Picking a Candidate Based on Your View of the ISSUES

Martin is the only American I've ever heard support the idea of a free-market military. But the military is a special case because while the technology is money-driven the enrollment is often not. It requires a lot of patriotism, mass cooperation, and government direction.

For some reason, this just made me wonder if the DMV could be better run by the free-market...

 

It depends on definition of "winnable". This war has made it abundantly clear that you cannot give people freedom. We can support it if it is culturally brewing, but freedom just doesn't go hand-in-hand with fundamentalism.


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The question is what can we do to make things right there. I don't believe there is a whole lot that we can do, but there are some things & I believe we should get what we can done before leaving.

I don't support pulling out immediately, but I also don't support "staying the course". I just think we need to be there another year or two.

The world will look for anything they can to lose respect for us. Once again, it just comes with territory of being the top dog.

I really don't know. Someone that has actually been there could probably answer this.

I don't believe that our attempts are futile, but I do think our goals are currently set a bit too high.

 

Another year or two? That's been said from the start.

Some will hate us for being wealthy and prosperous, but I think our reputation is lower than it has been in a long time. Those feelings go beyond the expected penis envy that you are talking about.

There have been 10s of thousands if not 100s of thousands of Iraqi deaths. That is a very high price to pay, especially considering that we've killed many innocent Iraqi's. If we were to leave, I do not think terrorists would explode Iraqi's nearly as much and our accidental killings of Iraqis would end as well. Perhaps there would be further civil war, but we can't make Iraqi's get along and we can't force them to coexist as we think they should. We've been there for a long time and we could remain for a long time. I really think that we need to leave as soon as safely possible.

 

Can't deny that...

 

I agree.

 

Let's see. You want free, universal health coverage paid for by the government (that is the only way it will ever be free and universal), but you want lower taxes. What's wrong with that picture?

 

I do not believe in immediate withdrawal or setting an aribitrary date for withdrawal. Withdrawal has to be based on progress of the military mission and political improvements. Lately there has been improvements on the ground as insurgents and militia have begun working with the Americans and Iraqi security forces against Al Quiada. If this continues this development could be very significant. However, the political side of the equation has not seen much improvement and is a cause for concern. Sectional interests continue to be a hinderance to political stability.

 

I can't imagine an ideal time to withdraw from Iraq and I'm not sure how much longer we can afford to throw dollar after dollar into a foreign entanglement. I think we're being stretched very thin already and while resistance may be dropping, I don't think we can definitively say that the malcontents have been defeated - they may very well simply be biding their time.

Even if we do have an advantage on the ground, how is our financial stability doing? A recession seems in the works while we are pumping billions of dollars into interests abroad. We are a powerful and rich country, but even our pockets aren't bottomless.