into the hands of the top 1-2%, the Neo-Robber Barons, who would (as they already have) diminish personal liberty and choices through the enactment of laws and regulations by and through Bought-and-Paid-For legislative puppets.
Examples of their excesses include Enron and Big Oil price manipulation/goughing; Big Pharma's pressure on Congress to deprive Americans of getting better-priced prescription drugs in Canada; the Insurance Industry's fighting tooth and nail (with willing, and paid-for, legislators by their side) to restrict consumers' access to Courts (they are systematically dismantling the Jury System, which, in my book, is a somewhat Radical thing to do in the United States).
The monopolization and accumulation of wealth into the hands of a very few oligarchs, who effectively control all branches of government, is exactly how economically different from the Old Soviet System?
3 Lieberman. Lieberman has been Radicalized and is supported by his MSM water-carriers, and his frothing-at-the-mouth cheerleaders (Hannity, et mal). He and his cadre of Extremists would [ 1 ] dismantle the two party (let alone any others) system in the U.S. and replace it with One Republican Party, that may have a few, minor factions contained therein (not unlike the current Chinese Communist Party); and, [ 2 ] thwart the will of the people (whom they say they are all for) by having Lieberman unabashedly refusing to honor the results of a free and fair election. Theirs is a Radical, and extremely unAmerican, position.
This is, indeed, a matter of Framing the debate. But it is more: it's a matter of intellectual and linguistic and historical and political honesty. We wish to preserve, and conserve, the United States of America. They, the Extremists, the Radicals, the Radical Right, wish to dismantle it before our very eyes.
BenGoshi
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