Question for Americans voters on this forum

[pj67coll]

I'm curious about what American citizens see as the most important issue/issues that will influence thier votes in the upcomming election. I dont mean who you will vote for or what your vote will be, but simply what the issues are that will influence your votes?

- Peter.

[Botnst]

#1. Global Islamofascist terrorism.

#27,583 Something else.

[GermanStar]

World conqueror or world leader? White hats or black hats? Impose our will or support free will?

[Zeitgeist]

...I'm firmly resolved to rehash once and for all the moral relevance of events and activities of thirty years ago.






*I also want to figure out the meaning of the phrase "Global Islamofascist terrorism". Sounds like a flimsy imprimatur to embark on an Imperialist crusade...

Originally Posted by GermanStar

World conqueror or world leader? White hats or black hats? Impose our will or support free will?

BOTH, whatever means required.

[Chris Bell]

Originally Posted by Botnst

#1. Global Islamofascist terrorism.

#27,583 Something else.

Here here.

Originally Posted by Botnst

#1. Global Islamofascist terrorism.

#27,583 Something else.

same here

#2 an amendment banning tops on women with acceptable breasts.
#3 Rewrite FCC rules to allow full nudity on prime time tv.
#4 free beer
#5 BAN NASCAR and impose mandatory F1 races daily.

[Zeitgeist]

Originally Posted by w126

How best to stay out of my wallet and leave me and my family alone.

...so you're anti-corporate are ya?

Originally Posted by w126

How best to stay out of my wallet and leave me and my family alone.

My sentiments exactly!!!!!

[davidmash]

Federal bench apointments

[JimSmith]

Zeitgeist,

To simplistic a question to generate any really thoughtful answers. Bot about hit the nail on the head, unless you ask yourself what happens after we address the Islamofacist terrorists. It is clear the politicians love situations like this, where they can claim all the other plundering and raping of the general welfare coffers are justified by the need to succeed on the one, most important issue. Which is secretly conducted for national security reasons. Yeah, that's the ticket!

The selection of the next leader should be based on an assessment of how the present one, since he is still a choice because his party can't ditch him at this point, has done at the whole role of being President of the United States. This should be compared to what the alternates are.

Given an honest assessment of how GWB has done, the Republican Party should have dumped him. Kirk V and others have posted plenty of data that shows GWB has munged up just about everything he has touched. The Republican Party should have been looking for a replacement long ago. McCain would have been an electable choice, but given his stellar performance as a trained dog at the convention it seems maybe he isn't quite what his image implied.

Kerry is an unknown, tagged as an uber-Liberal, and therefore, without viewing what the present administration's fiscal record shows, rejected for wanting to spend more money. The present administration has found it much easier to spend the next generation of Americans' money, since they cannot vote yet, and sing a hypnotic song of tax refunds and permanent reductions to keep the simple of mind in a trance. I heard nothing but sound bites like "economic girlymen" and "fighting with spitballs" and a few others during the GOP convention, and nothing about how the next four years under GWB were going to function on a fiscal basis.

Anyway, the question requires a thoughtful answer, not another sound bite type response. While the most important things may be associated with addressing the Islamofacist terrorism threat, it is how that will be addressed while maintaining America what has made it such an outstanding world citizen, and country to be a citizen in that is important. Under the present leadership we could soon be alone facing a few billion Islamofacists we helped create, leading to the widespread use of nuclear weapons, by America, sooner than anyone might have guessed.

A few more simultaneous Islamofacist terrorism non-states attacking the US and then what? Another "Bring 'em on!" speech and then what? More inadequate numbers of troops and weapons dispatched to die because GWB can't learn to out think Islamofacist terrorists?

After 9/11 it seemed to be a general consensus that Islamofacist terrorism needed to be stamped out. The rest of the world looked to us for leadership, and, instead of using that dependence on the US for leadership in times of crisis, we alienated the rest of the world with the obsessive pursuit of Iraq, and forced them to learn to depend on themselves. It will never be as easy and straightforward to unify the rest of the world to fight Islamofacist terror again. The situation in Chechnya that just unfolded cannot help anyone from the rest of the world see that Iraq was the correct action. We clearly have not stopped Islamofacist terrorism by attacking Iraq in the minds of the Russian people.

The point of all this is the criteria should be for a team of leaders with the capability to out think the Islamofacist terrorists, the capability to enlist the rest of the world to join in, and to somehow get the rest of the world to follow our lead again. Because we are right not because we paid off the heads of a bunch of weak, failing, local governments.

This same team should have the integrity to address the long term financial robustness this country needs to remain the world economic leader, address our uniquely inadequate national health care picture, and eliminate our dependence on petroleum based energy sources.

Jim

[Zeitgeist]

A thoughtful response.

I happen to think the term Islamofascist is goofy and just plain wrong.

The tiny cadre of criminals at the heart of this uber-hyped collective panic attack is just that; a tiny cadre of criminals--no more, no less. US foreign policy over the years, and especially over the last few years, has allowed these goons a level of popular support in the middle east/asia they could've never achieved had we not propped up oppressive regimes and interfered in the internal affairs of (fomerly) sovereign nations--but we did it nonetheless, and continue to this day. But, this popular support is in the abstract, and not representative of broad wholesale buyoff amongst these populations for their entire criminal agenda. These criminals are the Pancho Villa of their day, standing up against the Imperialist bully run amok, so folks voice support for the one group that has shown the moxie to fight back. Iraq has swelled the ranks of those willing to engage in criminal action, BUT, we're still talking about a tiny cadre of criminals. This does not require an entire nation to mobilize and become whipped up in a frenzied state of fear/rage/apathy like we've been led to believe. This calls for an international resolve to engage in strategic and surgical police strikes at the core of the criminal element. All the while honestly seeking to address the legitimate underpinnings that motivate the popular support for their criminal actions.

T'aint easy, but it's doable, if we had the political willpower to be introspective and humble, rather than thoughtless and reactionary. I level the latter charge against both major parties in the US. The Dems are just as culpable in getting us into the Iraq quagmire--there's no excuse for their duplicity.

[JimSmith]

Zeitgeist,

I borrowed the term "Islamofacist terror" because it describes something we seem to be feeling threatened by, not be cause the term is self evident or an accepted description outside or in this forum. Some of the problem with a detailed, even accurate, description of how we got in to the present situation where "Islamofacist terror" has us paralyzed is that it is spilled milk, so to say. Going back or trying to undo the spill another way results in recovering milk no one really wants to drink anymore.

Going forward requires a new approach to Islamic groups. At this time I think the situation is more urgent and serious than any focus on how we got here can correct. The tiny cadre of criminals seems to be able to count on support, and not confrontation and exposure, from the vast majority of apparently non-criminal Islamic population. This is a major difference, and a significant challenge, from how local populations in a western culture deal with vicious criminals hiding in their midst. It therefore leads a large portion of the American population to write Islamic groups off as essentially closet criminals, who, if forced to take a stand would come out of the closet and sign up for the cadre criminals that used to be tiny. The political double talk of the Arab-Israeli conflict has convinced many that there is no logic or good faith to be found negotiating with such groups.

All this is very confusing and challenging, and urgent. It requires an exceptional team of leaders to come to a plan that works well enough in the short term to allow a longer term strategy to be developed and take root. And, then we must acknowledge that hoping for a non-Republican and non-Democrat with the skills and cunning to carry this off is a waste of time. Someone would find out he or she got laid before he or she turned 16 and we would have a news business bonanza while the media dissected this person's childhood and renders them unelectable. Or something like that of equally meaningless value.

So, this leaves you with little hope for any change unless Kerry is elected. Because we heard the Republicans tell us about their vision for the next 4 years and it sounds like a lot more of the same. Even with Kerry the stakes are still high enough that we should all be very concerned. It is not a Democrat vs. Republican issue. It is question of whether or not America can figure out how to stay on top of the heap. Jim

[Zeitgeist]

...I tend to spend an inordinate amount of time on the "spilt milk", because the populations who may or may not support the international criminals are far more aware of the history of US foreign policy than the average American. And the anger wrought by this knowledge helps to put the "fire in their belly", and has effectively drowned out the voice of intellectual moderation, replacing it with a rebel yell based in part on half-truths supplied by US taxpayers. If Americans were made to be more aware of the sordid impacts of our policies, we'd no doubt become more humble, which is a critical step toward making a corrective course change needed to reach a positive resolution to this situation.

[pj67coll]

So it seems that at least for the Yanks on this forum the war on terror is the big deal. Seems if you are on the right you support Bush as he's prepared to take the fight to the enemy and if you're on the left you hate Bush because the US wouldnt really have enemies if it wern't for him.

t's not that these failed states are in a mess because they are mired in a seven centuries old intellectual prison and cannot make the jump to the 21'st century, it's that the US screwed them over the last fifty odd years and, and what? Stole all their oil so they are now mired in poverty? Hi-Jacked their "educational systems" and sponsored Madrasses?

I think that Americans in particular, and perhaps most people in the west in general simply dont have a clue what the real nature of the problem is.

Botnst is right I think in that Islamofascism is the biggest problem human civilisation currently faces. Zeitgeist is hopelessly wrong I think, in deluding himself into thinking it's a small criminal clique who can be defeated if everybody in the west holds hands with the US and sings koombayah.

What nobody has had the courage to say on either side, because it's intellectually anathema to the left which does'nt allow in it's thinking for anybody but the US to be the root of all badness, and it's impossible for the right to say it for fear of being branded war mongers and frightening of the ignorent masses that make up the swing vote, is that this is simply the return of the Crusades. Now that western civilisation is vulnerable to Islam in a way it has not been in seven centures, because of it's own internal structural weaknesses and the widespread availability of effective weapons with which terrorists can attack it in a manner that the Islamic world has not been able to do for centruries, the world has changed fundamentally.

The right possibly senses it but cant admit it.
The left refuses to admit it's anything more than a temporary problem a bit of politics and policing can fix.

In my opinion neither attitude bodes well for the future but at least the right is not intellectually opposed to admitting there is a problem outside of the Beltway.

- Peter.