Only… we don’t live in a perfect world. The human mind in this part of the world, the Middle-East, seems to be operating in a very different way than it does in the Western world. Case in point: the Gaza disengagement and withdrawal from southern Lebanon about a decade ago, by the Israeli government. These were pure acts of good faith, destined to give the Gazans and Lebanese a chance to prove to their neighbor and the world that they would be able to “self-govern” and reciprocate friendly acts towards their neighbor. Not to get too much into details about what ensued after -I’m sure you’ve been following the news- but to this days, Quassam rockets are still pouring in the hundreds on a daily basis in Israeli cities neighboring the Gaza strip. What does this tell you? Not a very nice response, eh?

Yes, the US doesn’t share direct borders with any of these countries but that doesn’t protect the country either (as we all saw on 9/11). This just to say that, infortunately, you need to constantly be on your guards in such an imperfect world. Leave your guard down and remove the Iranian paramilitary from the US blacklist of terror organisations as Obama intelligently suggested, and you can be certain that Ahmadinejhad will take this to his advantage. To do what, I leave this to your imagination.

Bush is good at “showing that America means business”. That sure did wonders. Realistically, the causes of Islamic extremism are much more complicated than them “hating our freedom” and can’t be vanquished by our president intimidating them.

I’m not so sure that Ron Paul would make a good president but he’s a straight talker and made quite a few excellent points: “We didn’t have to invade their country. But to deal with terrorism, we can’t solve the problem if we don’t understand why they [attack us]. And they don’t come because we’re free and prosperous. They don’t go after Switzerland and Sweden and Canada. They come after us because we’ve occupied their land, and instead of reversing our foreign policy after 9/11, we made it worse by invading two more countries and then threatening a third. Why wouldn’t they be angry at us? It would be absolutely bizarre if they weren’t. We’ve been meddling over there for more than 50 years. We overthrew a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953; we were Saddam Hussein’s ally and encouraged him to invade Iran. If I was an Iranian, I’d be annoyed myself, you know. So we need to change our policy, and I think we would reduce the danger.”

Exactly :)

This blog was not meant to endorse Obama as much as trying to raise the level of political debate among us deafies which is why I asked folks to come last night. So far, the comments here seems spirited and intelligent - I want to see more coming.

As for the President’s influence, they can affect how citizens buy houses or meet our daily needs. For example, Presidents and Congress can reform the tax code and if they take Buffet’s advice, progressive tax codes would work - i.e. poor folks pay less taxes and save more for their daily needs and you work your way up. This is different from tax cuts.

For the record, I am a fiscal pragmatist who supports cuts in our federal spending i.e. earmarks and entitlement reform.