Fluff- It's Not Just a New England Thing
Here in New England we have a regional dessert item called Fluff used to make moon pies. It's kind of like creamy marshmellows, very sweet, almost all sugar and delicious. It has no nutritional value and you definately would not want to make a diet of it.
In listening to Sen. Edwards at a forum on the Iraq War for an hour, I could not help but think of Fluff. He was impeccably dressed, charming, spoke with a soft southern drawl using liberal buzz words and hot points to motivate the overwhelmingly far left crowd. He could not help himself from straying from the forum topic and had to bring in comments on global warming, his friend Al Gore and then Dick Cheney. The crowd loved the performance. I was impressed with the performance. However, I found a big something lacking. Substance.
During the questions and answer period, he was very articulate but almost seemed niave. When asked about troop withdrawal, he answered that if elected, an immediate withdrawal of 40,000 troops with the remainder withdrawn in 9 months. When asked "regardless of the situation at the time?", he answered "regardless". He went on to explain his "plan" would hinge upon working with Syria and Iran jointly to stabilize the situation and stated that Iran's main concern was "a million refugees" if civil war broke out. A question arose in my mind; If Iran won't even comply with UN International directives and sanctions regarding nuclear weapons and balistic missle technology, how can he believe they will work with the U.S. on our foreign policy goals?
A short time later, he was asked what he saw as potential negative impacts of an immediate withdrawal strategy. He immediately responded, "civil war and genocide". That the Shite's ( the overwhelmingly majority of the population) might begin committing genocide of the Sunni and the Kurds. If this was to occur, he would "create" a multi-national coalition to provide humanitarian aid and assistance. This struck me as quite odd.
If Sen. Edwards was aware that the Shites would be the dominate sect in a genocide/civil war, then why would he believe that the million refugees, the majority of whom would be Sunni, would flee to Iran, a Shite theocracy for protection?
As Iran is currently providing assistance and explosives to the Shite militias in Iraq, does Sen. Edwards really believe they would stop assisting the Iraqi Shites in creating an Iraq Shite theocracy out of fear of refugees?
Finally, after previously talking about being the party of compassion, why would the Senator want to allow or create a situation which most probably results in the genocide of millions of men, women and children?
The fact that when he went from topic to topic, question to question and answer to answer, he would effectively contradict himself left me with the feeling that he just didn't or couldn't grasp the complexity of any issue beyond politics. Like Fluff, I enjoyed seeing Sen. Edwards in person and face to face, but I would not make a diet of him. In my opinion, he just doesn't have the skills or mental acuity to be our president.