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Anonymous
Anonymous asked in Politics & GovernmentPolitics · 1 decade ago

War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on.....?

The War on Poverty was introduced by President Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964. After spending countless billions on social programs to help the poor and we are no closer to winning this war than when we started.

The war on drugs was started in its broadest sense, in 1880, when the U.S. and China completed an agreement (see Opium wars) that prohibited the shipment of opium between the two countries. Over the past 126 years, we have spent billions of dollars and have not won this war.

The War on Terrorism was started at the 1972 Olympics by the PLO and the terrorist have been attacking us for over 35 years now. Until 9/11/2001 we did not respond. Why do the dems think that after 6 years of effort, we are going to be able to erraticate a problem that has been going for at least 41 years.

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  • 1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    Dems do not think. Liberals don't care about facts. Liberals want the government to control everything. Liberals want to control the government.

  • Ron L
    Lv 4
    1 decade ago

    Also, the War on Cancer, started under President Nixon and cancer rates are as high or higher than ever. The problem is that we are using the wrong metaphor- namely "war".

    In government language, this means that we will spend billions of our tax dollars using the same failed approach as before.

    No great innovations or solutions have ever come out of these "war" programs. Instead, we have large bureaucracies and government contractors feeding off tax money without any results. In turn, these government contractors keep contributing to politicians' campaigns to keep the money coming. They are rightly worried that if the problem was actually solved, they wouldn't get any more money, so it is actually against their interests to solve the problem.

    The more they can create a crisis mindset among the population, the more money they can get because people think that spending more money on the problem will solve it. In dealing with government, you get rewarded for failure, not for success.

    If there is a problem in the schools, the answer is more money for the schools, not less money as there would be in the private sector.

    Both dems and repubs engage in this "war" mentality. It is part of our system. So, we waste billions of dollars and achieve nothing and can't even find a way out of this situation.

    The military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about has taken over our government in the form of various "wars" on drugs, poverty, terrorism, cancer, etc. Too many people are making too much money not solving these problems and feeding on our tax dollars. We are just too naive to see it.

    Thank you for bringing up this issue.

  • 1 decade ago

    Why do you think you can win a war on an idea or a concept at all? Even if you kill all of the people that count them selves as terrorists, there will always be those people willing to resort to instilling terror to get thier point across.

    Winning the war on terrorism makes no more sense than winning a war on the color green.

  • 1 decade ago

    Vietnam, Gulf of Tonkin, will be what people mostly remember and that is why he did not seek reelection.

    His other black mark was a comercial used one time despicting a girl and the atomic bomb when he went against Barry M Goldwater, Sr before the 3 November 1964 election.

    A Libertarian as the late US Senator and retired USAF General (4 star) Goldwater at http://www.friesian.com/ross/ca40/

    Here it is and it title: Classic Political Ad: Daisy Girl (1964)

    Source(s): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKs-bTL-pRg I was born 3 January 1965 in Tijuana North Baja California Mexico. http://360.yahoo.com/sfvalleyrose
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  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    > Why do the dems think that after 6 years of effort, we are going to be able to erraticate a problem that has been going for at least 41 years.

    perhaps because you're expected to focus on the problem itself, not on the iraqi oil hunt.

    oh, and next time you might want to elect a leader who is less of an asinine boor. it could help the overall quest.

  • 1 decade ago

    You could spend a thousand years fighting them in Iraq and you would never get rid of them. Terrorists are located all over the globe. There are terrorist cells in the U.S. now. That is why it is called the global war on terror. Get out of Iraq and get our resources focused on the terrorists.

  • Vaughn
    Lv 6
    1 decade ago

    Good point. History repeats itself. And repeats itself. And repeats itself.

    People who instigate any "war on [idea]" do so because it gets an immediate groundswell of enthusiasm, not because they necessarily believe, logically, that it will yield signficant results over time.

    And, er... why are you asking only the DEMS about the War on Terror? Isn't this one more the Republicans' baby?

  • 1 decade ago

    If every church in America would take in one homeless person, 80% of homelessness would end. If we registered our addicts and gave them drugs in trade for sterilization, instead of arresting them for possession, we could cut the addiction rate in half.

    War on terrorism- that's a tough one. If the moderate muslims would open schools teaching the true Q'uran instead of selected bits of it, that would slow recruitment rates, but who can say by how much.

  • 1 decade ago

    At least the war on the middle class is going well.

  • Bill
    Lv 6
    1 decade ago

    And don't forget the biggest war of all......the war on liberals!

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