[quote="DGFone"]No personal offence, but I find Azdgari's arguments very ill-informed. Here's why:[/quote]
Touché, my partner in crime!
[quote="Azdgari"] "The damage done to Al Qaeda by the Obama administration represents America’s greatest national security success since the fall of the Soviet Union and the peaceful integration of Eastern European countries in the 1990s." - Americanprogress.org. Pretty much only one Al-Qaeda leader remains, the military under Obama has eliminated all other major Al Qaeda players. That in itself is a remarkable legacy.[/quote]
[quote]Not really: Bush
fights back invades after 9/11, and Obama finishes the job, therefore taking all the credit. Bush deserves the real credit, because all Obama did was order the last mission that actually got Osama. Bush actually started the search. If we wen't in the Middle East already, Osama would still be around. Say you are building a tower: Bush starts and gets to the second to last floor. Obama takes over and completes the last two floors. Clearly he built the entire tower! Not quite...[/quote]
He started the job by completely botching it. First of all, do you think the Iraq was moral or a success? If you answer yes, we will have to disagree. I believe, as do many, it was a war started for unethical and inaccurate reasons (WMD's that did not exist) whose costs in finance and lives (both american and Iraqi) and negligible payoff (toppling of a regime that did not end up presenting a national security threat) are cause to call it an abominable failure. As for the war in Afghanistan, your analogy is inaccurate. If anything, it's 50/50, as they both spent four years on it. The military under Obama, at any rate, was much more effective and gutsy in drone striking Pakistan with more purpose. In any event, that was just to quell the inevitable "Obama has done nothing to fight terrorists." argument. I don't have enough military knowledge to say who was more accomplished in middle east militaristically. Neither, I suspect, do you, though I suppose I could be wrong...
[quote="Azdgari"]
Also, if Obamacare is eliminated, working class people out of college like my brother will be forced out of apartments back home, seeing as most low end jobs do not offer health care and the cost of it is too high to allow young people to also pay rent. Before someone says "well don't make it mandatory", just don't say that. I'm a perfectly healthy, athletic teenager who recently spent 2 months in the hospital and racked up over $750,000 in medical bills. If I didn't have insurance, my life and my family's life would be destroyed. [/quote] [quote]If Obamacare was in place, I would be dead. THANK YOU. 2 months in the hospital? Try 8 years of fighting back against a disease that took you right up to death's door. [/quote]
I have yet to understand exactly what happened with you and how it reflects dysfunction in the healthcare system. Can you PM me or perhaps link me to where you explained? Sorry. ;3
[quote="Azdgari"]Now that he has ended the Iraq war (like he promised) and has accomplished most of what America needs done in terms of foreign policy, he can focus on the economy.[/quote]
[quote]With everything war related, all Obama did was the clean up. The real work was done in the first half- aka, the Bush years. That's when we swept away Saddam, made the Taliban run, and finally allowed those nations to start getting around to fixing themselves. All Obama had to do was continue the plan and leave as scheduled. See the tower analogy for the first part. [/quote]
Exactly, he cleaned up. "Swept away Saddam?" Ummm, what? At the cost of thousands and thousands of lives and nearly a trillion dollars he took down a regime that ended up being no threat to the USA. He set up a puppet democracy that's failing, and left all the US troops out to dry in Iraq for the next president with no mind to get them out. Great work. Made the Taliban run? In what the heck way did he do that? The Taliban were not (and, unfortunately, are not) running, and to say that represents a complete lack of knowledge of the war over there, or perhaps you just used a poor metaphor, in which case ignore the following explanation. The Taliban is not a cohesive army that can "retreat." The Taliban presence is in every village in Afghanistan. The extent to which that presence coerces villagers into climbing up the mountain, shooting off twenty rounds at a US base, and then climbing back down to pick up their $1 pay and use that to buy food for their family, that is the Taliban. And to say that Afghanistan is fixing itself, again, is just not accurate. If they ever accept democracy, which is extremely unlikely given their history and their native hate for rule induced by occupiers, aka us, it will be a long, long time from now. And what place does the United States have forcing our way of life on other people anyway? If they choose to be a backwards country, it's not our business to go and be their big brother. We don't have the moral obligation and we sure as hell don't have the means to.
[quote="Azdgari"]In the coming term, Obama will have to focus on the economy.[/quote]
[quote]So changing a nation full of individuals into a statistic will save the economy? I would much rather have the option to choose for myself than have some who "cares for me" (There is no possible way that they can) choose my life for me. I want to live as a free person, not as a slave. This means going republican, because they want us to choose for ourselves instead of deciding what is best for us.[/quote]
Again, I don't get what you're arguing. From that logic shouldn't we just have no government? And... if you want people to choose their own lives, why do you support a presidential candidate against gay marriage?
[quote="Azdgari"]It's time for America to move past bigotry and religious ignorance into an age of freedom and tolerance.[/quote]
[quote]You do know that no non-religious president will ever be voted in? It's easy to on the internet that religious people are morons, but it's those morons who will be deciding your future for you...[/quote]
I didn't say I wanted a non religious president, I said I wanted a president who wasn't ignorant and intolerant because his religion (may or may not have) dictated it. Is a president's religion automatically our religion? Is America a theocracy where only Christianity is allowed?
I don't think all religious people are morons. I just don't think it should be an excuse for intolerance. And now the Catholic church is denouncing nuns because they spend too much time helping the poor and not enough protesting gay marriage. Jesus would be proud.
Perhaps we should get off of George Bush, lovely as the topic is, and back to Romney and Obama's respective merits and candidates? I didn't mean to derail us like that.
@Nicholas, point taken. Thanks for the perspective. +1
@Woeler: Easy tiger. No need to be hostile, we're just having a debate. We don't want to have a moderator sweep in and shut this down do we? I'd like to continue sparring with DF--I'm genuinely interested in his perspective. C:
@moderators: chillax. we got this. let the boys play.
@people that don't like gay marriage

#howwillyoulookinfiftyyears