In This Issue:
- The Future of the US in Iraq
- Clash of Fundamentalisms
- Full List of Articles

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Q & A with Past American Heroes

A thought-provoking discussion of current events with notable figures of the past.

1. What is your view of "liberating" people who live under a brutal dictator?

"Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her [America's] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own." -John Quincy Adams 6th U.S. President

2. Some in the U.S. believe that our form of government should be promoted to the rest of the world.  What do you think?

"Believing our own form of government to be the best, we have never attempted to propagate it by intrigues, by diplomacy, or by force." -James K. Polk 11th U.S. President

3. Is it prudent to concern our government with the criticism of the domestic affairs of other countries?

"While naturally sympathizing with every effort to establish a republican form of government, it has been the settled policy of the United States to concede to people of foreign countries the same freedom and independence in the management of their domestic affairs that we have always claimed for ourselves." -Grover Cleveland 22nd & 24th U.S. President
 

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

Jeannette Rankin,
First Woman in Congress

4. Why should Americans be concerned about our foreign policy, i.e. the invasion of Iraq?

"Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us." -John F Kennedy Jr. 35th U.S. President

5. Is it wise, as some in Washington would have you believe, to give up some of your freedom in order to be more secure?

"They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety." -Benjamin Franklin Scientist & Founding Father

6. What do you think about the recent facts which illustrate that Iraq did not pose an imminent threat to the U.S.?

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
-John Adams 2nd U.S. President

"The degree of one's emotion varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts -- the less you know the hotter you get." - Bertrand Russell, British Nobel Laureate

7. Is it a wise decision to go overseas and secure our interests in other countries?

"If there be one principle more deeply rooted than any other in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest." -Thomas Jefferson 3rd U.S. President

8. Shouldn't we be proud of our military machine and encourage it?

"Military glory: the attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood." -Abraham Lincoln 16th U.S. President

9. How would you characterize war?

"War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children." -Jimmy Carter 39th U.S. President

10. What do you think of  people who believe that a foreign country is a vital ally and needs to be given special treatment?
"The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife."
-Theodore Roosevelt, 26th U.S. President

11. Is it okay to mislead the public in order to prepare for war?

"I hate deception, even where the imagination only is concerned." -George Washington 1st U.S. President

12. Is it okay to question the decision to go to Iraq or is that unpatriotic?

"When even one American (who has done nothing wrong) is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril." -Harry S. Truman 33rd U.S. President

13. Should we trust the government to protect our civil liberties from assault?

"Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance." -Woodrow Wilson 28th U.S. President

14. If our ultimate goal is peace, should we continue to spend over $400 billion per year on military expenditures?

"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -Albert Einstein Scientist & Inventor

15. What do you think people in modern day America are forgetting?

"One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means."
-Martin Luther King Jr. American Civil Rights Leader