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Zonie63 -> RE: Okay so we are actually baptising terrorists when we water board them. (4/29/2014 10:45:57 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Phydeaux
"The one-liner went over great with the crowd. It summarized well a main point of her address, which held that liberals are hypocrites who are too weak to protect America."
Palin isn't saying she'd convert terrorists. She's saying she'd waterboard them. She's saying liberals are lying, weak hypocrites that think gun free zone signs protect children from shooters. Again. Paraphrased. CS monitor.
"Too weak to protect America"? I've heard this kind of invective used before, and while I can see the specious reasoning behind it, it still kind of floors me whenever conservatives accuse others of being "weak." Conservatives of today basically go along with the same basic policies originally set under FDR and furthered under the Truman Doctrine. Prior to FDR, most conservatives were isolationists who bore no resemblance to the hawkish interventionists dominating conservatism nowadays. Were they "weak," too?
I know that conservatives always criticized FDR and Truman for "giving away" Eastern Europe, China, and North Korea (as if they were ours to give in the first place). The common view was that liberals were weak on Cuba and Vietnam as well.
But if we're going to criticize "weakness," at least let's be fair about it. I don't think conservatives should get a free pass on this issue, either. I recall that it was a Republican in office in 1973 when the Arab oil embargo and subsequent quadrupling of oil prices took place. This was a calculated act of hostility against America in retaliation over our aid to Israel (similar to the issue which the Japanese bombed us over in 1941), yet our "tough" President didn't do anything about it. He just let it happen.
In 1981, just after Reagan was inaugurated and the hostages in Iran were freed (after the terrorists proclaimed their intention to not release the hostages until Carter was out of office, pretty much clinching Reagan's victory; it told us which candidate/party the terrorists support), Reagan just let them get away with it. Worse still, he made more deals with them by trading arms for hostages. There's a real tough guy for ya. I don't recall that he retaliated for the 1983 Beirut bombing which killed hundreds of U.S. servicemen. About the same exact time, he decided to invade the superpower known as Grenada instead. And if he really thought that Cuba and Nicaragua were "threats" to the United States, why didn't he invade them too? Why would he pussy around with the Contras (who failed)? Was he too afraid and weak to invade any country that was stronger than Grenada?
Bush invaded Panama and liberated Kuwait, yet people thought Bush was the wimp and that Reagan was the tough guy. But even in the liberation of Kuwait, he stopped without finishing off the Hussein regime. If he was really that tough, he would have gone all the way in 1991 and spared his son the task of having to finish the job in 2003.
Under a Democratic Administration, America defeated Germany and Japan in less than four years (and frankly, the Axis was more powerful than we were at the start), yet a Republican Administration could not defeat much weaker Iraq or Afghanistan in a significantly longer period of time.
Overall, I think America's position of power and strength in the world (and our ability to defend ourselves) is owed more to the policies of Democratic administrations like FDR, Truman, and Wilson. The Republican Teddy Roosevelt might also deserve some credit from a certain viewpoint, but even he was a progressive. After WW2, American foreign policy was driven towards maintaining our hegemony and the world order which had been established. As a result, maintaining that world order has become equated with "defending America," but I would say that this has become a debatable point now. WW2 and the Cold War are in the past, and what may have been relevant to American security back then may not be the case nowadays.
I don't know that any of this has any bearing on the waterboarding comment or that liberals are somehow "too weak" to defend the country. I think the liberals' general tone has been to try to pick their battles and their enemies a little more carefully. I don't think liberals need to prove anything in the "toughness" department, especially since WW2 was presided over by liberal administrations, up to and including the use of atomic weapons, hardly the actions of "wimps."
Even liberals who are/were devout pacifists and supported the peace movement, they don't do so out of weakness, but out of a sense of principle and morality. Many of them are very religiously motivated towards non-violence, which is why such criticisms of "weakness" might seem incongruous in the context of "baptizing Christians" by waterboarding.
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