Friday, September 12, 2008

Obama

I can't imagine anything more traitorous than to lie ones country into war - war!! Yes, all the reasons we were given for invading Iraq have since proven to be lies.

I didn't believe them at the time, having already, beforehand, read all about the proposal to invade Iraq. It had been developed around the time President Clinton came into office. September 11th was just an excuse to execute the plan that had been proposed years before.

On the whole, the rest of the world knew better, too. But too many Americans, traumatized, bombarded with propaganda (with the news media conniving), and bullied, did believe those lies. And far too many people of various nationalities died as a result, and are still dying.

This probably doesn't fit the rather narrow legal definition of treason, but in a more usual sense, what could possibly be more treasonous? What betrayal of country could possibly be greater than this? And with it, so much horror, so much death, our reputation in the world in tatters, our economy wrecked.

(And since the reasons given us for fighting in Iraq were all lies, what was the real reason it was so important to somebody? What was it all for? Especially at a time when we needed to be going after actual terrorists? Nobody of either party has ever told us why we really went into Iraq. Nobody.)

And Senator McCain made himself the nation's number one cheerleader for this deception, distraction, and, yes, treason. And he knew better. If I did, an ordinary citizen, a housewife, then certainly he did, a senior senator.

I can't vote for him. With or without Governor Palin. Eight years ago, when he really was a maverick, I would have voted for him, was hoping to, had he been nominated. But not now.

Moreover, neither he nor Mrs. Palin strikes me as very much exemplifying "family values," except that in her case, her family has put its pro-life stance into action, for which I honor them. On the other hand, family values include being faithful to one's wife, which Sen. McCain admits to not having been. In fact the current Mrs. McCain is one of several women with whom he had affairs while married to his first wife. Family values also, to me, include a mother spending a LOT of time with her five children, especially a disabled one.

On top of that, I am old enough to remember Sen. McCain's involvement in the infamous Keating affair. He was eventually cleared of actual illegality, but it all smelled very bad.

So, I've been voting since 1968, and for the first time in my life - wait, no, the second time - I'm voting for the Democrat for President.

Senator Obama has been copiously smeared, but none of the really frightening allegations about him has turned out to be true or to have substance or to amount to much. They're scare tactics. Sometimes they are thinly disguised racism. (Racists ought to remember that Senator Obama is only half black, and was raised in a white culture.) I believe him to be a man of good character (rare among politicians) who is competent and intelligent, cultured and well-spoken, who really can reach out to most sorts of people. I do not think he is Messiah or any such thing, and I don't know a single other person who does, either. That's a red herring, an attempt to turn his enormous popularity into a liability. Like anyone else, Sen. Obama has his flaws and everybody knows them, because they have been made much of.

The main qualm I've had about voting for Obama is of course his stance on abortion. However, as Pastor Beane has noted, presidents have never had, nor can have, much influence upon that issue. Even if they do, their political influence is subject to reversal later. It's a mistaken and failed stategy to try to correct abortion through a president. I think the solution is to try to evangelize the people of America, to encourage in them higher values and better morals. The problem has to be solved from the bottom up, one heart at a time, not from the top down. Voting for a pro-life candidate, while good in itself, is a minor and relatively ineffectual action among the many we need to take against abortion; and because it is so minor, it can and should be weighed against other factors. I do not think we ought to let a president or a party get by with horrific things just because they say they're pro-life (and prove in so many ways they are not).

Treason, on the other hand, is something a president can deal directly with, can end, can turn around. Or at least perhaps he can, providing our country isn't yet a crypto-dictatorship, as Fr. Beane also suggests - and he may be right. (Look at the U.K., for example. At the start of the Iraq war, some 80-90% of Brits were firmly against involvment in it, yet their government took them into Iraq anyway. How is that supposed to be democracy at work?) Perhaps it is too late and Obama, too, will be coerced or co-opted into doing someone else's bidding. Perhaps he will turn out to be a big disappointment. I really hesitate to lend my support to anyone these days!

But I still have a little hope. And if the president can't or won't reverse the treason, end the bloodshed honorably, restore America's moral standing in the world, and begin to mend our economy, we aren't going to have to worry about abortion, because we aren't going to have much of a country left to purify of that curse. The terrorists will have won.

11 comments:

Cha said...

Well, Anastasia -
There are several things which you and I view a bit differently, I think.

But about this we are on exactly the same page. Exactly.

DebD said...

you said: It's a mistaken and failed stategy to try to correct abortion through a president. I think the solution is to try to evangelize the people of America, to encourage in them higher values and better morals. The problem has to be solved from the bottom up, one heart at a time, not from the top down.

I so agree with this statement. This is a lesson that should have been learned 10 years ago.

Also, I read that McCain got caught up in the Keating affair because he was a maverick (they were trying to smear him to shut him up).

Chris Jones said...

Anastasia,

Exactly right. I am glad to know that my wife and I are not the only ones who see things this way.

Grace said...

The President can appoint judges who can change abortion laws, but like you say, making it illegal won't stop women from having them.

L.T. said...

Pastor Beane indeed says abortion is not something presidents can solve, but you ignore his prescribed method of ridding the abortion issue of presidential politics: overturning Roe v. Wade. Yet Obama has stated openly and vociferously not only that Roe v. Wade must be protected, but that Roe v. Wade must be further reinforced and converted into black letter federal law (Freedom of Choice Act). He votes against bills that only moderately restrict abortion rights over particularly rare but heinous procedures. He then falsely accuses pro-lifers of lying when they hold up his voting record for review. Is the GOP spinning this for political gain? Of course, but even FactCheck.org has called Obama out on his own misrepresentations. I find there's a lot to like about Obama, but how he's dealt with this issue contradicts even moderate pro-life views. I agree it's not the only or most important presidential issue, but it's not easy to simply discount given his activism for the pro-choice agenda.

Anonymous said...

I choose not to vote for evils anymore even if one is the lesser of the two, so I am writing in a candidate.
I won't vote for McCain because of foreign policy and I won't vote for Obama because of foreign policy, abortion, taxation and his penchant for socialism and I could probably come up with a few more if I wanted to.
I don't ascribe to the "lies" opinion, the intelligence was wrong and the whole fiasco was just a continuation of Clinton's version of foreign policy of regime change in Iraq, but with gutted intelligence services.
As far as Palin goes, I wouldn't want anybody judging how I raised my family, that is personal and the objections given are not required of men. Women are terribly hard on women- so safe to say we will never have an old boy network!
If someone truly shares Obama's "vision" for the USA then wahoo, vote for him, but as the greater of the two evils, he is not getting my vote, but then again neither is McCain. :)

Tony said...

Like thehandmaid, I don't share the "lies" opinion either. If there was any fault it was bad intelligence. However, I was for the invasion of Iraq then and I am still for it now. Saddam Hussein was the Idi Amin of the Middle East: he didn't care about international opinion and was constantly ignoring/violating it, he supported terrorism across the Middle East, he was constantly plotting against his neighbors, and the treatment of his own people and staff made Stalin look like FDR (a good book to read would be the Iraqi Perspectives Project, available for free online - it comes recommended from me because my father worked on it!). Furthermore, an Iran surrounded by a democratic and America-friendly Turkey, Iraq, and Afghanistan lends some value in long-term goals.

As for Obama, I cannot vote for him - however, neither can I vote for McCain. In fact, I've recently become a card carrying member of the Libertarian party, due to my disillusionment with the conservative Republican party in the past few years. Obama wins people with promises and a warm personality, but as Mohammad once said, "Eloquence is sorcery." I don't want to sound like a typical anti-Obama spokesperson, but he really does remind me of Jimmy Carter, with ideals and plans that seek to replace what works with what sounds good. You mentioned that he can't really do anything about abortion - well, when you get right do it, presidents cannot do EVERYTHING on every topic. There is still the Congress and the Supreme Court to get through. Carter had the same problem. He had many great ideas, and admittedly he tried to get some of them done, but he could not get them through Congress. Reagan, on the other hand, even with a hostile Congress, knew how to play politics and get his ideas through. All this aside, Obama's waffling on many issues such as the Middle East, his distortion of stories, his trying to take credit for things already getting done (he promised to bring the levees in New Orleans back to their pre-Katrina levels within a few years...the Corps of Engineers already got the funding and go ahead to do that before he even said it), as well as his backtracking on many topics (claiming in his book that Jeremiah Wright was his pastor for 20 years and that he heard his opinion on many subjects, then claiming after Wright became controversial that he didn't remember much he said) reveals him to be just another Washington politician rather than this beacon of hope so many take him as.

When election day comes I'll either vote third party, or, if I'm in a serious enough mood, might vote McCain, but as it stands I'm really not excited about either major candidate.

Anonymous said...

i would suggest that the reality is that the next president will set the table around the Supreme Court bench. Obama is clearly in favor of abortion and the whole agenda associated with it. He supported infanticide, and shows evidence that he will support sodomite marriage as Federal policy, embryonic stem cell research, the stripping of citizen's rights in the name of reversing so-called global warming, the restriction of free expression and practice of religion, and a number of other simply wicked policies. What the difference would be between voting for him and Biden and voting for Stalin i simply can't imagine.

Anastasia Theodoridis said...

Responses to various points:

No, I don't think the evidence supports "bad intelligence," but doctored intelligence. The then CIA director, George Tenant (who is Orthodox and attends our parish occasionally, being related to a local family), very much appears to have capitulated to enormous pressure to slant the interpretations, and later to have become the fall guy.]

The weapons inspectors had reported that there were no WMD.

To those who refuse to support either major candidate and plan to vote for a third party person, or to write in someone else, I highly honor that position. In fact, that is what I also have been doing in the last several elections.

Tonight, Mr. Obama's interview with Bill O'Reilly was telecast, and there just didn't seem to be any difference AT ALL between his foreign policy and Mr. McCain's. None. The two appeared identical. So I may have spoken too soon! I may end up joining you who are voting for "Neither of the Above." If so, I will say so beforehand here in this blog.

On abortion. Yes, it IS difficult to support someone who takes the stance Mr. Obama does. One doesn't do it lightly.

Yes, Supreme Court judges appointed by presidents can uphold or overturn Roe v. Wade. But even if they should overturn it, a later president can appoint other judges who may legalize abortion all over again. Isn't all that rather too iffy to hang your vote on entirely? I think so.

On Iraq: yes, Saddam Hussein was a thoroughly unsavory character, although the U.S. had earlier allied itself with him against Iran, and that gas he used on his own people had been supplied by the United States, as had the other weapons of mass destruction. So there is enough of the unsavory to go around. But that was insufficient grounds to justify invading a country that had not harmed us nor could have.

Yes, as Tony points out, it was for strategic purposes; I agree. But WHAT strategic purposes?

Tony said...

I actually outlined my strategic purposes, both in stemming radicalism in the Middle East and reigning in a possibly expanding Iran, which also funds terrorist movements among the Shia population in the Middle East (hence why Arab nations are weary of Persian Iran). Could Iraq have hurt us? Probably no more than Hitler could have hurt us if we had just left him alone to kill Jews, gypsies, Slavs, Catholics, and other undesirables and while his armies ran a muck conquering his neighbors, nor probably any more than Pol Pot could have harmed us while he massacred most of his population, or the Vietnamese against their southern brothers after we pulled out, or even the Hutus as they slaughtered a million Tutsis.

As for US involvement with Iraq against Iran, most of the equipment given to Iraq was engineering and other non-chemical or biological weaponry. In fact if you study the Iraqi military (pre-Iraqi Freedom) most of their equipment was Russian.

Whether or not Saddam Hussein had WMD's (which actually contradicts the argument that we gave him WMD's), there is ample evidence that he had the WMD programs and actually believed he possessed them. We have recorded documents (which, again, my dad worked with, and you can read in the Iraqi Perspectives Project) of Hussein speaking with advisers on the WMD programs and seeking their full capability. The problem was, of course, Hussein ran a Stalinist-style government that punished poor performance with death (during the war with Iran he chopped up an adviser and sent the body parts to his wife simply because he suggested he step down temporarily). As Soviet ministers lied to Stalin about industrial production, so too did Hussein's ministers lie or exaggerate about his weapons programs. Nevertheless, he had the programs. He also fully intended to use them, as he did against the Marsh Arabs and as he threatened to do on the outset of the American-led invasion.

Anonymous said...

"Yes, Supreme Court judges appointed by presidents can uphold or overturn Roe v. Wade. But even if they should overturn it, a later president can appoint other judges who may legalize abortion all over again. Isn't all that rather too iffy to hang your vote on entirely?"
Even if Roe were overturned - and it should be because it is unconstitutional - abortion law would then revert back to the States and local communities can and should decide laws on abortion.
Roe federalized abortion this is the problem.