So, is this a war like “the war on drugs”?

Our military defense has become a spectacularly bloated Welfare Mom, but wait! The Republicans have a plan to save us. Spend even more money the same way.

And better yet, declare a war! A war unlike any other. And then fight the Cold War in the wrong country. We got those commies on the run now.

If Al Qaeda wanted us to react to 9/11 like imbeciles, Mission Accomplished.

A party that claims to be strong on national defense needs to make military decisions with military strategy. A party that claims to be “conservative” needs to make sure that military strategy is carried out without appalling financial waste.

I miss Richard Nixon.

A Liberal,

JD

As to the dead: Have you been to a funeral for a fallen soldier? I have. If you think you have a “right” to see pictures of the fallen, I assure you that you do not. When a soldier falls, he no longer belongs to the nation, but to his family. You have no right to intrude. If the family wishes, they can open the funeral to the public. But that is their choice and their right. Not yours.

I don’t think we are at war.

Nations don’t give tax breaks (to the richest of their population) during wartime. Taxes are what pays for war.

Body bags come home during wartime. I still haven’t seen any on television or in my daily newspaper. have you?

Scrap metal drives, paper drives, gas rationing, and food rationing are often seen during wartime. I haven’t seen those in years.

Real wars aren’t fought on the cheap.

Nations often institute a draft during prolonged wars.

Wars have beginnings and endings.

Nope. I’m not sure what you call it, but this isn’t war.

All along I have talked about liberals. YOU have tried to steer the discussion into a Republican/Democrat debate. Talk about intellectual dishonesty. The article is about the failure of liberals to connect to mainstream society. I have stayed on-topic the entire time. Quit your spin and stick to the topic at hand. America DOES NOT trust liberals when it comes to national security and defense. You have the President of the DLC saying they are damaging the Democratic Party because of this, and yet you continue to stick your head in the sand and pretend it doesn’t exist. If you want to do that, go ahead. Don’t be surprised when you get shut out at the ballot box year after year after year.

20% of this country considers themselves “liberal.” 40% consider themselves “conservative,” and then there is the rest of us, the 40% stuck in the middle. Liberals are a distinct minority in this country, and there’s a good reason why. People just don’t buy what you’re selling. Unless you’re willing to be honest about it, well, you’re not going to get very far in any “discussion” you might want to have, especially when you spin things and take it off-topic. Again, the topic is liberals, NOT Dems or Repubs. You can throw all of the polls about Dems and Repubs you can find at me. IT’S NOT WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT!! I gave you info about liberals straight from the mouth of the President of the DLC, specifically in regards to their weakness of national security and defense issues.

As soon as you can find something to back your arguement that’s actually on-topic, please post it. Otherwise, YOU’RE the one making unsubstantiated claims. Intellectual honesty. Try it sometime.

So best wishes to you, Gaius, and even to you too, Todd. Have a good one!

Yours is a fundamentally dishonest approach to political discourse. All you’re doing is name-calling and slander. You throw around assertions that you can’t prove, about liberals being “weak and spineless,” about Americans not trusting liberals (when the opposite is demonstrably true), about liberals being “marginalized,” etc. Virtually everything you’ve written so far is either completely empty invective, factually untrue, or wildly exaggerated. Basically it’s a bunch of B.S., and I suspect that even fellow conservatives recognize it as such.

You have a chance to have a frank and honest exchange with responsible fellow Americans who care just as much as you about the well-being of the country, even though their political philosophy may differ. You waste that opportunity by being so hateful and disrespectful. I’d like to think that responsible conservatives have more to offer than this.

Bob, (edit). You say "I’m a Democrat, and like most Democrats, I’m also a liberal." Hmm, according to Bruce Reed, President of the Democratic Leadership Council, 27% of Democrats identify themselves as liberal. I'd dare say he knows more about the party than you do. So, it would seem, MOST Democrats are not liberal. Seems you're pretty out of the loop, which is exactly what I was saying about liberals. They're completely out of touch. He goes on to say the following: "Liberals, energized by a newfound ability to raise money among people angry at Bush, hold too much power in the party and are leading it down a road that is not the mainstream of the nation. Liberals give the inaccurate impression that Democrats are not people of faith, opposed to traditional families and weak on national defense and security." So, seems the President of the DLC is saying exactly what I'm saying. You're out of touch.

Todd – warning – no personal attacks

David, (edit). CLASSIC liberalism, which most closely resembles libertarianism, is NOT what liberalism is today. Not even close. For goodness sakes, the article even mentions this. Nice try. Might want to work on your reading comprehension skills. For a group that touts itself as being "intellectual," (edit).

Increasingly, Americans will come to believe that the only people hard-headed enough to fight the religious lunatics of the Muslim world are the religious lunatics of the West. Indeed, it is telling that the people who speak with the greatest moral clarity about the current wars in the Middle East are members of the Christian right, whose infatuation with biblical prophecy is nearly as troubling as the ideology of our enemies. Religious dogmatism is now playing both sides of the board in a very dangerous game.

Newsflash: rapists, murderers, whack job survivalists, killer crack addicts etc. are born and bred daily in our midst of 300 Million US citizens. They don’t even need a religion to run up deathtolls exceeding a corpse a day in many US cities. There are 1.2 Billion muslims.

If 1 percent of 1 percent were bent on killing infidels so they could score the heavenly poontang, that would be what 120,000 nutzoids waking up every morning with their only goal for the day being killing infidels. School children have shown that killing unsuspecting US citizens in relatively small numbers is like ducks on a pond. One jihadist, one gun show, one highschool football, soccer, hockey game and you’re with Allah and all the chicks.

Take away the closet war for the sake of warmongers and candy ass fears of Amber Alert worshipping Mom’s who have no concept of statistics and probability and the threat of Islamist terrorism becomes what it is — one of the least likely ways an American will be killed or injured. Period.

Ooooh…. let’s all wake up to the scary fact that a bunch of backward religious fanatics in caves half way around the world have been told by some old sexually frustrated Mullah that they’ll get laid in heaven if they kill Americans as they kill themselves!

If one of them kills 30,000 Americans next I know what to do — Wage wars in other lands that kill a million of them! Pretty soon we’ll show those other Billion to shut up and live in poverty while we party for good!

I guess the fact that at least one of the 911 terror killers was the child of parents who died while the US shelled Beruit while the Israelis occuppied the country is lost on you “they hate our goodness” armchair warriors.

US soldiers raped and murdered an Iraqi girl awhile back. If some all powerful country’s forces occupied my town and my daughter suffered that fate, you can count me (and probably 100 or so of my closest friends) immediately in on that jihad stuff against that country.

Find the killers and bring them to justice. It’s not perfect, but it’s worked here in the USA going on 230 years.