Christopher Bell's Comments
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Sep 20, 2008 | comments: 62
Christopher Bell Sep 21, 2008, 1:07pm EDT
Obama! Chris Bell
Nov 3, 2007 | comments: 1
Christopher Bell Nov 9, 2007, 11:10pm EST
Herb--A thought-provoking article which will make you few friends in conservative circles but then you know that. In order to arrive at your goal, leaders with vision need to re-frame the issue in a way which makes sense to our citizens. If I knew the best way to do this, I certainly would be doing something different with my life. Chris
Oct 27, 2007 | comments: 133
Christopher Bell Nov 4, 2007, 11:53pm EST
Kathryn--Well-written review (as usual) regarding a book which seems to resonate with the dreams and hopes of many on Gather. The book sounds quintessentially American--the rugged individualist succeeding by focus and will-power. Does it not also describe our collective American ego? We always want more because we are never satisfied with what we have now. The future will, or at least should always be better than the present. In this world, however, change is constant and everyone and everything is transitory. Striving to reach our goals is good so long as we try to remember to be alert and alive to what is now because everything we do only occurs in the present moment. Best, Chris Bell
Jul 1, 2007 | comments: 3
Christopher Bell Jul 30, 2007, 10:56am EDT
Hi Gisela,
It is indeed nice to hear from you. I hope you and your family are well and grateful...Chris
May 26, 2007 | comments: 27
Christopher Bell Jun 4, 2007, 1:14am EDT
Well, Patrick, we will just have to agree to disagree. Chris
Apr 20, 2007 | comments: 44
Christopher Bell Jun 1, 2007, 12:23am EDT
Pamela--Oh so true! Great poem. Happiness is a choice! Best wishes and hope you had a terrific birthday! Chris Bell
May 26, 2007 | comments: 27
Christopher Bell May 31, 2007, 11:41pm EDT
Patrick--I have no doubt whatsoever about al-Qaida'sdesire to acquire and use nuclear weapons on the US. However, the present mess in Iraq plays into al-Qaida'shands by diverting our attention, our resources and our manpower to a place where al-Qaidanuclear work is not. War in Iraq radicalizes more Muslims in al-Qaida's favor, makes us look like a "paper tiger" and tires the political will of Americans to attack the real battlefront.
The first thing we should do is to spend much more than the Bush Administration is currently spending to buy up all the enriched uranium, plutonium and existing bombs from whomever and wherever we can even if it costs as much or more than the war in Iraq. If we withdraw from Iraq and focus on the nuclear risks we have a much better chance than if we keep our eye on the wrong ball. Chris Bell
May 26, 2007 | comments: 27
Christopher Bell May 26, 2007, 11:40am EDT
Patrick C.--You wrote, above, "But if we let sponsors like Hussein, the Taliban, the radical Islamists of Iran, the thugs in Syria, or others, remain unchecked, they could indeed destroy
the US. They will, in fact, be thousands of times stronger, more effective, and more determined than ever." Do you seriously contend we are checking them now? How do we "check them"? Should we bomb Syria, Iran, Pakistan (where the Talaban now hide in part), etc., Unless we use nuclear weapons, such bombing with conventional weapons having proved ineffective so far, we will not effectively "check" them. Of course then, we prove N. Korea and Iran correct, one really does need nuclear weapons to "check" the unilateral aggressiveness of the US! As for the UN resolution, there never were any WMD found after the invasion as Iraq claimed so your insertion of the resolution, although interesting for me to read, is rather beside the point.

I really don't have a good answer for what to do now in Iraq other than to withdraw and see what happens. All I do know is that what we are doing now and for the last four years has been an unmitigated failure and has worsened, not improved the situation in the Mideast and our influence around the world. All hell may break loose in Iraq if we leave; things probably will get worse. If this is the real problem, I see no evidence, and you have produced none, that the present course is the solution. Our military is exhausted and depleted as is our treasury. We are a democracy and our citizens are convinced the present war and strategy is a disaster. Poll after poll of Iraqis indicate a majority want us to leave. Time to go.... Chris as far as I am concerned.
Apr 29, 2007 | comments: 21
Christopher Bell May 1, 2007, 12:11am EDT
Your cost-benefit analysis is compelling. Unfortunately, our federal, state and local governments tend to use such analytical tools only when they wish to de-fund programs. There are many governmental programs which have demonstrated repeatedly that they return many times the dollars spent which, nonetheless, are not fully funded. So, what will it take to fully fund education using the targeted approach you suggest? Perhaps both carrot and stickshould be used simultaneously. Give a school district a choice between losing federal education money or adopting a specified reform with the carrot of being given the federal money to do it. Then see what happens. Chris Bell
Jan 30, 2007 | comments: 23
Christopher Bell Feb 2, 2007, 12:35am EST
Marty--Just to clarify my point, we cannot control others but we can control ourselves. Actually, I fly quite often but obviously driving is out of the question for me. Isn't it better to be "personally inconvenienced" rather than at war tens of thousands of miles away with hordes of militant terrorists whose passions we continue to inflame thereby becoming their most effective recruitment tool? If we get mad enough to bomb Iran, let's say, is it so illogical to assume they will get mad enough to bomb us back? After the Japenese bombed Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt made it one of his personal military priorities to find a way for us to bomb Japan in retaliation. Thus, General Dolittle's raid on Tokyo came to fruition. Our raid had little military significance because of the small number of planes involved, but it gave the folks at home a tremendous morale boost. I am not a pacifist. There certainly are people out there who mean us harm regardless of what we do. No doubt some of them will need killing as a matter of our self-defense.But it is not always true that the best defense is a good offense, particularly when our enemy apparently views "martyrdom" on the battlefield as a direct, non-stop, do not pass "go" trip to Heaven. It would be more effective if we could use their own strength against them much as a Judo master defeats an opponent by re-direction rather than resistance.

Should we bbe "personally inconvenienced?" Damn right we should. Aren't we at war? Chris
Jan 30, 2007 | comments: 23
Christopher Bell Feb 1, 2007, 11:09am EST
Marty--You stated in a comment to your article:"
...Addressing Kathleen's substanative comments about whose job it is to control the middle east, I think the only reason we are trying to be the school yard
security guard in that region is because no one else is doing it."
First, We have no such "control" over other peoples or nations. It is a peuliarlly American illusion to suppose otherwise. We may or may not have some influence on some issues in some areas, we may create some positive or negative consequences based on how we assess or misassess the behavior of others and we assuredly can kill and maim. But "control" is way out of our hands.
Second, in addition to believeing in the illusion of control, we also adore action. Unfortunately, we tend to act first and think later which seems to be the case with our tragic Iraq folly. Moreover, the area over which action is most effective is ourselves. For example, we would have far more impact on the islamicists andIran if we moved immediately to curb our use of oil. Lowering the price of oil by reducing consumption, as Tom Friedman has said, will do far more to undercut our foes than will tanks and soldiers. Of course, we Americans feel entitled to maintain our current lifestyle at any cost so we will oppose a gasoline tax and real investment on a crash emergency basis into alternatives sources of energy which would promote reduced oil consumption. It is far easier to blame others than it is to honestly assess our own actions and options. Chris Bell
Jan 11, 2007 | comments: 18
Christopher Bell Jan 30, 2007, 3:31am EST
Randy--In the end, we are all dead. We can and should take prudent steps to defend our country and our people by enhancing our external intelligence capacities to discover plots against the US. We should act against those plots. However, premptive strikes against other countries like N. Korea or Iran only promote more conflict. We cannot terminate all of our enemies. Since many of our enemies now are not nation states, it makes it even more difficult to take effective action against them. We can pursue our "war against terror" and fight "terrorists outside the US as you suggests but the evidence is we only breed more terrorists and we cannot kill them all. Nor can we ever assure our countrymen we will not be subjected to a nuclear weapon smuggled into the US by terrorists. How can we make peace more likely than continued war,with all of its attendant risks to ourselves and others? By being more peaceful and less militarily aggressive. We do not promote peace when we launch war. violence begets violence. If you bomb theirs, why will they not want to bomb ours? It would be far more intelligent to follow Tom Friedman's concept and dramatically reduce our dependency on Mid-East oilto throttle down the printing of petro dollars funding those who teach and practice hatred and violence.

As for World War II and our use of force against Germany and Japan the times and circumstances are different. japan and Germany were nation states who seized other countries with an obvious intent to keep on going as far as they could. We could join in battle with clear enemies. Today, our terrorist foes choosewhen and where to fight. Rarely do we catch them in a pitched field battle where we have an overwhelming advantage. They hide and live among civilians. Our traditional method for waging war is not effective in this context and only makes things worse by creating more enemies and ill-will.
My example of how war does not create peace would be Israel. It has a superb military. It believes in and practices preemptive strikes. It has extracted from its enemies "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" since its founding. It has extremely high internal security mechanisms. Still, its people are killed by suicide bombers and Katusha rockets. If Israel cannot fight its way to peace in the Middle East, what gives you the idea that we can? Chris
Jan 24, 2007 | comments: 15
Christopher Bell Jan 25, 2007, 3:12am EST
Shannon--Thanks for your personal experience on this issue. We are so short-sighted on health care insurance in general and health care in particular. Bush et al goes around with his allies saying, in effect, "Your end of the boat is sinking!" as if our collective lives are not bound together in reality and spirit. Chris
Jan 24, 2007 | comments: 15
Christopher Bell Jan 24, 2007, 9:50pm EST
Randy--I do not know about which health insurance premiums are subject to income taxand which are not. What I do know is that I pay income tax on my employer's share of health insurance premiums it provides to partially pay for my coverage which makes perfect sense as it is just like paying me a higher salary. Be that as it may, I am surprised that a conservative such as yourself would approve of increasing the budget deficit for a gimmick. For a President who claims he wishes to balance the budget, he has an odd way of going about it if he wants to give away even more taxpayer dollars for a plan which obviously will not increase health insurance coverage for the poor and lower middle class. Chris
Jan 24, 2007 | comments: 15
Christopher Bell Jan 24, 2007, 2:57am EST
Sandy--OK but I think those who propose and support such policies need to be forced or at least embarrassed into defending them. there nevercan be any real accountability unless this stuff gets challenged intellectually as opposed to just dismissed--which is one justifiable approach--but then the outcome seems to me to be determined only by political force which brings much heat but not much light. Political force may be all that is left ultimately but it doesn't deal with the hard policy issues, in my opinion, only who is politically stronger. Until now, for the last decade or so, the Republicans have been stronger so that equation-political might makes right, er, I mean correct, won't dig us out of the hole we are in. Chris
Jan 24, 2007 | comments: 15
Christopher Bell Jan 24, 2007, 2:16am EST
Daniel--The problem is that a person living paycheck to paycheck can't afford to buy the health insurance in order to get the tax deduction. You have to buy the insurance in the first place in order to get any benefit from the deduction. If your income effectively precludes saving beyond what you inevitably pay out over the year because stuff happens, and you don't have the money left to purchase the insurance, the plan is of no benefit at all to those who really need the help. Chris
Jan 24, 2007 | comments: 15
Christopher Bell Jan 24, 2007, 1:43am EST
I tried to block indent the long quotation from the address but I have no idea whether or not that happened. If not, and reading the text is confusing for this reason, I apologize. My screenreader and I really do not understand all of the new editing options on gather or in Word either, unfortunately. chris
Jan 11, 2007 | comments: 18
Christopher Bell Jan 12, 2007, 4:29pm EST
Randy---As I said in the article, we can kill people. And we did just that against the the Nazis and Japanese as you say. What we can't do is force another people to build a nation in our image or based upon any other model. But that is exactly what Bush has been trying to do in Iraq and elsewhere, bring liberty and dwemocracy to others. We can help to remove barriers to liberty and self-government if and when such barriers are ours to control. but we can't make a nation coalesce. That has to be done internally by the people themselves.
Liebermann's quote is catchy but meaningless. What does "victory" mean in the context ofIraq? We don't have enough troops to seal Iraq's border to bar islamisists from entering. For that matter, we cannot even seal our own border.
I invite you to debate with me what "victory" means in the Iraq context. You would need to write the article painting your picture--or the picture of other conservatives--of what "victory in Iraq" means and provide some idea of what the US would have to do to get there. I sincerely would gbe interested in reading such an article. Do you want to do it? Chris
Jan 11, 2007 | comments: 18
Christopher Bell Jan 11, 2007, 11:18pm EST
Thanks to you all for reading and commenting. I agree with everything said except the last tongue and cheek point about me as president--YIKES, what a nightmare that would be! Chris
Nov 16, 2006 | comments: 16
Christopher Bell Nov 20, 2006, 12:57am EST
Randy--I also take quite a few prescriptions for my physical and mental health and many of the drugs I take are relatively new ones. Notwithstanding our apparently similar reliance on various medications for daily living, My bottom line is the reverse of yours, Nancy's and don's conclusion. I am not only willing to have the government set drug prices, I look forward to the day it does so! I would much rather see single payer health care than the present system which provides excellent health care to many but which is staggering from ever-rising costs with one-sixth of the population being left with no coverage at all. You assume that the result of government imposed (I still say there will be negotiations as part of this process) drug prices will result in a loss of R&D. That depends on the level of the prices, whether there will be offsetting subsidies or tax breaks.. In other words, the devil is in the details as the saying goes. I do not believe an ideological rejection of the approach is warranted until such an approach is fleshed out. I believe it will be positive for consumers and you believe it will be negative. Depending on the specific plan being proposed, I might end up agreeing with you. I also would not want to touch the current system if I thought it was acceptable as is. However, I think the current system is broken and needs fixing. I might add that I heard on NPR that the health insurance industry has proposed a plan for coverage of all Americans. I have not looked at their actual proposal. However, as described on NPR, it includes expanding medicare and Medicaid as well as providing for some additional means of coverage by private insurers. I add this note merely to say that even the current private sector health insurance crowd is proposing to expand rather than eliminate the role of government in enlarging and improving what we have now. I believe the insurers understand that universal health coverage cannot be achieved without governmental involvement regardless of conservative ideology. Chris
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Christopher Bell
Roseville, MN
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