Wide Rift Within the Democratic Party on Foreign Policy

[Frodo]

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We are referring primarily to those terrorist groups that advocate using violence on the United States and its allies to advance their cause of recreating an Islamic caliphate throughout the Islamic world under the guidance of Wahhabite fundamentalism. 

So terror is not actually one of your concerns.
Thanks, that's all I wanted to hear when I wrote that part.

I'm glad you outed yourself as a dishonest SOB, arbitrarily putting words into my mouth that you know very well I did not mean to say.     

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Well in a literal sense that's actually true

Can I have whatever you're smoking? 

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WTF?  Who said they did?

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'Merely' -nice choice of words. 

And yes, that would be their ultimate objective.  Good boy -I am glad you're catching on. 

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Yes, it's a wrong impression, but you are so far off left field it seems a waste of time to explain that to you, especially since you seem set on putting words into my mouth.   



 

[Frodo]

Think beyond Iraq.  You are as fixated on the war as you are on President Bush.   

Well, in Afganistan, Bush let Osama get away at Tora Bora. Of course you warmongers don't seem to care.

You, unsurprisingly, missed the point of my comment which was: do you on the left have any plan or strategy on how to battle terrorism for the next generation?  This question assumes, of course, that you leftists have the willingness and desire to do whatever it takes to defend this country from those who seek to do it harm........   

Yes, first off

1. Pay atttention to memos titled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US"
2.When you have Osama cornered, don't fight some low level proxy battle like Bush did. If we can afford 200,000 troops for Iraq, we could have afforded a few thousand there.
3. Don't get the whole world pissed off at us. Fighting terrorism works much better when you have the hearts of most individuals. After 9/11, French newspapers ran headlines: "We are all Americans now", and sent a bunch of troops to Afganistan. For some reason we decided to bash France for the next few years.

Excellent suggestions.  Here is my plan:

1. Reaffirm our support for international institutions and treaties (one helpful gesture would be to launch a global war on poverty and global warming at the same time we are fighting terrorists), and emphasize international cooperation when hunting down terrorists while reserving the option of militarily overthrowing the regime of a country actively hosting transnational terrorists, and promptly asking the international community to help us rebuild it.   

2. Implement in full all the recommendations of the 9/11 commission, and fully fund our homeland security efforts, securing nuclear and chemical plants, our infrastructure (electrical grids, reservoirs, sewers, etc.), as well as our ports.

3. Energy independence -begin an Apollo program of shifting our nation's energy sources from fossil fuels to renewables (including nuclear fusion and hydrogen fuel-cell technologies),while massively expanding the building of nuclear fission power plants as an intermediate step. Also, double the tax credit for hybrid vehicles while raising fuel economy standards for all vehicles, while cutting CO2 emissions. 

4. We should not be shy of raising taxes on the very wealthy to fund these initiatives for the duration of this war as long as we explain the actions as being an investment in our future and security, while tarring those who criticize it and call us the age-old insult of 'tax-and-spend liberals' as irresponsible and infer that they are being unpatriotic.  Hey, if the Republicans can stoop to that level, why can't we?   

5. You keep talking about Iraq, and I suppose I might as well address it -  I never supported going into Iraq in the first place, and had it been my choice, we would never have gone in there.  But since we are there and have invested blood and treasure in this enterprise, it would be irresponsible (an act of criminal negligence, actually) for us to call for an immediate pull-out, or a timetabled withdrawal.  You leftists keep calling Iraq a failure, and a terrorist haven when its future is still in doubt -it would most certainly become that if we prematurely withdraw our military with our task still infinished.  The government has just been elected, and it will need time to establish itself, and to gradually take over the security of the country -and even then we should withdraw the bulk of our force only at the behest of the Iraqi president and parliament.  We have already invested so much -we owe it to our servicemen and women who have fought and died there to leave behind a stable Iraq and not another failed state. 

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Grow up. 

[Nym90]

Well put Frodo, I agree with all of your proposals.

Number 3 in particular would go along way toward addressing the fundamental problem. The best thing we can do for long term national security is to marginalize the improtance of the Middle East by reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. Unfortunately the current Administration has little or no incentive to do this, and in fact perhaps a disincentive.

Likewise, I didn't support Iraq; I didn't think that the costs, both in terms of lives and dollars, would be worth it for the benefits, and I feel I have been proven right on this. I wasn't opposed to the concept of removing a dictator (I strongly support democracy and strongly oppose dictatorship), but I didn't see Saddam as any worse than the multitidue of other dictators in the world.

But likewise, to pull out now would be a very bad idea. Unfortunately we are stuck with the mess and have to clean it up.

[minionofmidas]

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We are referring primarily to those terrorist groups that advocate using violence on the United States and its allies to advance their cause of recreating an Islamic caliphate throughout the Islamic world under the guidance of Wahhabite fundamentalism. 

So terror is not actually one of your concerns.
Thanks, that's all I wanted to hear when I wrote that part.

I'm glad you outed yourself as a dishonest SOB, arbitrarily putting words into my mouth that you know very well I did not mean to say. 

No, it's exaclty what you meant to say - and of course what everybody knows anyways, it just makes sense to spell it out from time to time because people forget. It's not the existence of terrorism (ie tactics aimed at creating terror) you want to end, but a certain group's ability to threaten you personally.   A totally different thing (of course, that's an understandable pursuit)

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WTF?  Who said they did? [/quote]Well, if you don't think that either, you have some 'splaining to do re:

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It's not as if you had anything to do with that.

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While you quote me so grotesquely out of context (twice) that (insulting line deleted, since I don't actually want to insult you).

[Undisguised Sockpuppet]

I'm not a democrat but I think Aericawould be for the best if one of the 2 big parties adopted a foreign policy based on realpolitik. None of this neocon wannabe imperialism or the lefty feel good "save the world" internationalism. America needs realpolitik.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

I'm not a democrat but I think Aericawould be for the best if one of the 2 big parties adopted a foreign policy based on realpolitik. None of this neocon wannabe imperialism or the lefty feel good "save the world" internationalism. America needs realpolitik.

I think most of the Democrats opposed to the Iraq war fall in that catagory. Of course people will straw man them into other postiions, but that's other people using lies, and not our fault.

[WMS]

But the article does make a good point, in that there are essentially two very different types of isolationsists; [1] those who view "Americanization" of the world as doing more bad than good, and the far more common type, which, as I mentioned, [2] basically don't give a damn about what goes on outside of our borders.

Likewise, interventionists can be [3] both those who view the United States as a force for good in the world, or[4]  those who want to make the rest of the world more like us so as to better serve our interests.

Or as the highly-flawed yet interesting Christian Science Monitor article of 2004 put it...[1] = Liberal; [2] = Isolationist; [3] = Neoconservative; [4] = Realist.

Ah, Rome. The vilest motherfucker in earth history. Rome well deserved all the hate it got and something extra, you know that? Believe you me, you don't want to take Rome as your role model, because if you do, that'd really be the end to whatever civil liberties you got left.

Well, to be technical, the Roman Republic was pretty damn good, especially by the standards of the era - you had places rebelling in order to become Roman citizens. Once the transition to the Roman Empire took place, things headed south in a hurry. My source, BTW, was my always-entertaining libertarian Ancient History professor back in my undergraduate days, whose specialty was Greece and Rome.

[Nym90]

But the article does make a good point, in that there are essentially two very different types of isolationsists; [1] those who view "Americanization" of the world as doing more bad than good, and the far more common type, which, as I mentioned, [2] basically don't give a damn about what goes on outside of our borders.

Likewise, interventionists can be [3] both those who view the United States as a force for good in the world, or[4]  those who want to make the rest of the world more like us so as to better serve our interests.

Or as the highly-flawed yet interesting Christian Science Monitor article of 2004 put it...[1] = Liberal; [2] = Isolationist; [3] = Neoconservative; [4] = Realist.

Ah, Rome. The vilest motherfucker in earth history. Rome well deserved all the hate it got and something extra, you know that? Believe you me, you don't want to take Rome as your role model, because if you do, that'd really be the end to whatever civil liberties you got left.

Well, to be technical, the Roman Republic was pretty damn good, especially by the standards of the era - you had places rebelling in order to become Roman citizens. Once the transition to the Roman Empire took place, things headed south in a hurry. My source, BTW, was my always-entertaining libertarian Ancient History professor back in my undergraduate days, whose specialty was Greece and Rome.

I actually would flip flop 3 and 4. The difference between them that I was trying to articulate was that liberal interventionists view us as having a moral obligation to improve the rest of the world by making them more like us, where as neocons generally want to do so as a means of improving America's national security. The difference is on who the intervention is primarily intended to help, though obviously many if not most such interventions will be helpful to both America and the country we are aiding as well. However, when a proposed intervention would primarily help one country far more than the other, that is where you would see these two types of internationalists generally seperate.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Liberal internationalist (or interventionist, in my case) but I don't really consider myself liberal on foreign policy at all

Dave

Well you wouldn't be as the term is defined today (although I've always maintained that the vast majority of liberals don't support what conservatives like to call liberal foreign policy, but that's for a different thread).

But as the article defines it, you certainly would be. Traditionally liberal foreign policy supported the idea that the United States has a moral obligation to make the world a better place, while conservative foreign policy traditionally was more focused on the idea that we shouldn't care about anyone else and focus on ourselves.

But the article does make a good point, in that there are essentially two very different types of isolationsists; those who view "Americanization" of the world as doing more bad than good, and the far more common type, which, as I mentioned, basically don't give a damn about what goes on outside of our borders.

Likewise, interventionists can be both those who view the United States as a force for good in the world, or those who want to make the rest of the world more like us so as to better serve our interests.

If you word things like that, I think you'll find a lot of anti-Iraq war people show up in the first interventionist catagory.

[Nym90]

Liberal internationalist (or interventionist, in my case) but I don't really consider myself liberal on foreign policy at all

Dave

Well you wouldn't be as the term is defined today (although I've always maintained that the vast majority of liberals don't support what conservatives like to call liberal foreign policy, but that's for a different thread).

But as the article defines it, you certainly would be. Traditionally liberal foreign policy supported the idea that the United States has a moral obligation to make the world a better place, while conservative foreign policy traditionally was more focused on the idea that we shouldn't care about anyone else and focus on ourselves.

But the article does make a good point, in that there are essentially two very different types of isolationsists; those who view "Americanization" of the world as doing more bad than good, and the far more common type, which, as I mentioned, basically don't give a damn about what goes on outside of our borders.

Likewise, interventionists can be both those who view the United States as a force for good in the world, or those who want to make the rest of the world more like us so as to better serve our interests.

If you word things like that, I think you'll find a lot of anti-Iraq war people show up in the first interventionist catagory.

I absolutely agree. I myself am certainly in that camp. I support the idea of the United States promoting democracy and taking down dictatorships in theory (primarily because I view democracy as moral and dictatorship as immoral, plus it does have the definite benefit of increasing the security of all freedom in the world to eliminate tyrrany and oppression), but I think Iraq was way too expensive in terms of both lives and dollars for the gain that was made; if we can't install a functional democracy, there will have been no gain at all, or perhaps even a net loss.

So I have always been opposed to the Iraq war, although I do not fundamentally disagree with its purpose. I simply view it as a massive waste of money that could be better spent on other priorities.

[WMS]

But the article does make a good point, in that there are essentially two very different types of isolationsists; [1] those who view "Americanization" of the world as doing more bad than good, and the far more common type, which, as I mentioned, [2] basically don't give a damn about what goes on outside of our borders.

Likewise, interventionists can be [3] both those who view the United States as a force for good in the world, or[4]  those who want to make the rest of the world more like us so as to better serve our interests.

Or as the highly-flawed yet interesting Christian Science Monitor article of 2004 put it...[1] = Liberal; [2] = Isolationist; [3] = Neoconservative; [4] = Realist.

I actually would flip flop 3 and 4. The difference between them that I was trying to articulate was that liberal interventionists view us as having a moral obligation to improve the rest of the world by making them more like us, where as neocons generally want to do so as a means of improving America's national security. The difference is on who the intervention is primarily intended to help, though obviously many if not most such interventions will be helpful to both America and the country we are aiding as well. However, when a proposed intervention would primarily help one country far more than the other, that is where you would see these two types of internationalists generally seperate.

Interesting perspective...although you're actually adding a fifth category and not flip-flopping the existing ones, since Realists don't care about improving the world at all.

[Nym90]

I would personally put realists into a totally different category. I may be misinterpreting the term, but I think of realists as analyzing the pros and cons and weighing the costs and benefits of each individual action on its own and thus not necessarily adhering ot any particular philosophy of interventionism or isolationism.

[Undisguised Sockpuppet]

I would personally put realists into a totally different category. I may be misinterpreting the term, but I think of realists as analyzing the pros and cons and weighing the costs and benefits of each individual action on its own and thus not necessarily adhering ot any particular philosophy of interventionism or isolationism.

I concur. Realists wouldn't fit into either isolationism, internationalism or imperialism.

[TomC]

I don't like the wording of the poll because I consider myself to be both internationalist and anti-Imperialist. To assume the United States cannot be both a leader and avoid imperialist behavior is short-sighted, even though the Bush administration hasn't helped dispel that myth at all.

We can promote human rights, democracy, economic vitality in impovrished nations. We can do this without being oppressive and imperialist. We've got to elect better leadership to do it, but it is far from impossible.

[WMS]

I would personally put realists into a totally different category. I may be misinterpreting the term, but I think of realists as analyzing the pros and cons and weighing the costs and benefits of each individual action on its own and thus not necessarily adhering ot any particular philosophy of interventionism or isolationism.

Actually, adherents of any of the schools of thought could do the part in bold. Realists are noted for realpolitiquè (I hope that's the right type of mark ) - the rejection of any motiviating factors other than the power of their state. Whether or not another country massacres its citizens is meaningless to them - they only care about whether or not the other country is a threat to their country. Think Henry Kissinger.

[True Democrat]

Liberal internationalist

[Undisguised Sockpuppet]

We've got gitmo right? Dump the internaiontlaists there. That's right both the neocon militarists and liberal internationalists.