Reasons to agree:
%
%- We just want to create a good place for our people to live. We don't need anything more than that.
America should just be a good republic, and not try to be an empire
Help me populate the fields below! Just leave a comment, and I'll add it to the debate
The cost of on-the-job training
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29685.html
During the presidential campaign, many Americans thought that Barack
Obama's lack of leadership experience would not prevent him from being
an effective president. His eloquence, his insistence that, yes, he
could solve any problem and his image, so artfully crafted by his
advertising team, led by David Axelrod, convinced many that hope could
trump demonstrated ability. It has not. Nowhere is the evidence more
apparent than in his mismanagement of the conflict in Afghanistan.
In March, not long after taking office, President Obama explained his
convictions regarding the conflict. He charged that "the terrorists
who planned and supported the Sept. 11 attacks are in Pakistan and
Afghanistan." Further, "if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban,
that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as
many of our people as they possibly can." And he concluded: "To
succeed, we and our friends and allies must reverse the Taliban's
gains and promote a more capable and accountable Afghan government."
What followed this bold and definitive goal was the classic failing of
people without real leadership experience: the inability to do what is
necessary to achieve one's objective.
The president refused to focus on what was most important. He took on
so many tasks that he underinvested in the most critical ones. The
restructuring of the entire health care system and his cap-and-trade
proposal eclipsed the economy and the war. Investor Warren Buffett,
the "sage of Omaha," counseled him against such a foolhardy agenda,
but Buffett's wisdom was no match for the heady prospect of
all-encompassing change.
So it was that in the first 100 days after his appointment in June of
Gen. Stanley McChrystal as commander of U.S. and NATO forces in
Afghanistan, Obama met with the general only once. After the press
took note of it, the president squeezed in a mere 25 minutes for
McChrystal when he was in Copenhagen to pitch Chicago's Olympics bid.
In the annals of American history, it is certain that no wartime
president has ever spent less time with his generals than Obama has.
A full year after being elected, Obama still does not have a strategy
for Afghanistan. His apologists explain that rather than rush a
decision, it is better to get it right. But at some point,
deliberation, if it goes on too long, becomes indecision. It is fair
to ask, What has he been doing for the past 12 months that took
precedence over his responsibility for our soldiers?
The answer is that he made 30 or more campaign trips for the
Democratic Party and its candidates, including five events for
defeated New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine alone. He repeatedly traveled
around the country to keynote campaign-style town hall meetings that
were carefully choreographed by his communications advisers. He
appears to want to do what he knows best: campaign, rather than engage
in what he was elected to do — lead and govern.
While he was busy campaigning in the U.S., the president ignored the
election in Afghanistan and took wholly inadequate measures to ensure
a valid outcome, even as he must have known that a legitimate
government was essential to our success. Because Obama left so
critical a matter to chance, we are left with a fraudulently elected
regime, which is accused of rampant corruption. Thus, the prospects
for our success have been greatly diminished.
With the McChrystal report in his hands since August, the president
has finally been spending more time in the situation room. Surely his
deliberations have not been speeded by the presence of Axelrod, the
president's campaign adman. Polls, politics and perspectives on what
the TV networks may think have no place at the national security
table. Communications staff should be informed of security decisions
after they are made, not invited to be a party to them.
During my career in business and government, and in running the
Olympics, I made many instructive mistakes and learned the lessons
that come with experience. Obama is making those mistakes in his first
real leadership position, and because that position is president of
the United States, the consequences of his mistakes are sobering. The
lives of our soldiers, the war against violent jihadism and the future
of millions of Afghans are in the balance.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was a 2008 Republican
presidential candidate.
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Equality
The numbering system below describes a system that scores groups of people within a range of 1 to 10 by how much they value equality.
- These people undervalue equality. People who value equality at a 1, do not value equality very much. These people are willing to accept inhuman, or even unnatural cruelty to others, or specific groups of people. They do not value all life equally. People from their group (family, race, nationality) are acceptable, however they give little or no concern to those from other groups, or actively seek to harm those from other groups.
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- These people over value equality. Someone who overvalues an otherwise positive value like equality would be willing to sacrifice other good values in order to satisfy equality. These people not only are willing to steel from Peter to give to Paul, but are willing to trample all over such concepts as "freedom of choice", the "law of the harvest", justice, or reasonable application of mercy in order to ensure that Peter does not have anything more than Paul. An example of someone who is overly concerned with equality hate the strong, powerful, or beautiful. These people are not just concerned about equality of opportunity, but also equality of outcome. They are willing to sacrifice freedom, and require massive amounts of power in order to guarantee the outcome that they see fit. They don't care if anyone is happy, just that no one is more happy than others. They are so concerned with equality, that they can not accept that truly evil might be sad, or noble people to experience any happiness. They feel bad for Hitler. These people would say that no tradition, no norm, no action is wrong, or worse than other actions. It is wrong to say that someone is bad, and another person is good. We are all equal, and therefore everyone can be whatever they want as long as it is not better than someone else.
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