<p>Welcome to UVA! My name is Eugene Resnick and I serve on the Executive Board of the University Democrats! I'd love to welcome you to UVA, and to encourage you to get politically involved once you get on Grounds. Dont forget to join the University Democrats, UVA's largest and most powerful student organization. Friend me on Facebook and join the University Democrats Facebook group! We will be at the activities fair in August so don't forget to stop by! See you all in August!</p>
<p>If you have any questions about the University Democrats, politics on Grounds, or general student organizations, feel free to post them up and i will attempt to answer all. Thanks!</p>
<p>Wow......Democrats are not Godless......making God a Republican is sacreligious. Dirty/hippies? Are you in 2007 or 1967? Reality check. Its ok if all the Republican candidates are old white men, thats fine. Its ok that only 28% of Americans today identify as Republican white 40% identify as Democrat, proudly. Support terrorism? Wow...my relatives live in Israel, i was just there 3 months ago...I dont think someone in rural Virginia knows a thing about terrorism to speak about it, plus, i live in New York City. Thanks. I experienced it first hand. Reality check again.</p>
<p>hahahaha, so i like how you get so upset at and defend an extremly steriotypical and (I hope) joking post on Democrats by a random poster by making an extremly steriotypical statement about the other side</p>
<p>Explain yourself. I'm not a Republican, but I'm starting to agree--in some cases--with all the "coward" criticisms the right has thrown towards Democrats. Especially with all this funding nonsense. We have to fund those troops, and the sooner the better. All this "playing chicken" nonsense doesn't help anyone and it could potentially be disastrous.</p>
<p>Should we be trying our damnedest to get out of Iraq? Yes, we most certainly should, but are the politicians really so dense as to think this is merely a question of "staying the course," propositioned by idiotic Republicans and "cutting and running," proposed by the idiotic Democrats? God forbid we actually try some other options. God forbid we actually try to negotiate with the various players in the region to establish some kind of stability in Iraq. I'm well aware that such actions may not solve a thing, but is the possibility of failure ever an excuse not to even try? Particularly when the two courses of action being pushed by our own politicians are both doomed to failure?</p>
<p>Troop safety is number 1 priority. The Republican congress in 2003-2006 did not equip the troops enough. The Democrats are against sending soldiers to fight if they are ill-equiped. How is that cowardly? </p>
<p>We need to get out of Iraq as soon as possible because our presence there is actually breeding terrorists every day. They hate us more and more every day. What Nancy Pelosi did, which was to actually talk to Syria, instead of condemn them uselessly all the time was right. Thats what we need to do. We need to understand people, nations, cultures, ideologies, before we get involved in a mess. Our foreign policy was headed by a man (Bush) who didnt even know there were three sects of Iraqis in Iraq at the time of the invasion! (Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds) I hope you find that absurd because that is the core of our problems. It is our involvement in places without even understanding the inner politics, cultural systems, etc. We just go to "spread freedom and democracy" which is the most ridiculous thing ever. Most Islamic countries cannot function under a Western system without radical cultural changes. These countries are theocracies and dictatorships. Its not like shifting from Communism to Capitalism. And even that has proven to be very hard especially for Russia. </p>
<p>Failure? We ALREADY HAVE FAILED! Our failure is getting deeper and deeper every day. What is so bad about demanding a deadline date for the troops to come home? 2/3 of Americans support the Democratic plan! We need to be focusing our priorities elsewhere in the region and at home? Forget about the 46 million uninsured? Terrible education system??? HELLO!? Why are we so willing to spend Billions of dollars on a foreign country so we can add our oil profits up and up. We should be instead focusing on alternative sources of energy. Then, we wouldnt be going into a country that didnt even sponsor Al-Qaeda (READ TODAYs WASHINGTON POST).</p>
<p>Cheap political words like "cut and run" or "coward" or "playing chicken" doesnt mean a thing when our soldiers are dying over there for a lost and unknown cause!!!! Even the Former Joint Chiefs of Staff said so. Its easy to say Democrats are cowards, because they have nothing more to say. They used the fear factor to get elected in 2002, and 2004, well it didnt work in 2006 because Americans finally figured out their sickly-twisted political stunts such as gay marriage bans. Its all right in front of your face!</p>
<p>Do you not get the point of my post? I'm accusing the Democrats of making the same mistakes as the Republicans, but on the other side of the spectrum.</p>
<p>I know Iraq wasn't connected to al-Qaeda, this was known before 9/11 even occurred. Please don't tell me to read today's Washington Post, as if it's news--the scary thing to me is that this is news at all.</p>
<p>Part of the problem I believe is that there's very few people actually willing to negotiate. The leaders of the three main factions will work together and negotiate, but the insurgents won't. We can negotiate with Iran and Syria if we want, but while they may help the insurgents--and I'm not entirely sure they are--they don't control them. Frankly, I think Iran and Syria would rather have a stable Iraq first, then they would probably try and control the government; it's infinitely easier than trying to control an amorphous collection of individuals, which is what the insurgency is right now.</p>
<p>Declaring a date and placing restrictions on the money related to it is just flat-out wrong: It hangs the troops out to dry and they're already in a really bad place in terms of equipment and training as it is. The Army simply needs that money--and the Pentagon needs to direct it to the troops and current equipment and away from high-tech toys that would be great for fighting against an actual army, but are lousy for fighting insurgents.</p>
<p>Did I say what Bush is doing is right? No, in fact, I believe the exact opposite. Do I think what the Democrats are doing is right? No--in fact, I believe the exact opposite.</p>
<p>Edit: Also, please stop citing the majority as if it's an authority. You can look up numbers to see whether the majority of the country still believes that Saddam was a part of the cause of 9/11.</p>
<p>I guess its not a stereotype that Democrats can't take a joke... oh well.
Anyways, I do not understand Bkln saying that spreading "freedom and democracy" is the most ridiculous thing ever. Freedom and democracy are inherently superior to totalitarianism and thus it should be the goal of every person who has freedom to give it to those who do not. I do not understand any other point. One can disagree about the means to achieve the goal of freedom for everyone, but one cannot disagree that freedom is a noble goal.
I see hypocrisy coming everyday from the anti-war movement. The same people who are calling for the end of a genocide in Darfur are calling for the start of one in Iraq. By us pulling out, the civil war will grow stronger and bloodier. Thousands will die in that civil war. Yes, Bush's policies are resonsible for that civil war, but does that mean it is okay for genocide? No, of course it isn't.
Right now our troops are the ones stopping a full blown war, if you remove our soldiers, you got yourself a nice little humanitarian disaster in Baghdad. It is our responsibility to prevent this. I do not want to look in books 50 years from now and see that our exit from Iraq caused thousands of deaths.</p>
<p>newsflash marlin: the history books in 50 years will already say that our strategy in Iraq has caused 100,000s of deaths (iraqi citizens+all combat forces)</p>
<p>I never said freedom was bad. I said the arrogance in the way we "spread" it is all based not on caring about others, but on spreading capitalist democracies so it can benefit us economically. I dont see us overthrowing the authoritarian government of soo many African countries any time soon because we have nothing to gain from them. Yet why dont we do this under the rationale of spreading freedom and doing what is right?</p>
<p>marlin, the problem is that the government has been instilling notions of "freedom" and "democracy" in this country - both of which I agree are noble goals. But what good use are those goals if no one is actually free to practice democracy?</p>
<p>Also, I do not want to look back in the books in 50 years that the US caused the killings of hundred thousands of soldiers and civilians. Ask yourself which is worse.</p>
<p>Bklyn: Personally, I would like us to topple authoritative African regimes. Yet I do know that this is not about to happen. Part of this is that we have very little to gain from doing so, but another part of it is that the US does not have the political capability to do so. The political left would denounce any such incursion as imperialism and the whole anti-war movement would start again.
Tennis and Bklyn: Yes, our decision to go into Iraq is what allowed the civil war to break out. And yes, thousands have already died. But the only deaths that US forces are responsibe for are the deaths of insurgents, and a few accidental killings of civilians. The Iraqi insurgents are the ones that are responsible for the mass majority of the deaths, not us. It is also untrue to say that the insurgents are only fighting to get us out and would stop if we left. There have been insurgencies in the past, the Free French for one, whose tactics did not completely rely on the killing of ones own countrymen. So, extremist Iraqi's are killing themselves in a civil war. Our forces are the only thing that is holding the tides of that war back. Our forces are the only thing preventing the escalation of that civil war into a genocide. And our forces are trying to stop the civil war and return the country to stability. Yes, more of our soldiers will die every day we stay, but our 4,000 American lives worth sparing another 100,000+ Iraqi ones? My short answer is yes.</p>
<p>the problem with most of you is you tend to impose your ideologies onto other people.</p>
<p>WHO says democracy is right? WHO says democracy is better than dictatorship? WHO says you should respect women? WHO says you shall not swear in public? AND WHO says genocides are bad??</p>
<p>Untitled is right, I am imposing parts of the Western culture on other people, but is it really unrealistic to say that western culture IS superior in some respects?
Your views also say that there are no universal rights at all for people. If genocide's goodness and badness are just dependent on the culture seeing it, then one should never judge a genocide. Thus not everyone is entitled to the right of life. If you want to debate that point go ahead, but IMO it is evidently clear that the right of life is vastly superior to not having the right for life.
You are pretty much saying that no culture/civilization is superior to any other. Why then does Western culture produce vastly more works of literature and advances in science? Dumb luck?
And lastly, why do many foreign people want Western culture? If theres is just as good then why do they try to immigrate, why do they listen to our music, why do they wear our fashions?
The answer is because Western civilization is superior to other cultures in the world.
And thats all the political stuff I am saying, this forum is not the place for it.</p>
<p>There are different value systems in the world. Trust me, we have some terrible values in the West, such that especially in the US, our economics is based on the protestant ethic which says poor people shouldnt get help from the government. We value money more than the individual. Values are subjective. MORALS are subjective. What is immoral to you, is not to me and vice versa. Genocide is wrong, murder is wrong. There are SOME universal values, I think. But you cannot say that our system will work anywhere and everywhere, and it only depends on the will of the people to choose to accept it. I deny that claim. It would be great if everyone had democracy, TRUE democracy. You cannot say our own democracy is healthy because as you have seen in recent elections, our democracy is broken. We go to war for profit. Period. You know it and I know it. Its all under this guise of "protection" when its all really for our imperialistic desires. Whats so great about that when its killing thousands in the process and leaving many to be homeless at home here. I'm not an isolationist but there are more pertinent problems within America that we need solved. Isn't that patriotic? Caring for one's country? Where you are blatantly wrong is when you claim western civilization is superior to other cultures. Thats just dogma, arrogance, and ignorance. There are many beautiful cultures around the world and you cannot say ours is best because we value consumerism and spend spend spend, and paying CEO's billions while 84% of this country only has 10% of the wealth of the US. Isnt that ridiculous to you!? By the way, people from Asia are no dumber than us. You have intelligent people from all over the world.</p>