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Name: Andrews
Location: Riva, MD
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Amusingly Left Wing

I found a strange post, which I shall reproduce in its entirety:

Come on, do we really want another 100 years of war? Our military is already severely depleted can we risk a parallel war with Iran. Would you send your kids? I know John Mc Cain wouldn't, and George Bush wouldn't even have gone himself. Why don't we ask the families of the over 4,400 dead American soldiers if they are for the war. The Bush administration has already killed more Americans than the September 11th terrorists. And John how is cutting taxes to the poor who either already don't pay taxes or pay very little supposed to help them out? You are out of touch my friend. A heads up Trickle Down Theory is a lie!!!!!!! The last 8 years of republicn aristocracy have turned the American Dream into the American Nightmare, let's not do this to ourselves any longer.

Those who replied on the site corrected the most obvious errors, that McCain's sons did serve, that the "100 years" quote has been horribly misrepresented, and so on. So, instead I will focus on one comment that I have heard over and over form the left.

"The Bush administration has already killed more Americans than the September 11th terrorists." I have heard this line, or variations on it, many times. Yet does it even make sense?

Do these same people say FDR killed hundreds of thousands of Americans? That Lincoln killed hundreds of thousands? That Washington killed thousands? They don't even blame Clinton for the blackhawk incident, even if he is more culpable there than Bush is for any deaths in Iraq. It is only when it comes to Bush that somehow he is responsible for every death in Iraq.

Of course, their response is "we didn't have to fight in Iraq, George Bush WANTED that war, so he is to blame."

But that is a load of garbage. Iraq WAS supporting terrorists., Even if they were not supporting Al Qaida directly, supporting terrorists is still helping. People tend to think of terrorist groups like political parties or NFL teams, you are PLO or Hammas or Al Qaida, they are distinct. That is not true. Terrorist groups are more like the Elks and Moose and Rotary, you can join more than one. So, while Saddam may have been supporting Ansar al-Islam or some other group, he was still helping terrorists who were also part of Al Qaida. If you help one terrorist group, you end up help many of them.

Which means that attacking Iraq was a perfectly valid response to September 11. We had declared our intention to destroy terrorist harboring regimes. Not only was Iraq such a regime, but they had been in violation of countless UN resolutions and the ceasefire from the first Gulf War. Should we have ignored that? I thought most of those complaining about Bush also supported the UN. If so, aren't we supposed to help the UN enforce its resolutions? Why is this the one time we are supposed to ignore the UN?

Finally, and most importantly, Saddam had fired on US aircraft. It was a horrible dereliction of duty that Clinton ignored this act of war. Our president has a duty to respond to acts of war, and Bush did so. It does not matter whether Saddam had any hope of taking out our planes, nor does it matter that they were over Iraqi airspace. By terms of the ceasefire, we had a right and duty to patrol the no fly zones. Saddam fired on our pilots performing their duty, that is an act of war, and it is our president's responsibility to respond.

So, how is it George Bush's fault that terrorists and Iranian infiltrators in Iraq are killing our troops? Unless those blaming Bush will also Blame FDR, Truman and Wilson for all the casualties in their respective wars, I don't want to hear it. And as far as forcing us into a war is concerned, JFK did more to force us into Viet Nam (a pattern Johnson continued, but hardly originated) than any president*, yet we hear no blame for him either.

For some reason, only Bush is ever blamed personally for casualties in a war fought during his presidency. I wonder why that is?

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* I actually agree with the philosophy of containment that partly led to Viet Nam, but not Kennedy's original goal of preserving a French presence in southeast Asia. I think events after 1975 show the tremendous cost of allowing communist expansion, so I hope I don't have to explain why containment was a valid philosophy. But should anyone ask, I will happily explain.

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POSTSCRIPT

I have been intending to write a comprehensive essay explaining all the reasons Iraq was a perfectly justified war. All the way from the fact that WMDs were present to the stupid argument asking why we didn't also invade North Korea and Syria and Iran. (The idea that we have to attack all villains at once or none is a particularly popular argument on the left, but also a very foolish one.) However, as I have not yet completed it, I decided to present some parts of it here. If this essay seems a bit cursory in justifying our involvement in Iraq, that is because providing the full explanation would take too long. So, if you have objections to my justification, please rest assured I shall soon be answering them in a future essay. But if you want to voice them anyway, feel free to do so in the comments.

I also want to write an essay about the misnomer of "trickle down economics", a term the right did not originate, and the idiocy of how the left describes this approach. Rather than attempting to understand the simple economic truth that a rising tide lifts all boats, they caricature this theory then disprove their own caricature. To correct this deliberate misunderstanding, I hope to soon write something rebutting their description and laying out precisely how cutting taxes and reducing regulations benefits all Americans, and the world, not just "the evil rich". But that will have to wait until later as well.

POSTSCRIPT

Some will argue that Saddam was not supporting Ansar al-Islam. And that is possible, though their opposition to more mainstream Kurdish groups suggests Saddam would have found them to his liking, and would at least tolerate their presence. He may not even have been tolerating them, they may have been opposed to him. However, he DID support any number of terrorists, including Hammas, Hezbollah and Fatah suicide bombers in Israel. As I said, doesn't matter which specific anti-Israeli, anti-US terrorists he supported, the overlap allows support for one to be translated into support for others.

There is also the fact that Zarqawi was hiding in Iraq prior to the invasion organizaing cells (which he could not have done without Saddam's tacit approval), which suggests a closer tie to Al Qaida than the left allows. Saddam also sheltered Abu Nidal, until he became an embarrassment. And beyond that, the supposedly "disproved" allegations from Czech intelligence, upon more examination, are hardly conclusively refuted. The US intelligence agencies (which are largely anti-Bush) deny it, but the Czech intelligence agencies are split, or may even still stand behind them with a few vocal dissenters. So claims that this theory has been "disproved" are as exaggerated as the claims there are no WMDs, despite what the MSM may say. (I do not say ties are proved, just that they are not disproved either.)

So, whether it was Ansar al-Islam, al Qaida, or some other group does not matter. Saddam supported terrorists, despite his supposed "secular" position. And it doesn't matter which specific terrorists he supported. Does it matter if Crips or Bloods shoot you in a drive by? So why worry which anti-US terrorists he was supporting?

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