Single Issue Voting

[Annie]

time and place:

http://www.donaldsensing.com/index.php/2006/11/06/single-issue-voting/

Single-Issue Voting
by Donald Sensing

I was talking on the phone a few weeks ago with a friend who said that the only issue that mattered to him this November is the war on terror. “If we don’t get the war right,” he said, “the Medicare prescription plan won’t matter, Social Security won’t matter, nothing else will matter.”

In 1851’s running of the America’s Cup yacht race around the Isle of Wight, the schooner America raced 15 yachts orf the Royal Yacht Squadron. Waiting near the finish was Queen Victoria. America won by 20 minutes, so far out in front that when it appeared on the horizon it sailed alone into view of the waiting crowd. “Which ship is that?” Victoria asked. A naval officer looked through his scope and replied, “It is America.” Victoria then asked, “Who is in second?” The officer looked again and again saw only America. “Majesty,” he replied, “there is no ship in second.”

The prosecution of the war against Islamist terrorists is so far in front as the leading issue today that truly, there is no issue in second, not close enough to be a serious challenger to the gravity of the Islamist threat.

Hence, The SF Examiner wonders whether Americans are sleepwalking into a gathering storm, much as the British did in the 1930s.

This is indeed another time for choosing. Embattled Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said it well in a recent speech. "The war is at our doorsteps and it is fueled, figuratively and literally, by Islamic fascism nurtured and bred in Iran, "Santorum warned. "… Many Americans are sleepwalking, just as they did before the world wars of the last century. They pretend it is not happening, that it all has to do with the errors of a single American administration, even of a single American president. … It’s time to wake up."
​

Is the war in Iraq like Vietnam, as its opponents declare and its supporters deride? Hollywood screenwriter Dan Gordon says that after the Vietnam war, “No Viet Cong Followed Us Home.” He’s willing to grant any negative argument about the Bush administration that anyone wants to make.

And you don’t like the war. You were lied to. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Bush and the neocons made it all up. They duped us. They duped you. They duped me. They duped Hillary and Kerry. They duped us all. Dupe, dupe, dupe, dupe, dupe. Done deal. Not only did they dupe us, but they dicked it up, made every mistake in the book.

Pick whatever argument you like. They should have had more troops. They should have had less troops. They should have listend to Chalabi. They shouldn’t have listened to Chalibi. Bremer was right. Bremer was wrong. Rumsfeld’s a bozo. Bozo could have done a better job. I’ll sign on to any part of it you like. They said this is a part of the war on terror, and of course that’s a lie too.

Ooops.

What do you mean, oops?

Well, what I mean is that part is actually true.

What part?

The part about Iraq being a part of the war on terror.

You’ve got to be kidding. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11! There was no connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda!

Maybe not, but there is now.

Well, who’s fault is that?

Doesn’t matter.

What do you mean it doesn’t matter?

I mean, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how we got there. It doesn’t matter how you think you were lied to. It doesn’t matter if you think there was a connection between Sadam and Al-Qaeda. The only thing that matters now is that both Al-Qaeda and Iran and the terrorist groups they back and inspire believe that Iraq is their decisive battle. They have chosen it as the place where they will defeat America, and unlike the Viet Cong, they will not stay put. They will follow us home.​

I urge you to read a long essay by novelist Orson Scott Card, of which this one short excerpt in which he observes that those who call for immediate or near-immediate) withdrawal from Iraq,

… see Americans dying and they have no hope of victory. The Iraq War (as they call it) is costing lives and shows no sign of ending. Meanwhile, Iran is getting nuclear weapons, North Korea already has them, Syria and Iran are sponsoring continuing and escalating attacks on Israel — how can we possibly “win” a war that threatens constantly to widen? Let’s cut our losses, retire to our shores, and …

And will you please stop and think for a moment?

There is no withdrawal to our shores. American prosperity requires free trade throughout most of the world. Free trade has depended for decades on American might. If we withdraw now, we announce to the world that if you just kill enough Americans, the big boys will go home and let you do whatever you want.

Every American in the world then becomes a target. And, because we have announced that we will do nothing to protect them, we will soon be trading only with nations that have enough strength to protect their own shores and borders.

Only … what nations are those? Not Taiwan. If they saw us abandon Iraq, what conclusion could they reach except this one: They’d better accommodate with China now, when they can still get decent terms, than wait for America to walk away from them the way we walked away from Vietnam and Iraq.

We cannot win by going home. In a short time, “home” would become a very different place, as our own prosperity and safety steadily diminished. Isolationism is a dead end. If we lose our will to protect the things that support our own prosperity, then what can we expect but the end of that prosperity — and of any vestige of safety, as well?

The frustrating thing is that if people would just look, honestly, at the readily available data from the Muslim world, they would realize that we are winning… .
​

On terrorism, novelist Roger L. Simon quoted Leon Trotsky:

“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”​

So to all the sleepwalkers out there, or those who simply swim in the Egyptian river about the nature of Islamism and its jihadis, undertand this: You may not be interested in al Qaeda, but al Qaeda is interested in you.

No, not me? you reply. Not me, I’m a peace-loving, non-ideological, live-and-let-live, hyper-tolerant citizen of the world, they don’t hate me or wish me ill!

But are you Muslim? More accurately, are you a radicalized, reactionary Muslim? Because Islamists who bomb and murder don’t care about your gentle, organic-foods lifestyle and your self-congratulatory tolerance culture or your identity politics and they don’t care whether you think Muslims are oppressed or misunderstood or whether you think that Islam itself is the paradigm of religious practice, if religion must be practiced at all. They don’t care whether you oppose the Religious Right, what candidates you vote for or the kind of car you drive. Dan Gordon again:

[M]ake no mistake about who it is they want to kill. If you are a Christian they want to kill you. If you are a Jew they want to kill you. If you are a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Taoist, or a Jain, or a Muslim of a slightly different creed, they want to kill you. If you a secularist and believe in gay marriage, gay adoption, gay rights, or gay pride, they want to kill you. If you watch movies and like rock n’ roll, if you read Playboy, or Cosmo, if you wear mini-skirts, or “allow” your daughter, wife or girlfriend to do so, they want to kill you. When they say convert to Islam or die, they mean convert to Islam or they will kill you.

I know you don’t like that. I know you don’t want to believe that. I know you would like to believe only a cross eyed, red necked, right wing, apocalyptic, bozo hick like George Bush would believe such a thing, but that won’t let you off the hook. However much you don’t want to believe it, however much you would like it to go away, however loudly you whistle in the dark and comfort yourself with the sweet thought of Nancy Pelosi hanging her drapes over Denny Hastert’s fat, dead, humiliated body, it is still true.
​

There are a lot of serious issues facing this country, but compared to the Islamist threat, they are not close enough even to be seen as in second place.
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Posted @ 1:35 pm. Filed under War on terror, Domestic, Law & Politics, Federal

 

[manu1959]

interesting premise......

what issue that is dear to you would you give up for everlasting peace on earth?

taxes?
abortion?
religious freedom?
health care?
the environment?
guns?

 

[Avatar4321]

interesting premise......

what issue that is dear to you would you give up for everlasting peace on earth?

taxes?
abortion?
religious freedom?
health care?
the environment?
guns?

id give up every tax the government ever imposed on me for everlasting peace on earth... and you know what, giving up ever tax would probably bring it

Seriously, there are things more important then peace (by peace i mean worldly peace, IE absence of war). Freedom for one.