Author: guyermo

    It seems to me that there are fundamentally two types of people.  People who ask “How?” and people who ask “Why?”  This may seem like a small difference, but rest assured it is not.  Those that ask “how” want to achieve something without considering the consequences, “How can I make people agree with my point of view?” or “How do I get what I want?”  

     People who ask why assume that anything can be accomplished.  However, they need those things to be justified, “Why should they agree with my point of view?” or “Why should I get what I want?”

     Democrats are the people of why.  We know anything can be accomplished if we want it to; we just need a reason why.  Republicans, on the other hand, don’t care about why or why not something should or should not be done; they just care if it can.

     One example is Social Security.  Republicans are demanding that it be changed.  They want to know how can we change it, and the President wants to know how he can change it to private accounts.  Democrats want to know why we should change it in a way that will cost 2 trillion dollars, when we already are seeing increasing record deficits.  It is a problem that can be solved later.  Immediate action might have unintended consequences if we don’t think this slowly and carefully.

     Another example is the President’s judicial nominees.  He didn’t get all the ones he wanted in his first term, so he’s trying to find out how to force them through in his second term.  Democrats are asking why should they be approved a second time if they weren’t the first.  The Democrats are also asking why, if President Clinton didn’t get all of his nominees, should President Bush get all of his?  There are 44 Democrats in the United States Senate.  Surely they should have some say in the agenda the Senate puts forth.

     Perhaps a slightly more famous example is the treatment of Representative Tom DeLay, of Texas.  Republican leaders in the United States House of Representatives wanted to figure out how to protect their ethically troubled leader.  Democrats wanted to know why the rules should be changed to make unethical behavior easier.

     This can also be extended into regard for your privacy.  In the circus revolving the Terri Schiavo case, Republicans wanted to know how they could show they had a “culture of life” and “moral values.”  They ended up passing a law that had President Bush flying from his ranch in Crawford, Texas in the middle of the night to sign.  They pursued the how, even though seventy percent of Americans disagreed with what they were doing.  Throughout this, Democrats were asking why should the United States government get involved with the private issues of a family?  Why should we be taking an action that seventy percent of our fellow citizens disagreed with?

     If you had told your spouse that you wanted to be taken off life support, but did not have a living will that said so, your parents, siblings, or children could fight the case in court to determine who power-of-attorney would be.  However, some Republicans believe that their “moral values” are more important than the law, which, in most states, automatically gives power-of-attorney to the spouse if the patient is incapacitated or otherwise unable to make that decision.

     As a Democrat, the issue of taxes is always raised.  A Democrat “must” be a tax-and-spend liberal, after all.  You’ll see that that argument is just childish name calling if you look at it this way.  Democrats, thinking `why should we do this,’ are usually against lowering taxes.  Nowhere in history has lowering taxes successfully solved any problems, and has a nasty habit of hurting those who could use it.

     Why does it work this way?  Because the benefit you get will be less than the loss in social services that your tax money would pay for.  We know you don’t like it when we raise taxes, but sometimes that is the only way to pay for things that are constantly getting more expensive.

     Also, if you look at the record, a “tax-and-spend” liberal President was able to “tax-and-save” and create budget surpluses that could have been used to pay off some of the national debt, or be put into Social Security for use by future generations of retiring Americans.

     What happened to that money?  Most of it went to the richest two percent of Americans because Republicans were more concerned with how can we spend this money, instead of why should we spend it?  Wouldn’t you rather that your kids learned how to build a savings account than live from paycheck to paycheck or credit card bill to credit card bill?

     Remember, folks.  Democrats are concerned with the why.  If you ask us to justify our decisions we will be able to do so.  Republicans are concerned with the how.  For them, reasons don’t matter as long as they can accomplish their goals.  They feel they don’t have to justify their positions.  They feel that people should accept them on face value.  Name-calling and negative campaigning are part of that strategy, by distracting you just long enough to avoid having to answer a tough question, or sometimes even a simple one.

Where’s the outrage?

How is it that statements like those made by Karl Rove (“Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers”) and Scott McClellan (“[Rove] was talking about the different philosophies and our different approaches when it comes to winning the war on terrorism”) can be made without being questioned in the media?

When Sen. Dick Durbin points out the savagery of prisoner abuse, he’s accused of hating our troops! Never mind that his comments were about policy, not soldiers.

Please tell me how Rove and McClellan can make remarks like this without being forced to back them up.

Scott Graupner, Wabasha MN

Let’s go back to 2002 and think about what the American people hoped for in Iraq. Such a review provides context to the latest British document leaked to the press and leads inevitably to the conclusion that both the British and American people were grossly misled.

Now comes, however, a classified briefing paper prepared for a July 23, 2002, British cabinet meeting, the minutes of which have come to be known as the Downing Street memo. The briefing paper makes clear that both the British and American administrations viewed action by the Security Council not as an alternative to war, but as a means of justifying a war already decided on.

The paper goes on to explain that “Regime change per se is not a proper basis for military action under international law.” But it would be lawful if “authorized by the U.N. Security Council.” It goes on to say that this is the preferable route, provided the Security Council does not allow the weapons-inspections process to continue indefinitely.

This is where the plot really thickens. Perhaps readers will recall that Bush’s nominee for U.N. ambassador, John Bolton, recently was accused of orchestrating the 2002 ouster of Jose Bustani, head of the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons, a U.N. agency. Why did Bolton want Bustani replaced? Because Bustani was aggressively seeking to reinsert chemical weapons inspectors into Iraq. The conclusion of many observers is that the United States did not want inspectors in Iraq because it undercut the U.S. case for an invasion.

In the end, the Security Council refused to play its role, arguing that the weapons inspectors needed more time (actually ample time) to complete their mission. Then the United States threw up its hands, branded Security Council members a bunch of hand-wringing pansies, and went to war. As the British briefing paper makes clear, that was pre-ordained.