I also have to give McCain credit for his classy and gracious concession speech. He represented himself well.
YEEHAW!!!!!!!!!
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
HISTORY HAS BEEN MADE!!!!
WOOOOOHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!! I am so excited and proud right now. I can't believe that my generation was here to see the first black president voted into office. I feel hopeful and am so happy to be a part of history. My prayers are with Barack for his safety and wisdom as he leads our country. Can you imagine that women were not allowed to vote until 1920? African Americans were not allowed to vote until, what... something ridiculous like the 60's, because of skin color? Thank you Lord... that's all I can say.
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I'm not sure why I feel the need to post this but here goes. I can't help but feel a bit queezy (literally) after hearing the news a few moments ago that Barack Obama will be my next Commander in Chief. Nothing against him as a person or his skin color. It is hard for me to fathom the qualifications, or lack there of, that 2 years of Senate experience gives a man to now hold the most important job in the world. For all his flaws, and there are MANY, President Bush kept my family safe from the true evil in this world in a time when we needed saving; and I, for one, consider that his most important job. I can only hope that President Obama surrounds himself with an extremely knowledgable staff, a staff that will act as a voice of reason against some of his outrageous promises and positions. I believe, political party affiliation aside, the very fabric of American ideals may be at stake. No matter how much the world resents us for it, America needs to position itself strongly in every endeavour. We must continue to be active in a position of global security. It is our duty as the sole superpower in this world and I pray to God that President Obama understands this, or that his staff can make him understand this over the next few months.
Yes, this is a truely historical moment and I congratulate Obama on his success. I merely wish for him to "carry a big stick" as he treads lightly.
-Joel
Yes, Cha, renewed pride is the overriding emotion for me. I am once again able to say I am proud to say I am American. Just this "sea change" in itself is powerful for a country that has been so divided on so many counts. Think of all the younger generation being so engaged in the voting process - whether their vote was republican or democrat. How amazingly encouraging for our future! I am proud of this new generation! And, yes, riv, I agree that this is not a panacea - there is hard work ahead - and I think we would feel "queasy" for any change of presidents right now. It is a tricky time to be sure. And we need checks and balances more than ever. If we can hold the thought to "hang together" we will do our part. Would I say this if McCain had won? I probably would be voicing the same concerns as you, but for the sake of our country, yes, I would pray we hold the momentum of a country coming together - as both McCain and Obama have stated.
I'm not a wordy woman. I don't have a fancy way of stating things... but here we go. After surviving the Bush administration (talk about outrageous), and working hard to make our lives worth getting out of bed for, I feel a renewed sense of hope. I am aware that Obama is has a long road to travel, but he is very much aware of the distance he has to go. He has acknowledged it and reiterated it on several occasions. Obama, unlike many career politicians who slide in to power, will have to work his butt off to prove himself to our nation. Which is not a bad thing. Too many of our men in women in office take the blessing of their leadership positions too lightly because they have been there for years... jaded, filled with self importance, and accomplishing little for their people. Our President Elect is an intelligent and articulate man, who will have to learn, grow and work tirelessly to start towards a gradual change. It will take time, but I am excited for the melting pot of knowledge that he will surround himself with. I have every confidence that he is aware of his challenges, and it is for that very reason that he will have to surround himself with extremely knowledgeable people... and provide a much needed balance.
History truly HAS been made! Of course, despite the overwhelming sense of optimism that I'm now filled with, the fact remains that President Elect Obama WILL have a long road ahead of him as the leader of the "free world". I'd venture to guess that President of the United States of America is, perhaps, the most difficult "job" in the world. God only knows what challenges we will face as a country during the next four years, but, what is different for me this go around (after 8 very embarrassing and challenging years as a country) is that I literally DO feel hopeful. I feel optimistic. I feel a sense of pride that I haven't felt in a long long time. The icy walls of cynicism are already beginning to melt and Mr. Obama hasn't even been President Elect for a full week yet. I feel compelled, though, to respond to RIV's comments above, regarding the Commander in Chief position. Without a doubt, one of the biggest and most important responsibilities a President has is as our country's Commander in Chief. The security of our country is of the utmost importance--assuring the American way of life is no small responsibility. However, I must strongly...and I mean STRONGLY disagree with Riv's statements regarding President Bush. President Bush's policies, both domestically and abroad, have been a complete failure. As Commander in Chief, President Bush put American soldiers in harm's way for an immoral and poorly planned war with a sovereign nation (Iraq) based on very thin evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), and even thinner evidence that Iraq had ties to the devastation of 9/11. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians have been slaughtered by American missiles and smart bombs, and the death toll for American troops is in the neighborhood of 4,500. This unjust war has cost us billions of dollars and has done very little to ensure security. Of course, the major gaffe of the current administration (the Bush administration) was to take their attention off of Al Qaeda and allow American enemy number one, Osama Bin Laden, to escape and live to see another day to further plot attacks against American and her allies. What's interesting to note here, of course, is that one Barrack Obama had the gumption to vote against the invasion of Iraq. This can't even be refuted--his voting record clearly shows a "no" vote against invading Iraq. President Bush's cowboy "kick ass take names later" approach has weakened our standing in the international community, weakened alliances with valuable allies, and has mired us in a war with no clear exit strategy. This is, of course, all in addition to the loss of precious American lives--the men and women who volunteer to protect America. What breaks my heart is that the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq are pointless--it never had to happen in the first place. General Colin Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first half of Bush's first term, was quick to point out that an invasion of Iraq would be a mistake. So I guess it's not too ironic that General Powell actually endorsed Barrack Obama for president. I'm afraid that had Senator McCain (and his OUTRAGEOUS choice of a running mate...I mean, really??) been elected, the man who voted over 90% of the time with the worst president in the history of our country, our stay in Iraq would probably continue on for the next decade. I believe that President Obama will begin a troop withdrawal and re-allocation of forces to Afghanistan where the true threat lies--the Al Qaeda camps. Senator McCain's service to the United States can't be overlooked, but, we must also realize that just because he was soldier and a P.O.W, that doesn't make him a more qualified leader, nor Commander in Chief. President Obama is a intellectual, brilliant, and charismatic leader who will command respect with world leaders, and begin mending fences over seas. I firmly believe that President Obama WILL surround himself with brilliant cabinet members and will learn quickly on the job (as did JFK and Bill Clinton, two very young and "inexperienced" President Elects as well). True, the United States is the the leader in the world, but we cannot go it alone. Terrorism, as evidenced by Al Queda, is truly the work of rogue organizations. More than ever, it is important to work with the leadership of other countries and their intelligence agencies and outlets to track these groups down and destroy them. Invading sovereign nations and risking American lives based on thin and false intelligence is not the way to achieve security for America. The American stance that we are always right and that what we say goes (again, that Bush mentality) has done nothing but hurt us. After 9/ll Bush had the chance to unify the world, but instead, chose to divide it. His abject failure as President of the United States of America has made us the laughing stock of world superpowers (and no, we are not the "lone" superpower...tell that to China, who practically owns us now...another Bush failure. Thankfully, though, we now have a chance to crawl out from under this rock and establish ourselves once again as the country that world looks to as the world leader.
Nan - one of our checks and balances is gone with a highly liberal Congress/Senate and President. I say this not as a bitter republican, but as a statement of fact. As a country we need to be wary of any Congress/President having TOO easy a time passing legislature.
I agree and do hope that Obama can unite the country; it would be a wonderful thing to witness.
-Riv
First off, Cha, my apologies for hijacking your blog, but in the spirit of honesty I must correct some inaccuracies.
Anonymous, where do you get your information from? Sounds like sound bites from the evening news. When you make blanket statements like “President Bush's policies, both domestically and abroad, have been a complete failure”, it only enhances my beliefs that you truly do not understand about which you are blogging. When you say the Iraq war was a “poorly planned war.” Where do you derive this information from? Did you sit in on the planning meetings with the NSC? Where you there when General Tommy Franks and his staff planned out the 5 front invasion? It is described in detail in his interview with Knight Ridder Newspaper (http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-8188615_ITM). In it the General, commander of US Central Command (Middle East area of responsibility), stated the following, let me quote some of it for you.
“We would sit around and we would talk on the telephone and we would say: ‘What happens if the diplomacy is not successful in gaining control of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) in Iraq?’ Never a question about whether there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The intelligence, while not precise, was overwhelming. Still is to this day.”
“Intelligence information is much more often imprecise than it is precise. So the foundation on which to build the view on what was the situation with WMD came from the last Gulf War, it came from the son-in-law who gave information, went back and was executed in Iraq, it came from monumental reams of intercepted information, it came from penetrations of Iraq by Kurds with whom we talked, so Humint (human intelligence) sources. A huge volume of information that was never precise enough to say there are these tons of sarin, there are these barrels of this there…”
“We had a tremendous amount of information going back to 1991 that WMD were not only present but were being continually pursued by the (Iraqi) regime. So we said we will try diplomacy in order to gain disarmament of this country in accordance with Security Council resolutions that came at the end of the last Gulf War.”
“So what if the diplomacy doesn’t work? And if we have taken a policy decision that the way of the past will not be the way of the future, that is, if we believe he has WMD we will not tolerate it. If that decision is taken, and if diplomacy fails to gain desired result, then what one comes up with is the necessity of removing the regime…”
When it comes to world affairs, it is not always possible to wait for the end of one conflict to begin engagements in another, the intelligence was there, we tried to do it diplomatically, that failed.
I take offense to your use of the word “slaughtered”. If we wished to slaughter civilians we could have easily nuked the whole darn place and been done with it. You are very cavalier with your word choices. The US spends billions of dollars researching and manufacturing weapons that can fly through a pane of glass in an effort to be discriminate, not to slaughter civilians.
I am not here as a Bush loving, he can do no wrong, fanatic. I admit he has done wrong, but come on, the “worst president in the history of our country”. Are you truly that historically inept? Endeavor to learn something outside of your own life-span, please. Recency, partisanship and media bias aside, I’ll admit, he’s nowhere near the top of the list, but “worst”?
You also state that “Barrack Obama had the gumption to vote against the invasion of Iraq. This can't even be refuted--his voting record clearly shows a "no" vote against invading Iraq.” - This one is almost too easy. Are you kidding me? First off you misspelled his name, twice. I hope you were more careful in filling out your ballot sheet. Obama’s record shows nothing of the sort, he wasn’t even a Senator at the time of the 2nd session of the 107th Congress on 11 Oct 2002 when said vote took place. In fact, if he was in the Senate at the time, I can, with 96 or 97% accuracy, depending on the source you look at, say that Obama would have voted for the War in Iraq. 29 Democrats voted for the war, as opposed to 21 against it, and Barack Obama votes along party lines 97% of the time.
Again, you state “What breaks my heart is that the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq are pointless.” I would bet the soldiers you speak of, at least the vast majority of them, would not feel that their deaths were pointless. Nor do I think any of the Kurds, nor do most of the Iraqis for that matter think their deaths were pointless. Let’s get one fact straight, Saddam was by no means an innocent, peace loving bystander in all of this. He laughed at us and the UN when we imposed no-fly zones over his country. I was there. I heard daily intel reports of our planes being shot at and his planes violating the sanctions. He even poisoned 30,000 of his own countrymen in the 1980’s, invaded a sovereign country and ruled with an iron, Hitler-esque fist. The deaths of American Soldiers fighting for more than themselves and their country are never pointless.
Since you feel so highly of General Colin Powell’s opinion, let me share with you another quote from the General.
“It is an unfailingly effective applause line for critics of any U.S. administration to charge that the president has no vision for the world, that he has no strategy. Every trouble is attributed to this failing, as though the world would otherwise be perfectly accommodating to the U.S. purposes. Unfortunately, this criticism has come close to being true in some administration. But it is not true in the present one. President George W Bush does have a vision of a better world. And he also has a strategy for translating that vision into reality. I know – I was present at its creation.”
He continued to say: “This administration’s public pronouncements have been remarkably candid. They reflect the personality of the president himself, a man who, with great consistency, says what he means and means what he says. It is somewhat odd, therefore, to discover that our foreign policy strategy is so often misunderstood by both domestic and foreign observers. U.S. strategy is widely accused of being unilateralist by design. It isn’t. It is often accused of being imbalanced in favor of military methods. It isn’t. It is frequently described as being obsessed with terrorism and hence biased toward preemptive war on a global scale. It most certainly is not.”
Both of these quotes are from “Foreign Affairs”, vol. 83 No. 1 from Jan/Feb 2004, after the war with Iraq had already begun.
What do you mean “just because [McCain] was soldier and a P.O.W, that doesn't make him a more qualified leader, nor Commander in Chief.” It most certainly does, who are you kidding with this? And by the way, he was a sailor, not a soldier.
You say that Obama is a “charismatic leader”? When has he ever led anything? What about him will command respect with world leaders; his wealth of Senate experience?
I feel sorry for Michelle Obama if you are comparing Barack to JFK and Clinton, yes, two young, inexperienced presidents, also two who had infidelity problems.
“After 9/ll Bush had the chance to unify the world, but instead, chose to divide it.” At its height, Operation Iraqi Freedom had 34 countries participating, as of 8/08 it had 19 countries. Those 19 are active with troops on the ground; that number does not count the ones we receive supplies/money from which would add many more to the list. So we are allied with many other countries across the world. If you choose to only listen to the nightly news media you would think otherwise though, and I gather you do.
I would argue that where it counts, as a world leader in action as well as “by-the-numbers” we are the sole super power in the world. When was the last time you saw China using their vast man-power or resources or wealth to help out around the globe? In the Sudan? Haiti? Iraq? Palestine? Cambodia? South Africa? Somalia? … Never.
As I step down off my soap box I wish to say that I think Barack Obama has the potential to be a great president, and I may have even voted for him if it were 2012 or 2016; but as it stands, he was just too wet behind the ears for my vote. No matter how much, if any, I may hate Bush, it doesn’t change that fact. The vote has been cast though, and Obama is the President Elect. As is the case with every president, I will serve and obey his lawful commands, and I will respect him, but not because I have to as a military member, but hopefully because he has earned it (I’ll let you know).
-Riv
I suppose this is why we all have the right and the blessing to cast our own votes. :).... Good for us I say... Life looks very different based on where you are standing.... I don't see any mind changing happening here. Let's call it done.
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