I don't believe it

[Shelby07]

Your link, a response by Guillermo Christenson, is interesting.
I only have one question...who the hell is Guillermo Christenson?

Paul Pillar is a known entity. His position, and expertise, is well known and heavily documented. I never heard of the other guy.

I suppose if you are willing to believe every article, by any person, in response to things they may or may not know about, well, I can see how all this confuses you.

This is along the same lines as the Retired Generals who served in Iraq, who came out against how rummy was handeling the whole thing. Fox produced their usual "foxperts" (people who are presented as experts on fox, who actually have no direct knowledge of what they speak), who said that those Generals who had actually had their boots on the ground in Iraq, were just disgruntled workers, and the fox-faithful ate it up.
Now we all know that those Generals know more of what was really going on than some idiot talking heads on fox. But, the more those "foxperts" and the neocons repeated the White House talking points, the more the sheeple believed that they were right.

OK. Bad example. I'll give you that. My point, not very well made, was that Pillar has his critics. He has openly criticized Bush and his policies since the beginning of the administration. It is fairly well known that he resents the fact that Bush and the rest of the intelligence community in this country, and indeed around the world, didn't agree with his assessment. My biggest problem with Pillar is that he believes the way to resolve disagreements with terrorists is to negotiate,. While I would love to believe that, I just can't. I don't believe that negotiations would have any lasting effect. I truly believe that the people we are fighting have no other agenda than to disrupt our society and kill as many of us as they can. They have nothing other than their religious beliefs to fight for and martyrdom, for them, is an honor, not a tragedy. The attempt in NY to blow up the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, and the plot that was unfolding to blow up 9 or 10 aircraft over the Atlantic supports that. And, of course, the attack on the WTC was completely unprovoked.

I am not a war monger. I would love to see this situation go away tomorrow and have our troops come home. Who wouldn't? But a quick withdrawl, in my opinion, would show our enemies that we can be beaten into submission, and would show our allies that we don't have the conviction to stay until the job is done. That, in my opinion, would be disasterous for the future security of our country. I believe the hate these people have for us is going to be around for a long, long time and we will have to continue to fight it far into the future.

One big reason that I don't feel comfortable with democratic leadership is their lack of consistency and conviction. The democratic party, in my opinion, create policy by bending to the poll of the day. They change their position quite frequently, depending on what is popular. Although this may seem like a good idea on the surface, the truth is that our government is a commonwealth, not a democracy. as I am sure you know. In a commonwealth, the people's responsibility is to vote for representatives to make the decisions and set policy that's best for the country, not to listen to the poll of the day and react. As you know, polls change weekly and I don't believe that changing our direction on a regular basis is the way that the country should be run.

Let me ask these questions, which might help me understand more where the democrats are coming from. What would the democrat's ideal resolution in Iraq be? What do they think the results would be if we pulled out of Iraq in the next 6 months or so? What is their plan for dealing with the threat from Iran and Korea? Going forward, what would they do to keep us safe from future attacks? Would their policy be proactive or reactive? Perhaps if I could get answers to those questions I could feel more comfortable with a democratic leadership, but honestly, just hearing that it's time for a change without knowing what that change would be leaves me cold.