Farehnheit 9/11

[Yourstranger13]

I actually went and saw the movie. I thought it might be interesting to see the way he protryed everyhting, and just how bias it would be. Being only sixteen I've never been very political so I dont have much of a opinion on the Bush Adminastration. Walking out of the theather without prior knowlegde of what to expect when I sat down, I would have decided the entire adminastration had been a scandle and I would join a group of "Bush Haters". Gladly I know better. I do agree the controversy with everything that he does draws a crowd. But he has a way of showing things in a manner that appeals to the consciences of the veiwers and makes it easier for him to suck more people in to his opinions. I still dont have a solid idea on what I think of the government right now, but I do find it enthraling how easy it is to get people to listen and agree with you.

[Skar]

That's a very salient point.  It is terribly easy to get people to agree with you if you appeal to their emotions and they tend not to think for themselves in the first place.   In all the many political discussions I've had since my return I've heard many of the same lines about Bush and the war in Iraq.

"I don't like Bush because he thinks he's such a Lone Ranger."

"There were no WMD in Iraq so what was his REAL reason for the war?"

Arguments of this nature are specious in the extreme yet only a very few seem to see it right off the bat.  Michael Moore and his ilk assume that Americans, as a general rule, are stupid.  Most of the mainstream media does as well, best recent example is the memo scandal. Dan Rather apparently really thought no one would notice the obvious evidence of forgery.   I disagree and think that Americans, as a general rule, are pretty smart. But then I have to reconcile this with the fact that America is the birth place of the ravening moron that is reality TV.  The idiot box is making idiots out of Americans.

Michael Moore and the mainstream liberal media take advantage of the fact that it's much easier to appeal to emotion than reason (since reason takes effort on the part of the targeted) and say things designed to give the listeners a warm fuzzy but which, if you carry it to a logical conclusion, are just stupid.   For instance, I can't keep track of the number of times I've heard impassioned liberals say that "war is bad"  No kidding.  The next logical step in that chain of thought is the realization that, as bad as war is, there are worse things.  Most Americans never seem to take that next step, though they could if they cared to make the effort.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

while I agree with you generally, Skar, I have a couple nits to pick.  Warning folks, this is gonna be very political, and touch on certain issues that have really ticked some people off earlier. Don't read it if you're going to take it personally.

Ok, moving ahead.

1) the war is bad part. Yes, there are worse things, but how the heirarchy is structured is very debatable. For instance, I think going in, blowing up things in a country, capturing their leader, and then leaving it in pretty much the same state is worse than not going to war int he first place. No, this isn't something that can be argued rationally, but I still believe we haven't improved things over there -- it looks to me the next leader, as soon as there's no western military to hold things down, wiill be just as bad. Or will leave it in a state of anarchy like Afghanistan. (how many leaders did they have within the first 6 months after we started dropping bombs?)

2) the no WMDs thing. Maybe that was his real reason for going to war. If so, then he got bad info. (Info that I never believed in the first place, but it's true that I could never have had all the details on the intelligence, if only for security reasons, so maybe there's something more convincing in the classified stuff). And no one was really held accountable for that bad info. Is that who I want leading the free world? In my opinion? Not really. When the president is either someone who starts wars without provokation or doesn't hold anyone accountable for mis-judging something so serious, well, I don't have a lot of trust in his leadership ability.

3) liberal media: there's a lot of VERY conservative media out there too. (Fox News, anyone?) that uses the exact same tactics you describe. I'm not exonerating either side, but let's avoid putting the "mainstream media" on one political side or the other, because at best, the situation is much more murky than that. Remember when Clinton was impeached? Remember Hillary's response? There was a "vast right-wing conspiracy." Admitedly, that sounds insane and paranoic and probably has no basis. I only bring it up to show that while Conservatives clearly think the media isn't on their side, the liberals don't think they have a strong ally there either.


</flame protection>

At least I can agree with you, without reservation, that MIchael Moore isn't presenting anything like objective fact.

[EUOL]

Heh.  Nobody can really chastise you for spam posting, SE.  Not when you consistently give us massive, five-paragraph posts.

I'd like to note something about point one.  I disagree that things are worse off there now than before.  I really think it's too soon to tell.  

Take Korea.  After we came in and took over, I believe things in North Korea were actually better for a time, because of the structure and order a Communist society produces.  There was a lot of poverty and chaos in Korea for about twenty years, during which time several gangster-like dictators got control of the government and (despite our best efforts) extorted and murdered.

However, look at North and South Korea now.  South Korea has a thriving economy and a stable government with a real democracy.  It's a free society, and is actually growing very prosperous.  North Korea is completely in the pits.  Its leaders have gotten worse and worse, and its people starve more and more.

Our belief in a nation's right to rule itself keeps us from taking over TOO much.  However, our desire to help gets us in trouble with people who think that we're interfering.  It's a position that doesn't earn us much love, but it has done amazing things for South Korea.  The more orderly communist regime proved more corrupt because of its inability to be flexible and change.

I expect Iraq will be the same for a period of years, perhaps decades.  People will remember the old times, when Saddam was in control, and think they were better.  For many of them, they might have been.  However, in the very long run, life will be better there.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

yes, that's the most tenuous position in my argrument. I'm sort of a pessimist, but I just see what we've done in the middle east in the past, and it mostly has turned out very poorly in the last century, so I extend that trend. I could be proven wrong, but i'm not very hopeful for it.

[Skar]

Skar's reply to SE's reply.

1: Yes, invading a country, capturing its leader and then leaving would have been very bad.  Fortunately that is not what we are doing in Iraq so I fail to see your point, please elaborate.  Having served in Baghdad during and after the invasion I can argue rationally that all, and I do mean "all" the people that I met were very glad the U.S. had come to town.  I wasn't one of the GIs that only gets to meet pet Iraqis in the conference room either.  I conducted intelligence operations in search of the "Playing Card" Iraqis all over the city in a six man team in two vehicles.  I'm sure I couldn't make that claim had I stayed longer, the "all" part anyway, but generally the Iraqis disagree with you about America's involvement being bad for them.  

As for Afghanistan I just spent a year there and your description of it as being in a state of anarchy is far wide of the mark.  I did substantially the same thing in Afghanistan as I did in Iraq but with Special Forces teams.  I can say with authority that the country is not in a state of anarchy.  It's certainly not midwest America but things are coming under control.  The last six months I was there all of the operations I went on were in cooperation with the Afghan National Army and in a couple they provided the main impetus.  What little you do hear about Afghanistan now in the press, having been overshadowed by Iraq, is of the sensationalist, emotional appeal variety, but more on that later.

2:  So you weren't conviced by the evidence for WMD you saw in the news.  I was, and still am, we gave him a good nine months to move and/or destroy the stuff after all. But no debate possible there.  

However, you do make a valid point that a leader who doesn't hold people accountable for doing a bad job, especially on something so important, is not a good leader.  I agree with you.  I don't agree, however, that Bush isn't holding people accountable. I think the shakeup in the intelligence community over 9/11 will correct alot of the same problems that led to any bad intelligence work on WMD in Iraq.  To stir that pot some more just to look like he was doing something about the WMD thing in Iraq would be even worse leadership on Bush's part.  

On top of that, being familiar with the intelligence community and process I don't think anyone did anything wrong.  Eight years of touchy feely politics severely restricted our intelligence gathering capabilities.  You have to make calls on what information you have and we had no one on the ground, we had to work with what we had.  Again, tossing out some poor analyst as a scapegoat in order to look like you're doing something about the Iraq WMD issue would also be bad leadership.

3:I agree that all mainstream media uses the tactics I decried.  Mucho apologies for making a faulty statement.  To imply however, that Fox News (the only example I've ever heard anyone give of conservative mainstream media) constitutes "...a lot of VERY conservative media.." is stretching it a bit.  In the realm of opinion, I see FOX as weaving back and forth across the center line rather than very conservative.  I like to think that I analyze what reporters say through a lens of logic and experience and therefore can tell when something is obviously slanted.  However, I think you probably do the same thing.  So where does that leave us?   I don't know.  

I had regular contact with intelligence professionals operating in Iraq during my entire tour in Afghanistan and they all say the same thing:  What gets reported in the news about events there paints a very onesided and misleading picture of the situation.  One guy claimed that he had seen a report on three bombings that sounded like it had happened in three separate towns.  The reporter used three different names for the same general area, like talking about events that happened in Sandy, Midvale and Murray as though they were in fact in Provo, Salt Lake and Brigham City.  The bombs were actually all part of the same event.  That's deliberately misleading in order to increase the sensation of the report.  Now, the guy couldn't remember what channel he'd seen that on so take it with a grain of salt.  Dan Rather's scot-free escape from the memo incident is evidence of at least CBS's wild leaning and the big names all tend to agree with one another, FOX being an occasional exception.  Hillary Clinton spouting off about a "vast right-wing conspiracy" is not evidence the liberals in general don't think they have an ally in the media.  I mean, really...

Anyway, having ended with pure opinion, I'll quit now.  

[stacer]

Skar, thanks for the personal view of things over there. I tend not to trust what I hear from news, and I guess I'm not involved politically enough to research it out, but it's very interesting to hear it from someone who's been there first-hand.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I've no inclination to argue all of this with you, Skar, since you obviously think that your personal experience is indicative of everything despite reliable reports that, while not completly contrary, do make the situation less solid than you portray it.

There is a lot of fighting still going on in Iraq. The Afghanistan govt, in my opinion, cannot be considered stable if leaders are assassinated every few weeks. Units in the military working with US units can be expected to give a display of stability, even if they're not playing an act. They're military, they know what their job is.

People who should have known better were trusting this information that came from the few nameless analysts who were canned. Colin Powell himself knew enough about it to go in front of the ENTIRE PLANET and share some of it. Did he not have enough information to be an expert on it? Then it was deceitful for him to portray himself as such. Did he know exactly how reliable that info was and know it was spotty? Then he was carrying out a mission of deceit. It's a very ugly situation either way, and does not reflect administration responsibility for what they're doing.

And finally the media. I did not claim that Fox News, by itself, constitutes large chunk of the media. I used it as an example to show that there are respected and well known, and widely viewed media outlets that are conservative. As for them looking at one side or the other, this too applies to the "liberal" media as well.

[Fellfrosch]

OK, yay, political discussion, but first things first: Skar's back! Glad to have you with us, Skar, and I hope you'll be here for a while. We need to throw you a party.

[42]

Just to add more to the fire. Micheal Moore is speaking at UVSC this month. It's caused quite the uproar. Personally, I think it was a bad business decision on the part of the student body councel, who should have been tuned in enough to the uber-conservative culture of Utah Valley to know that UVSC donors wouldn't support their decision.

If they wanted a liberal-leaning speaker, they could have easily found a less pricey, less controvertial speaker.

[Spriggan]

Just to add more to the fire. Micheal Moore is speaking at UVSC this month.

Humm, SE are your ninja monkeys for hire?


Anyway I can see it, UVSC revals in being the Anit-BYU, the doners may not like it but I'm sure the students are loveing it.  Moore is such a celeberty now that more people are going to see him then to listen to him.

[42]

Actually, when I went to UVSC, I found the students there to be more conservative than the ones at BYU. Mostly because the students at UVSC are primarily from Utah where the students at BYU are mostly from other states.

Some students are loving that Moore is coming to UVSC, there is a small, but very vocal group of liberals at UVSC. However, a larger group of conservatives has already started protesting in retaliation. 20,000 people signed a petition to have the offer for Moore's speaking engagement recended.

Course now UVSC is holding hearings to decided if Moore will actually come. And to supposedly correct the situation, Sean Hannity is coming next month.

It kind of comes down to what it means to have an "open mind." Does having an open mind mean you have to listen to everything anyone spews out?

[Spriggan]

I wouldn't minde either moore or hannety speaking if they waved their speaking fees, I realy don't beleave public moneys should be spent on political things like this.  Realy, UVSC obviously has more important things to spend their cash on.

[42]

Hannety is waiving his speaking fee of 100 grand, but Moore is charging 50 grand. Both are also have travel and lodging expenses paid for them.

Then there are the millions of dollars in donations being withdrawn if Moore speaks, and the possibility of the State legislator denying funds to UVSC. I figure the donors can do what they want. The legislators I think are acting inappropriately.

O yes, and there has been a call to have the UVSC student body presidency canned.

Ah, the joy of watching extremists collide. UVSC should offer free popcorn to whole community.

[Spriggan]

Moore just got cancled from speaking from a WV college because legislatiors (republican ones) said the school should not be paying  him (30 grand in this case).  But Moore said he was going to the campus wheither or not they let him speak.