Barack Obama has had many defining moments as U.S. president. The death of Osama bin Laden may become the most significant for him politically.
Obama, a Democrat, announced late on Sunday that U.S. forces had killed the al Qaeda leader and recovered his body. The death handed Obama a major national security victory just as he begins campaigning for re-election in 2012.
Obama and his people should get some of the credit for this, as should President Bush's administration. But most deserving of praise are our intelligence and military communities that kept working on getting bin Laden through both administrations. They're the reason we're still a superpower, and if we're going to be attacked as a superpower, we'd better be prepared like one. Our current leaders can talk about "America's decline" all they want to as long as they screw up our military readiness and intelligence capabilities and thereby hasten the decline.
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If we're attacked because we're a superpower, maybe we ought to reconsider whether we want to be one.
Harl, when your the top dog there will always be challengers, it is an expected law of nature. I much prefer being the top dog having a challenge now and then as opposed to being number 2 or 3 and being rolled right over.
There has never been a more free society on the face of the Earth than this one. I would hate to give that up.
Let me get this straight, Tim. You'd prefer to be attacked occasionally just so you can have bragging rights?
Other than the military budget ruining our economy, what real advantage to we enjoy by being the only military superpower?
Economically, we may soon be trailing China, which wastes far less money on its military and tends to stay out of other countries' wars.
Once again you misinterpret Littlejohn. It's not about bragging rights, the leader of the pack ALWAYS get's challenged, whether it's dogs or people or nations. It's about freedom. Would you like to live under Chinese or Russian rule? Would your quality of life improve?
As to military spending, you subscribe to this fantasy theory that if we simply stopped the enormous military spending that the money would then actually be put to good use, which is laughable at best. Is there waste and worthless endeavors better left unspent? Of course, but remaining the worlds' superpower is paramount to maintaining the way of life we've come to enjoy.
Now if we could just stop the democrats from their quest for economic suicide we'd be back on track.
They're pretty free in Denmark. The folks at heritage.org rank Denmark as number 8 in the world. The US is ranked 9. The top 7 are Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada, and Ireland.
If you back out the military expenditures from the GNP, on a per-capita basis, they're doing as well economically as us. They export more food than they import, which is no longer true of the US, and they export more energy than they import, which hasn't been true of the US for a long time. People have an average lifespan of 78 years in both countries, and they have infant mortality of 4% versus 6% here.
In what way do we figure we rank "number one", other than militarism? And how many of our neighbors' kids do we want to kill in order to call ourselves number one?
Tim, in case you slept through the 1990's, Bill Clinton turned the deficit into a surplus primarily by cutting military spending. There's no fantasy involved. We tried it; it worked.
And what's you obsession with being top dog? Who cares? A large standing army is like an erect phallus: It can ensure domestic tranquility or it can tempt one into foolish foreign entanglements. I wish I could remember who first said that, but I'm too lazy to Google it.
I think most Americans seriously overestimate our internal freedoms while underestimating that of other countries. And using comparisons like GNP leaves out a lot of important factors that should be considered when ranking one
"People have an average lifespan of 78 years in both countries, and they have infant mortality of 4% versus 6% here. " first, they use life exptency at birth which distorts this number immensly. They use it to show this to be the problem for Social Security and Medicare when in reality they were designed to fail.
"Bill Clinton turned the deficit into a surplus primarily by cutting military spending. There
Bill, the life expectancy numbers are from the CIA World Factbook. They don't give rat's ass about social security and medicare, they care about geography.
I'm not kidding about Ireland; I'm just reporting what The Heritage Foundation says. Perhaps you are confusing conditions in Belfast (which is part of the UK of GB and NI) with conditions in Ireland?
I suspect more people want Denmark than want Indiana.
Yes, Singapore has strong property rights; would you want tourists to empty the holding tanks from their RVs on the street in front of your home?
This isn't the same country it used to be. We used to see movies where the German secret police asked drivers for papers. These days, our own police don't just ask for papers, they fondle your testicles.
I used to have a housemate from Uganda. He told me of police breaking down doors in the middle of the night, and I was horrified; today, our police do that all the time. He told me of people being picked up, denied lawyers, never seen again, and I was aghast. We have people in Gitmo who've been there for the better part of a decade without being charged with a crime, without allowed a lawyer, without a bail hearing.
Emily Litella spoke in the 1980s about freeing Soviet Jewelry, but today, an Amish man cannot attend a family funeral in Canada because he doesn't have a passport with a photograph.
William, you're splitting hairs. I'm talking about the budget deficit, not the national debt. That is, I'm using the term the way most people use it.
Are you actually saying the deficit did not hit record highs under Reagan and Bush II, and decreased dramatically during the Clinton years? Because if you're saying that, you're either confused or you're trying to confuse others.
Do you think our giant military is cheap to maintain? That it has little effect on our budget?
LIttlejohn: "William, you
Littlejohn,
While I'll agree that a lot of people seem to confuse debt (annual) and deficit (aggregate), that's no excuse for intelligent people to do so. Bill had it right when he said there was no surplus. On the other hand, you stated "Bill Clinton turned the deficit into a surplus..." That is factually inaccurate, and William called you on it.
Clinton's only bragging rights are being able to say "Sure I went into debt, but less debt than the previous guys." Not really much to brag about there.