To Supersoulty and John Ford

[Nym90]

I agree, Akno. If America is going to be destroyed, it would be by big money more than anything...see my first post in my thread about "Why I'm a Democrat". Sorry I keep referring people to that thread in others, but I wrote so much there that it covers a lot of ground.

Democrats actually want a morally consistent foreign policy that opposes ALL dictators, not just those that big business deems worthy of going after. We want a foreign policy that does not coddle some dictators while going after others.

Well, at least I do....

[Nym90]

Well, John Kerry is not an anti-American crazie, sorry to break it to you. Say what you want about him, but he's not anti-American, and does not hate his country. You can argue that his policies are wrong, but I can't see how anyone can say that he's not a patriotic American.

So no, the left wing crazies who hate America haven't taken over the party; if they did, we'd be nominating them for President. Someone like Kucinich would've won the nomination. Even Kucinich doesn't hate his country, even though he is clearly a left wing extremist. He's very misguided, but still not evil.

And I don't exactly see liberals fawning over Castro. I certainly strongly oppose him, and I know all mainstream Democrats (Kerry and other party leaders) don't support him. You can't hold the actions of a few radicals against all Dems.

On the other hand, big business does control the Republican party. Money can be a very powerful thing. The fact of the matter is that the GOP supports big business on EVERY issue, including their positions on foreign policy.

Well, I do think that we should always support democracy and oppose dictatorship. If you disagree, that's fine, but I think that American foreign policy should oppose all dictators and support their replacement with democracy. We shouldn't have allies of convenience; history should have told us by now that strategy doesn't work. We prop up dictators out of convenience at the time, and in the long run it comes back to bite us in the a**.

Now, at the time, Afghanistan didn't look as bad as the Russians, but in retrospect, I'd say Bin Laden was worse than the Soviet Union. I do think that the current threat of terrorism is worse than the threat from the Soviet Union, as bad as the Soviet Union clearly was. Likewise, one can question whether it was smart to be allies with the Soviets in our fight against facism in WW2...we slayed one monster only to create another in the process.

I'm not necessarily saying either of those decisions was wrong, we did what we had to do at the time, but eventually supporting dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan will come back to haunt us. Dictators are never truly friendly to anyone. They are only allies with us out of convenience also, and will stab us in the back without thinking twice if they feel they can get away with it.

In order to truly defeat terrorism, we must promote democracy everywhere.

[Nym90]

No, I don't support anti-American dictators either. I have just as much concern for Castro as I do for any other dictator. I said I oppose them all, and mentioned Castro specifically.

I said I support the replacement of all dictators with democracy. I don't support replacing dictators with new dictators, no.

[Nym90]

I completely agree Gabu. I also am an eternal optimist who believes in the fundamental goodness of the human spirit and that people are essentially good at their core, not bad. I believe that people become bad due to how they are raised sometimes, as a defense mechanism against others or because it is how they are taught to be, but that they are basically good at heart. I do not believe that the world is going to hell in a handbasket at all. I think that things have gotten progressively better in the world over the course of human history, not worse, and that they will continue to get better in the future, no matter who wins. They'll just get better at a faster rate under my candidate, and progress will be delayed for a while under the other guy.