Politics

[connor_in]

 

[connor_in]

‘A touch hubristic?’ ISIS can wait; G7 sets sights on controlling global temperature | Twitchy

 

[Whiskeyjack]

I stumbled across an article today in Crisis Magazine by RJ Snell titled "Those Intolerable Catholics -- In Locke's Time and Ours":

Often touted as a landmark text in the history of religious freedom, John Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) is remarkable in wisely limiting the power of “the magistrate … to do or meddle with nothing but barely in order to securing the civil peace and properties of his subjects,” and thus of granting “an absolute and universal right to toleration” concerning matters of “speculative opinions and divine worship.” In other words, the state has no power to compel belief or unbelief in any particular doctrine.

Still, the text is more complicated and limited in its vision of tolerance than the received tradition may suggest. For instance, with respect to “practical principles” of social action, there is also a claim to toleration “but yet only so far as they do not tend to the disturbance of the state”; that is, so long as these religious claims do not disturb or curtail the public interest. Fair enough, for certainly we do not suppose that religious freedom extends to harming others or interfering with the just exercise of law.

But when it comes to Catholics, Locke’s generosity shrivels, convinced as he is that Catholics refuse to be “subjects of any prince but the pope,” thus blurring the lines between speculation, worship, and “doctrines absolutely destructive to the society wherein they live.”

Locke considers his hostility warranted by two claims. First, because “where [papists] have power they think themselves bound to deny it to others”— since Catholic do not, he thinks, grant religious freedom to others, they do not deserve it themselves. Second, and what is more interesting at our cultural moment, Locke believes that Catholics do not, and cannot, be trusted to give genuine allegiance to the law since “they owe a blind obedience to an infallible pope, who has the keys of their consciences tied to his girdle, and can upon occasion dispense with all their oaths, promises and the obligations they have to their prince.” Governed ultimately by the pope, their allegiance is to a foreign prince, an authority other than the nation’s laws, and they are not quite faithful citizens.

Setting aside whether Locke understood Catholic thought, it’s notable that the limits of tolerance are defined by the state, and granted only insofar as the subjects do not claim, ultimately, a source of conscience independent of the state. After all, would not any dissenter from the civil religion who placed their conscience in some source other than the state by in the very same position, whether or not they were Roman Catholic? Might not, for instance, a Presbyterian or an evangelical who dissented from the Church of England—to take Locke’s context—because of their allegiance to Scripture view the authority of the law as relative, as not ultimate?

Flash forward to our own time and consider the oddity of how the HHS contraception mandate is playing itself out. On the one hand, we are told that religious freedom absolutely protects our freedom of worship and belief so long as the practical principles of social action flowing from belief into hospitals, schools, and charities are kept distinct and unblurred from religion. In the words of the Bishops, this “reduces freedom of religion to freedom of worship.”

And not just for Catholics. The odd case in New York City of Orthodox Jews being charged with violations of human rights since their insistence of a modest dress code within their stores was motivated by religious impulse. Similar dress codes could be found at all number of eateries and public establishments around the city, but because this code, according to the human rights commission, was religious in motivation it went from the tolerated world of worship and doctrine to the not-to-be-tolerated world of sociality. The same is working itself out in the various court cases about bed and breakfasts, bakers, and photographers with respect to gay marriage. Religious belief is tolerated if it is only thought and sung, but not if followed in public ways.

Now the obvious reason for this is that everyone has religious freedom, including, and most fundamentally, freedom from coercion. Basic to free exercise, it is thought, is immunity from anyone else moving into the sphere of sovereignty proper to each individual or association. True enough, but this seems inadequate to explain the fury of those who cannot believe or tolerate this “retrograde” Catholic refusal to formally cooperate with the provision of contraception and abortifacients.

Contraception, to limit our example, is easily available, inexpensive (often free), and legal, and the Church in the United States has launched no movement to overturn Griswold or make condoms illegal. And yet the rhetoric of suspicion about Catholics makes it seem as though a religious order’s refusal to pay for contraception is tantamount to a gross violation of a person’s right to be free from religious encroachment, even though the order has not suggested that those employed by their school or institution cannot buy or use contraception. As Judge Rovner put it in her dissent from the Seventh Circuit’s ruling in Korte and Grote, Catholic business owners refusing to cover contraception use their religious freedom “offensively rather than defensively.” But how is it a violation of someone’s liberty to not pay for their use of the Pill?

The answer seems endemic to a tension within the liberal order itself, as evidenced by Locke. Religion can be tolerated so long, but only so long, as it does not interfere with the public order or call the legitimacy of the state to define the public order for itself into question. That is, tame religions are tolerable, those which do not propose truths for the conscience of all.

When the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council were debating the Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis humanae, European bishops, particularly those from behind the Iron Curtain, were insistent in their interventions that the “public order” warrant for limiting and curtailing religion needed differentiation, in part because of their justified concern that the Soviets would use “public order” as a weapon against the Church. Consequently, the Declaration insists that any impeding of religion must be done for the sake of “just public order.” Again and again, the Declaration outlines that public order is not a blank check for the state, for the limitation must be just.

To put it another way, since religious liberty is a demand of the natural law, the limiting principle on religious freedom must also belong to the natural law. It must be a reasonable and naturally lawful ground to limit another’s religious exercise, and such a test is rather more robust than the vagaries of Locke’s claims about consciences tied to the Pope’s girdle.

In our own age, which is largely hostile to the natural law—even fearful of it—we should not be surprised to find our polity largely confused about what counts as religious freedom, what counts as a fair limit on another’s freedom, and what counts as the incursion of one’s religious exercise against another. In the great moral debates of our own time—abortion, embryo-destructive research, marriage, and others—we see this internal confusion of the Lockean tradition working itself out, namely, that religion is free so long as it’s about pious thoughts and incense, but once it appears in the streets, or laboratories, or chambers of law religion must serve the interests of the state, as defined by the state, and without reference to natural law.

Given this trajectory, there should be no surprise when members and institutions of traditional religions, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Jew, are presented with an understanding of religious freedom which tells them they must not think themselves entitled to speak or act in public, and certainly must not challenge the authority of the state.

And this, this is intolerable.

 

[pkt77242]

Donald Rumsfeld says Democracy in Iraq was 'unrealistic' - CNNPolitics.com

 

[phgreek]

Donald Rumsfeld says Democracy in Iraq was 'unrealistic' - CNNPolitics.com

I think the only one with any credibility with regard to voicing their then trepidation is Colin Powell.

 

[IrishJayhawk]

I think the only one with any credibility with regard to voicing their then trepidation is Colin Powell.

True. But it does undermine the position that Iraq would be great if Obama hadn't messed it up.

 

[ACamp1900]

"(Insert topic here) would be great if Obama hadn't messed it up" pretty much works across the board...

 

[pkt77242]

Americans pessimistic about ability for economic mobility, study finds

 

[pkt77242]

I think the only one with any credibility with regard to voicing their then trepidation is Colin Powell.

I would generally agree.

 

[Buster Bluth]

Donald Rumsfeld says Democracy in Iraq was 'unrealistic' - CNNPolitics.com

Also interesting:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CSV_udW4mFs?list=PLZ1S-BLnVFNyoBR6W6qflGgMbOtnpahxB" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[phgreek]

True. But it does undermine the position that Iraq would be great if Obama hadn't messed it up.

Not sure what you are getting at...I think people saying the end game of hoping for a western democracy was aiming too high (as if they werent on board WHEN we were in reconstruction in Iraq) has nothing to do with failing to make a stable Iraq a priority in whatever model they were operating and evolving into when it was handed over.

Mr. Obama didn't like the war...made a calculation, against the advice of non political appointees...i.e. military folks...and it went real bad...the end. Folks can whine about how we shouldn't have been there...but we were and what he was given was far better than what it is after he took the helm and guided policy.

 

[Bishop2b5]

Look at the sorts of behavior that our liberal cultural elites are modeling for the American citizenry in our media-- sexual promiscuity, unreflective consumption of movies, TV, video games, the normalization of having children out of wedlock, etc. And the American underclass has dutifully taken these lessons to heart, and are modeling their own behavior on it, with disasterous consequences. Conversely, despite our upper classes supposedly supporting such libertine norms, they shield their own children from much of it, because they know that's not the path to stability or prosperity. That's hypocrisy.


Individualism and libertine sexual norms severely impede the ability of people to form lasting relationships with one another, to which the post-60s collapse of marriage among the American underclass testifies.

Absolutely agree with you. The agenda of the ultra-liberal progressives has been to completely destroy any concept of right and wrong, destroy all social norms, erase any established standards for what works, and to normalize everything, regardless of how good or bad it is or whether it's good for society. When you destroy all definitions of right or wrong and all standards, then who can say whether what you're doing is right, wrong, good, bad, good for anyone, or effective at building & maintaining a culture or society? No culture or society can survive for long without any standards of right & wrong where even the most perverted, disruptive, harmful, and destructive behaviors are accorded the same status and acceptance as the most effective, successful, moral, and noble ones are.

 

[EddytoNow]

Absolutely agree with you. The agenda of the ultra-liberal progressives has been to completely destroy any concept of right and wrong, destroy all social norms, erase any established standards for what works, and to normalize everything, regardless of how good or bad it is or whether it's good for society. When you destroy all definitions of right or wrong and all standards, then who can say whether what you're doing is right, wrong, good, bad, good for anyone, or effective at building & maintaining a culture or society? No culture or society can survive for long without any standards of right & wrong where even the most perverted, disruptive, harmful, and destructive behaviors are accorded the same status and acceptance as the most effective, successful, moral, and noble ones are.

"Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone."

or

"Judge not, lest ye be judged."

 

[connor_in]

 

[RDU Irish]

"Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone."

or

"Judge not, lest ye be judged."

Is this a plea for anarchy?

 

[Bluto]

Absolutely agree with you. The agenda of the ultra-liberal progressives has been to completely destroy any concept of right and wrong, destroy all social norms, erase any established standards for what works, and to normalize everything, regardless of how good or bad it is or whether it's good for society. When you destroy all definitions of right or wrong and all standards, then who can say whether what you're doing is right, wrong, good, bad, good for anyone, or effective at building & maintaining a culture or society? No culture or society can survive for long without any standards of right & wrong where even the most perverted, disruptive, harmful, and destructive behaviors are accorded the same status and acceptance as the most effective, successful, moral, and noble ones are.

Neo Liberal economic policies have done more to undermine social constructs such as marriage, community and family than any "ultra liberal" agenda in my opinion.

I have referred to this author a bunch but I'll do so again. Thomas Frank wrote a fantastic book titled The Conquest of Cool;Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism . It delves into many of these same concepts that Whiskey is presenting . I can't recommend it highly enough.

For the record I think the cultural "elites" in this country are pathetic.

 

[Bluto]

Is this a plea for anarchy?

It's a recipe for Anarchy!

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eZeT5b8hC2w" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[Wild Bill]

Obama confesses: 'We don't have a strategy yet' for dealing with Islamic State - Washington Times

“We don’t have a strategy yet,” Mr. Obama said of his plans for defeating the Islamic State in Syria. “We need to make sure that we’ve got clear plans. As our strategy develops, we will consult with Congress.”

How is this possible?

 

[ACamp1900]

They have yet to find an efficient way to use ISIS to manipulate the 'useful idiots' for more votes... once they do, a strategy will turn to action.

 

[pkt77242]

Obama confesses: 'We don't have a strategy yet' for dealing with Islamic State - Washington Times



How is this possible?

That article is from August 28, 2014. Color me confused.

 

[pkt77242]

Not sure what you are getting at...I think people saying the end game of hoping for a western democracy was aiming too high (as if they werent on board WHEN we were in reconstruction in Iraq) has nothing to do with failing to make a stable Iraq a priority in whatever model they were operating and evolving into when it was handed over.

Mr. Obama didn't like the war...made a calculation, against the advice of non political appointees...i.e. military folks...and it went real bad...the end. Folks can whine about how we shouldn't have been there...but we were and what he was given was far better than what it is after he took the helm and guided policy.

I agree that Iraq is worse off since we pulled most of our troops out, but the question is, how long should we have kept troops there? I don't think that keeping troops there 5 more years would have done anything other than led to more U.S. troops dying. Unfortunately Iraq with is not ready for a democracy, and I am not sure how most of us would have felt putting another dictator in charge there, and even if we could have effectively put a dictator in charge there. How long do you think we should have kept our troops there, 5 years? 10 years? Indefinitely? Do you think if we wouldn't have left, that we could have turned Iraq into a stable country in 10 years?

 

[phgreek]

That article is from August 28, 2014. Color me confused.

Yep...looks like an old reference to the same issue. Seemed like the President at least alluded to the same issue in a very recent speech. Only this time he said he was waiting for a plan from the Pentagon.

That immediately drew an angry response from Pentagon insiders...so there seems to be one thing clear...we do not have anything...the citation of an article from last year places an exclamation point on that fact.

 

[IrishJayhawk]

I agree that Iraq is worse off since we pulled most of our troops out, but the question is, how long should we have kept troops there? I don't think that keeping troops there 5 more years would have done anything other than led to more U.S. troops dying. Unfortunately Iraq with is not ready for a democracy, and I am not sure how most of us would have felt putting another dictator in charge there, and even if we could have effectively put a dictator in charge there. How long do you think we should have kept our troops there, 5 years? 10 years? Indefinitely? Do you think if we wouldn't have left, that we could have turned Iraq into a stable country in 10 years?

It's revisionist history for Rumsfeld to say "I knew it wouldn't work all along." And the withdrawal was also the Bush Administration's timeline.

At what point do we stop trying to install governments in the Middle East? We often end up fighting the very people we have previously aided.

 

[pkt77242]

Yep...looks like an old reference to the same issue. Seemed like the President at least alluded to the same issue in a very recent speech. Only this time he said he was waiting for a plan from the Pentagon.

That immediately drew an angry response from Pentagon insiders...so there seems to be one thing clear...we do not have anything...the citation of an article from last year places an exclamation point on that fact.

The rest of his statement is important.

Obama said, is that “it requires commitments on the part of the Iraqis as well about how recruitment takes place, how that training takes place. The details of that are not yet worked out.”

Read more: Obama, sounding like his critics, admits no 'complete strategy' for Iraq - Edward-Isaac Dovere - POLITICO

I would think that it is right to re-evaluate how we are combating them, since the Iraq army has proven to be worthless. We were counting on the Iraq army to actually, you know fight. We spent about $25 Billion on training their army as of the end of 2014, and they are worthless.

 

[Wild Bill]

That article is from August 28, 2014. Color me confused.

Sorry. Meant to post the most recent one from the G7.

Obama Iraq troops: 'No complete strategy' on ISIS fight - CNNPolitics.com

 

[pkt77242]

Sorry. Meant to post the most recent one from the G7.

Obama Iraq troops: 'No complete strategy' on ISIS fight - CNNPolitics.com

Not a problem, and this is my response.

The rest of his statement is important.

Obama said, is that “it requires commitments on the part of the Iraqis as well about how recruitment takes place, how that training takes place. The details of that are not yet worked out.”

Read more: Obama, sounding like his critics, admits no 'complete strategy' for Iraq - Edward-Isaac Dovere - POLITICO

I would think that it is right to re-evaluate how we are combating them, since the Iraq army has proven to be worthless. We were counting on the Iraq army to actually, you know fight. We spent about $25 Billion on training their army as of the end of 2014, and they are worthless.

 

[phgreek]

I agree that Iraq is worse off since we pulled most of our troops out, but the question is, how long should we have kept troops there? I don't think that keeping troops there 5 more years would have done anything other than led to more U.S. troops dying. Unfortunately Iraq with is not ready for a democracy, and I am not sure how most of us would have felt putting another dictator in charge there, and even if we could have effectively put a dictator in charge there. How long do you think we should have kept our troops there, 5 years? 10 years? Indefinitely? Do you think if we wouldn't have left, that we could have turned Iraq into a stable country in 10 years?

Funny because Kirby is now saying we need to be there for 3-5 years, some insiders are saying seven. It took a few years to start unraveling, it'll be another year to finish unraveling (assuming Mr. Obama remains supportive from afar), and now 5-7 to just get back what Bush left. You do the math. As I've said previously I thought 2020 was realistic in terms of target exit. Yes we would have lost American Lives. Yes it seems a waste to do so, but would it be any more than what we will lose to regain it all? It is clear the will of the American people seems to be to not cut and run...that they see boots on the ground as necessary. I don't blame Mr. Obama for disliking the war, and wanting to disengage...I don't discount the fact that those sentiments were part of what got him elected. The issue is utilizing the knowledge provided, the advice of the right people, and then bringing the base along by selling smart foreign policy decisions...even when they aren't popular. I also acknowledge he had Iraqi leadership playing games...but I think a deal was achievable to leave forces behind that had a SOFA. If ANYTHING works, its money. Our own political system allowed for some sweetheart deals to get ACA in place...I think with a little green encouragement, anything was achievable in Iraq....If it was given the priority DoD, and President Bush said it should be given. It wasn't.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

The Economist's Will Wilkinson just posted an article titled "The Caitlyn Jenner Moment":

IT CANNOT have escaped your attention that the gold-medalist decathlete American hero of the 1976 Summer Olympics, Bruce Jenner, now prefers to be known as Caitlyn. Ms Jenner's Vanity Fair cover is already, as they say, "iconic". Ravishing at the age of 65, her expression is shy, pleading and coyly hopeful, her athlete's arms held behind her back like a St Sebastian.

As Bruce, Ms Jenner in recent years had been little more than an awkward auxiliary member of the famous-for-being-famous Kardashian clan. Last week, however, Caitlyn Jenner was the most famous person in the world, according to Google at least. Searches for Ms Jenner outpaced those of her step-daughter, Kim Kardashian, by a factor of seven, despite the news that Ms Kardashian is now expecting her second child with Kanye West, a famous recording artist. Which is just to say that the advent of Caitlyn Jenner is, like it or not, a very big deal. Ms Jenner's pioneering public journey across the newly porous boundaries of gender identity lends an urgency to the question of what we owe, morally and legally, to the transgendered. There's no avoiding this conversation now.

Republican presidential contenders would prefer to avoid it, however. "Stay the hell away from it,” advises Ed Rollins a Republican strategist. “f you’re not careful, you can end up insulting a large portion of the population". So far, the big names in the race for the GOP nomination have heeded this advice. Those candidates who have piped up have expressed a carefully modulated tolerance.

"I can only imagine the torment that Bruce Jenner went through," offered Lindsey Graham, a senator from South Carolina. "I hope he's—I hope she has found peace." Though Mr Graham affirmed that he is a "pro-life, traditional marriage kind of guy", he added that "If Caitlyn Jenner wants to be a Republican, she is welcome in my party."

"If he says he’s a woman, then he’s a woman," said Rick Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator not known for his open-mindedness. "My responsibility as a human being is to love and accept everybody. Not to criticise people for who they are." As an outspoken critic of gay relationships, Mr Santorum has long reserved the right to criticise people for what they do, but he refrained from knocking all that Ms Jenner has done to make herself womanly.

This combination of silence and accommodation has unsettled some conservative commentators. "A surgically damaged man appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair, and the applause is mandatory," writes David French of the National Review. He then argues that the "sexual selfishness and radical personal autonomy” of the transgender movement “shares the same logic as such cultural catastrophes as no-fault divorce and abortion on demand", which are naturally to blame for "poverty, depression, and increasing inequality between two-parent families and the transient remainder". Mr French contends that conservatives are being bullied into a dangerous silence by left-leaning cultural arbiters. "By refusing to speak," he writes, "we contribute to the notion that even conservatives understand that something is wrong—something is shameful—about our own deepest beliefs."

Steve Deace, a syndicated radio host based in Iowa, offered a similar but more practical warning: "If we're not going to defend as a party basic principles of male and female, that life is sacred because it comes from God, then you're going to lose the vast majority of people who've joined that party."

It is surprising that a warning like this needs to be issued at all. Until recently, Republican politicians have been brash culture warriors. Mr Santorum once compared same-sex marriage to the union of a man and a dog, and still won the 2012 Iowa caucus. So why not speak out now? Surely the normalisation of Ms Jenner's gender fluidity is a terrifying prospect for anyone trying, and failing, to hold the line against changing sexual norms. And religious conservatives have long been essential to any conservative victory at the polls.

Still, it would seem that Mr Rollins is right. Ambitious Republicans really ought to keep their traps shut—or, like Messrs Graham and Santorum, offer Ms Jenner an awkward embrace. But if this is true, and it would be electoral poison for any Republican presidential candidate to campaign against Caitlyn Jenner's “sexual selfishness”, then haven't religious conservatives already lost the game?

Well, the game isn't over, but the outcome is not in doubt. The social forces that brought us to the Caitlyn Jenner moment are irreversibly ascendant. The gulf between the anguished vehemence of religious conservatives and the timidity of their brightest political lights is a sign of the times.

This is not to say that conservatives are being bullied by cultural liberals or are ashamed of their deepest beliefs, as Mr French seems to think. Rather, the silence may reflect a dawning realisation that "our deepest beliefs" are not quite what we thought they were.

One of the enduring puzzles of America is why it has remained so robustly religious while its European cousins have secularised with startling rapidity. One stock answer is that America, colonised by religious dissenters and lacking an officially sanctioned creed, has always been a cauldron of religious competition and, therefore, innovation. The path to success in a competitive religious marketplace is the same as the path to success in business: give the people what they want.

Americans tend to want a version of Americanism, and they get it. Americanism is a frontier creed of freedom, of the inviolability of individual conscience and salvation as self-realisation. The American religion does Protestantism one better. Not only are we, each of us, qualified to interpret scripture, but also we each have a direct line to God. You can just feel Jesus. In my own American faith tradition, a minority version of Mormonism, the Holy Spirit—one of the guises of God—is a ubiquitous, pervasive presence. Like radio waves, you've just got to tune it in.

In a magisterial study, "The American Religion", Harold Bloom maintains that the core of the inchoate American faith is the idea of a "Real Me" that is neither soul nor body, but an aspect of the divinity itself, a "spark of God". To find God, then, is to burrow inward and excavate the true self from beneath the layers of convention and indoctrination. Crucially, this personal essence cannot fall under the jurisdiction of the "natural law" of God's creation. Just as God stands outside His creation, so does the authentic self, which just is a piece of God. "[T]he American self is not the Adam of Genesis," Mr Bloom writes, "but is a more primordial Adam, a Man before there were men or women." Roman Catholic teachings about the obligatory roles of man and woman in the created natural order live on in the American religion as a faint and fading ancestral memory, but they are flatly at odds with the central American dogma of the "Real Me" as a bit of original divinity that stands apart. Indeed, from the perspective of the American religion, as Mr Bloom explains it, a moral code based on something as debased as "nature" offensively denies our inherent divinity. "No American concedes that she is part of nature," Mr Bloom says. Ms Jenner certainly has not conceded it.

In this light, Mr French's contention that Ms Jenner is "surgically damaged" smacks of a crudely materialistic philosophy that roots moral identity in the dispensation of genitalia. Far from "damaged", Ms Jenner's medical transfiguration is a glorious example of the American faith in action. She has refashioned mere nature to better reflect the hard-won truth of the divinity within.

Ms Jenner, it bears mentioning, is also a committed Christian. In the Washington Post Josh Cobia relates what Ms Jenner, then known as Bruce, taught him about Jesus, and life, at a non-denominational evangelical church they both attended. "Jesus wasn’t one to turn away from those the world had labelled broken," Mr Cobia concluded. "He was the one who would walk toward them with open arms."

The tolerant Jesus of Mr Cobia and Ms Jenner may not be the Jesus of Thomas Aquinas or Martin Luther or John Knox or John Wesley. He is a Jesus perhaps more thoroughly invested in the "autonomous eroticised individualism" of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman than any first-century reinterpretation of the Judaic law. But that is the American and still-Americanising Jesus of many millions of believers who, like Caitlyn Jenner, attend non-denominational evangelical churches, and who, like Caitlyn Jenner, vote Republican.

This is why going after Ms Jenner is ultimately a loser for Republican presidential wannabes. Caitlyn Jenner of Malibu is a leading indicator not of the secularisation of America, but of the ongoing Americanisation of Christianity. There's no point dying in the last ditch to defend Old World dogma against the transformative advance of America's native faith. Especially not if it will leave you out of step with the growing number of voters who find divinity by spelunking the self.

 

[Wild Bill]

Not a problem, and this is my response.

I would think that it is right to re-evaluate how we are combating them, since the Iraq army has proven to be worthless. We were counting on the Iraq army to actually, you know fight. We spent about $25 Billion on training their army as of the end of 2014, and they are worthless.

They don't have a finalized plan, according to the POTUS, so what are they re-evaluating?

 

[pumpdog20]

The Economist's Will Wilkinson just posted an article titled "The Caitlyn Jenner Moment":

"If his mama calls him Bruce, Imma call him Bruce."