Are You Happy With Pres Bush?

[Aloysius]

dUSt, what do you think of [url="http://phorum.phatmass.com/index.php?showtopic=16593"]This Idea?[/url]

[Matty_boy]

Bush rocks my socks! I don't know where these anti-war people get the idea that we're killing thousands of innocent civilians, but they obviously haven't seen the pictures of mass graves from Saddam Hussein's reign. Over 300,000 Iraqis that Saddam killed. The people in our military who are dying are people who volunteered to sacrifice their lives to protect others. I think it was worth it and I am joining up next May when I graduate college.

As far as the other aspects of Bush's persidency, the economy is very strong, the U.S. reported a $19.3 billion SURPLUS just for the month of June! Bush is pro-life. Bush appears to genuinely care for the American people, their well-being, and the well-being of people all over the world. I love that Bush doesn't let the U.N. tell him what to do. Bush's job is to ook out for the best interest of the United States of America and he's doing a great job!

[the protector]

[quote]I'll say it again: If you want peace, prepare for war.[/quote]
That is straight out of Orwell.

[quote]I'd respect your position more if you didn't want to vote for Bush or Kerry.[/quote]
I didn't say I was voting for Kerry. I am still undecided. This thread is entitled "Are You Happy With Pres Bush?", not "Who are you voting for?". I am not happy with President Bush. I am not happy with anyone who has further destabilized this world through war, AND is looking to introduce nuclear weapons into convential warfare.

[Luthien]

A baby is defenseless, a grown man in war is not.

Under certain circumstances, all deaths are not equal.

The man fighting in war is dying for his country.

An aborted child dies because of the selfishness of the mother.

Edited July 27, 2004 by Luthien

[let_go_let_God]

First of all let me speak my opinion about Bush. I voted unsure, and I have my reasons.

A) I believe that Bush has done a wonderful job for the rights of the unborn. The start of the partial birth abortion acts, closer looks at Roe vs. Wade and steam cell reasurch laws are a wonderful first step. I have not seen any public figure do so much for the rights of the unborn.

B) The war in Iraq. Bush has been searching for an acceptable reason for the war in Iraq. I feel somewhat relieved that Iraq is self governing again, but we can't stay there and over see what the Iraqi people do with their own government. I mean when we broke off from England, there was war and chaos with in the states but, once we gained our independance we had nothing to do with England for a very long time. Bush's policies on the war in Iraq are wavering and have been since the start. I hope that Iraq does not become another Croatia or Bosinia, where as after we were suppost to leave the country, we are still occuping it.

These are my opinions, I guess if I had to choose today who I would vote for, probably vote for Bush, but yet I am still very undecided.

[Luthien]

War smells of elderberries, Ill give you that...

And you're laying all of this war stuff on Bush, when there are others involved with the descion process, like the CIA?

There is a lot we don't know about this war, and Im not going to be one to expand one theory over the other.

[shelly_freak]

....nothing, except sin, is contrary to an act of virtue. But war is contrary to peace. Therefore war is always a sin. -St. Thomas Aquinas

Many Christians talk about a "Just War", but the Gospel of Jesus is the Gospel of Peace, there is no way in the New Testament to justify any bloody War... it is difficult to justify even the just, defensive war if one takes seriously the message of the Sermon on the Mount, which is the heart of the Gospel (Mat.5:28-42).

The Just War:

A- Jus ad Bellum: The conditions under which the use of military force is justified:

1- The war must be for a just cause:
- Self-Defense: Invasion: The clearest example of a just cause is self-defense against an aggressor.
- Assassination of a prominent person - a monarch or president.
- Attack on national honour (e.g. burning the flag, attacking an embassy).
- Attack on state religion.
- Economic attack (trade embargo or sanctions).
- Attack on a neighbour or ally. Assisting an invaded friendly nation.
- Preemptive strike: attacking the enemy to prevent an anticipated attack by them...Preemptive strikes may no longer be acceptable by UN members, since the Charter says that short of actual attack, "all Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means" (Article 2:3)
- Human rights violations: Another common example is putting right a violation of human rights so severe that force is the only sensible response.
- To punish an act of aggression. This is not accepted by everyone. Some people would say that a war of punishment can never be a just war.

2- The war must be lawfully declared by a lawful authority.
- Only a war lawfully declared, by a government with the authority to declare war, can be a just war.
- It prevents sneaky attacks in advance of a declaration of war:.The example usually quoted of an attack before a declaration of war is the Japanese attack on the Americans at Pearl Harbor.
- There are two obvious problems with this: First: there can sometimes be doubt as to which group is the lawful government of a country, and second: if a government behaves in a way that is arbitrary and unjust does its 'lawful' authority have the necessary ethical force for it to be entitled to wage a Just War?
- The UN has the lawful authority. However, the idea of the UN as the final authority is very legalistic since in practice the actual power to do things such as wage war remains with individual states.

3- The intention behind the war must be good:
- Good intentions include: creating, restoring or keeping a just peace, righting a wrong, assisting the innocent.
- Bad intentions include: Seeking power or imperialism, demonstrating the power of a state, grabbing land or goods, or enslaving people, hatred of the enemy, genocide, personal or national glory, revenge, preserving colonial power.

4- All other ways of resolving the problem should have been tried fist: War must be the last resort!:
- The alternatives might include diplomacy, economic sanctions, political pressure from other nations, withdrawal of financial aid, condemnation in the United Nations, and so on... These alternatives should be tried exhaustively and sincerely before violence is used.
- It is argued that sometimes it will be morally better to go to war sooner rather than later. This might be because waiting too long would allow the enemy to do much more damage, or kill more people than an early war would have done; or may allow the enemy to become so established in another country's territory than far greater force will have to be used to remove him than would have been needed earlier... like Hitler!.

5- There must be a reasonable chance of success:
- Only winnable wars are just. A State should only go to war if it has a reasonable chance of winning. Going to war for a hopeless cause may be a noble act, but it is an unethical one. This comes from the idea that war is a great evil, and that it is wrong to cause suffering, pain, and death with no chance of success.
- A war among two countries with large nuclear weapons arsenal would be a disaster.
- It is sometimes morally necessary to fight against a much larger force, for national defense, for example.
- This condition could be a bullies' charter, in that it means that big powerful countries can trample on little ones, and the little ones can't ethically retaliate, because they can't win.

6- The ultimate goal of a just war is to re-establish peace.
More specifically, the peace established after the war must be preferable to the peace that would have prevailed if the war had not been fought.

[picchick]

How I pick my politian.

Courage/Strength, whatever you want to call it. Bush is not afraid of what people say he will be strong in what morals he does support.

Ex. The many acts for pro-life that are very contradictory to many lives in America today. The war itself.

I put this before all other stances when judging a politician. Not only anti-abortion but anti-contraception, anti-death penalty. Bush, so far, is the only politician who has some of these stances especially the abortion one [i]WHO HAS A FIGHTING CHANCE OF WINNING[/i].

Now on to the whole troops thing. Not that it makes it right to kill soldiers, but this is what they have lived for. We are lucky to have a country that does not force it's military on their civilians. (except for the draft when it is needed severely.) These brave men and women have what it takes to fight. They have trained for it. They have gone through the rigorous trials to get where they are. They have what it takes. Yes, we love them. We miss them. They miss us. They miss home. But this [i]is there job. This is what they CHOSE to do.[/i] They didn't have to do it. But they wanted to.

God Bless,
Margaret

Edited July 27, 2004 by picchick

[picchick]

I think I spelled chose wrong. Isn't Choose? It is late time for bed!!

[BeenaBobba]

[quote name='Iacobus' date='Jul 26 2004, 02:54 PM'] Again I say, 1. numbers are pointless. Death is death. It doesn't matter who dies or how many SOMEONE DIES. [/quote]
Hi Jacob,

I disagree. With abortion, millions of babies are murdered. That's millions of [b]individual[/b] souls. Imagine that someone was guilty of premarital sex [i]and[/i] murder. Your logic would say that the murder means nothing since the person is already guilty of premarital sex.

Unjust killing is unjust killing, but the unjust death of one million people is worse than the unjust death of thousands of people. Both are very evil, but it's quite obvious that there is a greater magnitude of evil in killing a million people. If you're only remembering one soul in an unjust death, you're forgetting about millions of others who have died; and, in doing so, you're doing them a disservice.

[quote]and 2. if you insist numbers matter, the population of the world is 6.3 BILLION. Death toll if we start using nukes (nuclear winter, push off of axis, massive world ending strikes *heck India can end the world twice already*) would be a mere 141 times more than the all abortions from [i]Roe v. Wade[/i] till present.[/quote]

We've (unjustly) used nukes in the past, and this has not yet come to pass. There's no immediate evidence that it will, so to base your arguments around it is a bit...paranoid (for lack of a better word). You and I both cannot see what the future will bring.

God bless,

Jennifer

[BeenaBobba]

[quote name='flip' date='Jul 26 2004, 03:23 PM'] Also, what has Bush done for abortion? as far as i know, it is still legal.

[/quote]
Please read the evidence I posted. It can be found on the first page of this thread.

[quote]In 4 years, the Bush adminstration has not rid of us of this evil. are we to put faith in him that he will end it?
[/quote]

Could Bush have done better in stopping abortion? Yes. I won't be satisfied until abortion is illegal again; however, I must say that Bush has definitely done more for the pro-life movement than Kerry would ever do.

[quote]i know with kerry, abortion will continue and rise. but with Bush, i have no doubt that abortion will continue. when will it END???[/quote]

Abortion will end when a courageous pro-life judge (who is willing to overturn Roe v. Wade) is appointed to the Supreme Court. Bush has shown himself willing to appoint the judge who will do this. (As a matter of fact, if you click on one of the links I posted, you'll see that Bush tried to appoint a pro-life judge who considers Roe v. Wade an "abomination," and that this judge was rejected by Congress.) Kerry, on the contrary, has explicitly said that he will not appoint any judges to the Supreme Court who will overturn Roe v. Wade.

God bless,

Jennifer

[BeenaBobba]

[quote name='shelly_freak' date='Jul 27 2004, 12:41 AM'] Many Christians talk about a "Just War", but the Gospel of Jesus is the Gospel of Peace, there is no way in the New Testament to justify any bloody War... it is difficult to justify even the just, defensive war if one takes seriously the message of the Sermon on the Mount, which is the heart of the Gospel (Mat.5:28-42). [/quote]
Actually, that's not true. The Bible does not teach absolute pacifism. The Fifth Commandment says, "Thou shalt not kill," but the original language must be taken into consideration. The Hebrew word, [i]ratsach[/i], specifically refers to murder. And, as a matter of fact, God even sanctioned some wars in the Old Testament (read Joshua 10:40). God would not prohibit all killing in one breath and then do an about face and command someone to kill in the next.

Furthermore, in the New Testament, there are many examples of soldiers. In Luke 22:36, Jesus said that if one did not have a sword, he should go so far as to sell his robe and buy one. Of course, I doubt Jesus encouraged owning a sword because swords looked cool. On the other hand, Jesus wouldn't have commanded someone to have a sword to go on a killing spree. Therefore, self-defense must be the only justifiable reason for taking another's life. In Matthew 8, Jesus is met by a Roman soldier. If his being a soldier (with taking other's lives as an occupational hazard) was sinful and therefore required some degree of repentance, why didn't Jesus tell him to repent? St. Paul, too, accepted the escort and protection of military soliders in Acts 23:12-33; 28:16. What purpose would this escort serve if not to protect St. Paul's life, by force if had been necessary? Yet, there is no mention of this protection and willingness to kill to defend as being sinful and requiring of repentance. In fact, some of the early Christians were soldiers as well (see Acts 10:1-4, 22, 30-31). Cornelius, a solider, was called a righteous man in Acts 10:22. If, as some hold, killing of any sort (even out of self-defense) warrants repentance and some sort of penance, then it'd seem that for one to have repented, one would had to haved sinned. So, if going to war is sinful, it shouldn't be allowed at all. If something is sinful, a Christian religion should not allow for it. We are commanded to be perfect (Matthew 5:48), so Jesus would not encourage something that was sinful if it was an obstacle to perfection.

St. Athanasius, a Doctor of the Church, said: "For in other things that occur in this life, we find distinctions: such as, it is not permitted to murder, [u]but to kill the enemy in war is both lawful and worthy of praise.[/u] So then those who perform in the best way in war are given great rewards, and monuments are erected to proclaim their deeds." (Letter to Amun -- before 356 AD). [Emphasis mine]

God bless,

Jennifer

[BeenaBobba]

[quote name='Good Friday' date='Jul 26 2004, 04:44 PM'] [b]Edit:[/b] And if in fact he "does not rep the Church" because he doesn't support President Bush, then you better make me "Phishy" too, because I don't support Bush in any way, shape or form -- in fact, I think he is one of the most evil, deceptive men we've seen since Adolph Hitler. [/quote]
I don't agree with all that Bush supports and does, but that's a bit much, no? First of all, where is your evidence that he's a lying, deceptive man? If you cannot produce any evidence to support your claim that Bush is a horrible man, one cannot help but think your opinion is based merely on feelings rather than cool logic.

[quote]And I'm not going to retract that because Her Excellency Judie Brown disagrees with me.[/quote]

You judge Judie Brown unfairly. First of all, what makes you think she is an unabashed Bush supporter? From what I've read, she's not. Like me, she thinks Bush is a better choice than Kerry (no educated pro-lifer would disagree with this), but she also supports voting for a 100% pro-life 3rd party candidate. In fact, she finds much fault in Bush, but she respects the fact that Catholics can, in good conscience, vote for the candidate who will do less harm to the pro-life movement.

God bless,

Jennifer

[BeenaBobba]

[quote name='Good Friday' date='Jul 26 2004, 05:09 PM'] Cardinal Bernardin taught the same thing that Iacobus said.  Are you, a layman, saying that Cardinal Bernardin, a Bishop elevated to the status of a Cardinal by the Holy Father, was heterodox? [/quote]
Just because Cardinal Bernadin supported the "Seamless Garment" approach doesn't mean that it's correct. Cardinal Bernadin is not infallible. (Cardinals can and do make mistakes; e.g., look at Cardinal Law.) To argue that this approach is orthodox on the mere basis that Cardinal Bernadin supported it is not sufficient. If you'd like to interact with my argument, feel free to do so.

The "Seamless Garment" approach maintains that war and the death penalty are on the same par as abortion. This can be easily refuted. First of all, neither war nor the death penalty are intrinsically wrong. You will not find one official Church document suggesting otherwise. If something is not wrong in all cases, it cannot be intrinsically wrong. Had you lived around the time of WWII, and had you been a Jew living in Poland, would you have said it'd be wrong to stop Hitler with force? Do you think it'd be wrong to execute a dangerous criminal if there were no other means to incarcerate him and protect society? Chances are you answered no to those questions. The Bible also supports war and the death penalty under certain circumstances, as I pointed out in one of my responses in this thread. Abortion, on the other hand, is the taking of an innocent human life. It is always wrong; ergo, it is intrinsically wrong. Part of the reason abortion is more serious of an issue than the death penalty and war is that abortion, unlike war and the death penalty, is intrinsically evil.

Numbers do matter. Let's say that you and I were in a room, and the rest of the people here at PM were in another room. Now, let's say a serial killer kills you and I by shooting us both in the head. Later, a terrorist throws a bomb into the PM room and kills 100 people. They've both done wrong, but did they both do an equal amount of evil? Perhaps you and Jacob would argue that they did. I beg to differ. You and I both are individuals with individual souls. Vera and dUSt are two individuals with individual souls, but what about Flowery, Jacob, Katie, and everyone else? Are they not individuals with individual souls? If you only take one person's life and soul into consideration, the importance of a great number of other lives are forgotten.

I've read that the "Seamless Garment" approach also puts health care and things like that on the same par as abortion. That's absurd! Abortion is an issue of life itself, whereas issues such as health care, etc. deal with the quality of life. Hitler improved the quality of life for many of his citizens, but what good did that do if he denied life itself to whole groups of people? Yet, one could have voted for him using the "Seamless Garment" approach. I, for one, don't think I have to apologize for having serious beef with that.

The "Seamless Garment" approach is also self-defeating. It argues against taking the quantity of lives lost into consideration, but at the end of the day, it advocates taking the quantity of issues into consideration. Where's the logical consistency? What's more important: people or issues? People, of course, since issues would be nothing without people. That being said, the number of people is more important than the number of issues.

God bless,

Jennifer

[Apotheoun]

President Bush is doing a fine job.