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Do you support Obama's continuation of Bush's policies on the War on Terror?

Do you support Obama's continuation of Bush's policies on the War on Terror?

  • Yes

    Votes: 12 54.5%

  • No

    Votes: 10 45.5%
  • Total voters
    22
StillBallin75 said:
Things I do have a problem with:
- The continuing use of extraodinary rendition
- Gitmo detainees not being afforded due process

Things I think were a positive:
- Drawdown in Iraq

Things I don't particularly lean one way or the other, I just think it's a difficult situation:
- ongoing operations in Afghanistan. If he wants to pull out now, the Afghan government isn't ready to take over the country, and neither are their security forces. On the other hand, if we actually want to do this "nation-building" thing the right way, we may be stuck there for a generation.

That's all I have for now, pretty sure I left some other things out that I can't think of off the top of my head.
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Quite reasonable.
 
StillBallin75 said:
I appreciate your honest opinion, but I don't think these assertions are entirely true. I'd agree with you if they were.
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How have we not brought democracy to those countries?
 
StillBallin75 said:
That's their problem, not mine.

And you still haven't responded to my point. Location has no bearing on the treatment of detainees. You can take them out of Gitmo and interrogate them just as well as you can anywhere else.
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........so why close Gitmo?

........thanks for playing......
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ecofarm said:
Anyone have a link for that? Please, thanks.
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Abu Ghraib Called Incubator for Terrorists - New York Times

American commanders in Iraq are expressing grave concerns that the overcrowded Abu Ghraib prison has become a breeding ground for extremist leaders and a school for terrorist foot soldiers.

The reason is that the confinement allows detainees to forge relationships and exchange lessons of combat against the United States and the new Iraqi government. "Abu Ghraib is a graduate-level training ground for the insurgency," said an American commander in Iraq.

The American military has halted transferring detainees to Iraqi jailers until the Iraqis improve their prisoner care. But concerns about the growing detainee population under American control have prompted a number of officers to stop sending every suspect rounded up in raids to Abu Ghraib and other prisons. Many inmates might instead be released if initial questioning indicated that they were not hardened fighters against the American troops and the Iraqi government.

"These decisions have to be intelligence driven, on holding those who are extreme threats or who can lead us to those who are," another American officer in Iraq said. "We don't want to be putting everybody caught up in a sweep into Jihad University."
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Bush admitted this to Bob Woodward during Woodward's writing of The War Within. Bush told Woodward that the administration realized that terrorists were recruiting others within the prison.
 
Not really. But I don't care anyway, because they didn't want democracy in the first place. Bush just needed a more PC reason, instead of saying "we want your oil".
 
Gipper said:
Not really. But I don't care anyway, because they didn't want democracy in the first place. Bush just needed a more PC reason, instead of saying "we want your oil".
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Afghanistan doesn't have any oil.
 
Tyrannosaur said:
How have we not brought democracy to those countries?
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Hardly. Their governments are barely even functional, even if they are nominally democratic. The Iraqi government spent months and months last year just trying to elect a new Parliament. There is a risk of sectarian divison negatively impacting the entire country, and the government.

The Afghan government is even worse; it doesn't even maintain perfect sovereignty over most of it's own territory. It is corrupt. They experienced a significant amount of fraud in their last presidential election. Most of the Afghan people don't trust the government. The justice system, especially at the local levels, are barely functional. People don't trust the Afghan police. The lack of a functioning justice system is why many turn to the Taliban; as brutal as they are, they administer justice swiftly.
 
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Tyrannosaur said:
How have we not brought democracy to those countries?
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I don't think it is possible to bring democracy to Afganistan. It certainly is not possible while we have troops in country being seen as occupiers. Democracy is not something you can force on a society, or will it into existence, it must be grown organically from the bottom up, not top down. It can only be sustainable that way. The best thing we can do in Afganistan is to leave. We have nothing to prove, and personally, I don't want to lose another friend to that war.
 
Where is the option for "I support those I supported under Bush and oppose the ones I opposed under Bush"? I did and do support our efforts in Afghanistan. I did and do support military action against terror. I can and do support increased airport security. I do not, nor did I under Bush support warrantless actions. I did not and still do not agree with the war in Iraq. I did not and still do not agree with the mass holding of suspected terrorists in Guantanamo. I did not and still do not approve of "enhanced interrogation techniques. I did and still do oppose trading rights for security.

This is supposed to be a trap poll, but it's not a very good one.
 
StillBallin75 said:
The problem with your question is not that it's too difficult. It is that it's too simplistic. If you are done being a partisan hack, I would appreciate debating this topic with people who can actually act like adults.
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ROTFLOL... I just about spat out my brew reading your response.

Me says you is caught trying to figure out how to fire up the spin machine... hold on... you've got it going full blast.

So much BS, so little time.

liblady said:
i agree. dumb ass poll.
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Another Lib caught with their intellectual pants soiled and around their ankles.

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Afghanistan doesn't have any oil.
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We didn't really do much in Afghanistan, especially when you compare it to other bases of operation like Iraq. We sent as many troops into Afghanistan as Canada sent to Vietnam. And yes, that's tongue in cheek, in case any of you 'nucks get your panties in a wad.

If Afghanistan had oil, we'd have sent more than the odd predator drone.
 
zimmer said:
ROTFLOL... I just about spat out my brew reading your response.

Me says you is caught trying to figure out how to fire up the spin machine... hold on... you've got it going full blast.

So much BS, so little time.

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If anything is guilty of engaging the spin machine it's your simplistic trap poll.
 
StillBallin75 said:
Why are you asking me? Ask the ones that actually want to close it.
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I agree that torture can be conducted at the Super Max in Florence, Colorado, just as easy as it can be conducted at Gitmo. The reason for closing the detention center at GITMO is again, PR. I don't say that to belittle the importance of Public Relations, but rather to agree that it would be healthy for us to do so as it pertains to ongoing relations with our Muslim allies. Gitmo is a flashpoint for extremists, and so it would be a good strategic move to simply change venues. I would condemn torture wherever it is done, not just Gitmo.
 
ADG said:
I could care less about the welfare of the terrorists we have locked up in GITMO and beyond. Most of them probably deserve to be locked away. But my feelings about the enemy should not outweigh my values as an American and as a human being. War is hell, that is clear, and soldiers are required to do some things in the line of duty that many of us would never have nightmares about, and may God bless them and their sacrifice. But our leaders and lawmakers are a different story, and they should be held to a different standard. Being an American isn't easy, or at least it shouldn't be, in that sometimes our adherance to inconvenient rules and values may halt our need for blood vengance and actions that we normally would condemn in others.
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While I completely understand your point, I do not understand how we have come to view these as our American views. Have you ever read about US actions in Northern African during WWII? In many of the various other conflicts we have been in? America could easily win wars in those days because there was not a constant stream of media reporting every act undertook by our soldiers. There is a reason we lost Vietnam, the news presence hindered our military and we lost. If we hinder them now we will lose this one as well.
 
ADG said:
I agree that torture can be conducted at the Super Max in Florence, Colorado, just as easy as it can be conducted at Gitmo. The reason for closing the detention center at GITMO is again, PR. I don't say that to belittle the importance of Public Relations, but rather to agree that it would be healthy for us to do so as it pertains to ongoing relations with our Muslim allies. Gitmo is a flashpoint for extremists, and so it would be a good strategic move to simply change venues. I would condemn torture wherever it is done, not just Gitmo.
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So for you, it would be more of a PR/symbolic move, more than a substantive move because the Gitmo name has already been so poisoned? I don't agree but I can see where you're coming from.
 
StillBallin75 said:
If anything is guilty of engaging the spin machine it's your simplistic trap poll.
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I love it when you Libs get fired up and are riding your Spin-O-Matic... for example, the use of "trap poll"... ROTFLOL. It's only a trap for Libs who have a hard time admitting they support something they screeched about for 7-years of Bush.

Then the pollster is dumb, the poll is dumb, and they skate like Bobby Hull on a breakaway trying to escape the issue.

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zimmer said:
I love it when you Libs get fired up and are riding your Spin-O-Matic... for example, the use of "trap poll"... ROTFLOL. It's only a trap for Libs who have a hard time admitting they support something they screeched about for 7-years of Bush.

Then the pollster is dumb, the poll is dumb, and they skate like Bobby Hull on a breakaway trying to escape the issue.

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I've given my reason for why your poll is dumb, and I've given my own position on the issue. If you can't address any of those points, and instead keep on talking out of your ass, then you'll have proved to everyone beyond a reasonable doubt how much of a hack you are.
 
Let's face it though, Iraq and Afghanistan are better places now that the US went in there and overthrew genocidal dictators (see Saddam's chemical weapon usage on the Kurdish people).
 
tlmorg02 said:
While I completely understand your point, I do not understand how we have come to view these as our American views. Have you ever read about US actions in Northern African during WWII? In many of the various other conflicts we have been in? America could easily win wars in those days because there was not a constant stream of media reporting every act undertook by our soldiers. There is a reason we lost Vietnam, the news presence hindered our military and we lost. If we hinder them now we will lose this one as well.
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Torture has never been an American value. We condemned the Japanese for waterboarding in WWII and called it torture. Reagan has a great quote about people who conduct torture being our truest enemy (I can't find the quote, so any help would be appreciated). Up until Jon Yoo and David Addington decided to play legal games with our policy on interrogation, we were steadfast in our opposition to torture, no matter what political party controlled the White House. Abu Ghraib was an embarrassment because we all know, without referring to the Army Field Handbook or the Geneva conventions, that what happended was unacceptable.
 
StillBallin75 said:
I've given my reason for why your poll is dumb, and I've given my own position on the issue. If you can't address any of those points, and instead keep on talking out of your ass, then you'll have proved to everyone beyond a reasonable doubt how much of a hack you are.
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Of course you have... it's called spin. The question is simple... you see Libs hated Bush's policies to protect this nation and Obama claimed he'd reverse course on many of them. Instead... they're still there.

It really isn't a tough question, unless you want it to be... spinner.

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Tyrannosaur said:
Let's face it though, Iraq and Afghanistan are better places now that the US went in there and overthrew genocidal dictators (see Saddam's chemical weapon usage on the Kurdish people).
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I'm not arguing against any of that. I'm arguing that those places will fall apart if we leave (at least Afghanistan).
 
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zimmer said:
Of course you have... it's called spin. The question is simple... you see Libs hated Bush's policies to protect this nation and Obama claimed he'd reverse course on many of them. Instead... they're still there.

It really isn't a tough question, unless you want it to be... spinner.

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It's a complicated issue, and you try to simplify it into a yes or no poll. It's like asking, "do you think war is good or bad"? It's a stupid question.

You know nothing about my positions on Bush's policies because I haven't stated them.
 
Dinosaur said:
Let's face it though, Iraq and Afghanistan are better places now that the US went in there and overthrew genocidal dictators (see Saddam's chemical weapon usage on the Kurdish people).
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That is very true. I also couldn't give a damn.

Since when has morality become America's greatest export? I wouldn't lose a bead of sweat on my ass if we stopped raiding a country every time they believe something we don't believe.
 
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