[Grovenet] The Iraqi View

[David Morelli]

On Sep 12, 2007, at 8:48 AM, Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:

> President Bush is the first President I know about who managed to  
> panic the American people into acting as if we were forced into a  
> war with no real war threat in sight.

Whether he was the first or not isn't significant to me.  I would  
like to make certain that he is the last.  To that end, he needs to  
receive more than a silver watch when he retires from the  
Presidency.  Based upon the damage that he and his crowd have done to  
the country, I would hope that he and they all get ankle bracelets  
and stripped suits.

> ...
>  I think it's interesting how you put "spiritual", "moral", and  
> "environmental" in the same sentence. The first two are highly  
> subjective values that resist quantification or measurement.  The  
> third, "environmental" is a scientific issue that can be quantified.

All three represent values that are outside the realm of economics.    
We cannot expect capitalism to voluntarily address issues that are  
outside of the scope of economics, so we must be willing to recognize  
the limits of economics as a scale of measurement.

> ...
> It comes back to a basic premise I hold about myself and others:  
> people are more concerned with their individual perceptions of  
> reality and what they believe than they are with objective facts  
> and logical arguments. Logic is allowed to exist only within the  
> boundaries established by one's personal beliefs.

Sure, that is why we persist in making the same mistakes, over and over.
>
> I think that was why the President was able to run amok for so long  
> in Iraq and here at home. People had the perception that Saddam was  
> somehow connected with the threat the brought us 9/11. People  
> believed that attacking Iraq would improve our stature in the  
> world, our safety and strength as a nation and somehow remove many  
> of the fears we found lingering after 9/11.
>
> To the extent those perceptions and beliefs have crumbled, he has  
> lost popular support.
>
> Ron D'Eau Claire

Those false perceptions did not arise out of thin air.  They were  
promoted by the President, the Vice-President, the Secretary of War,  
and the offices under their control.

David