Realpolitik - About Bush

[talltrees]

Don't put words in my mouth, you fascist wannabe.

Were you in Nam? Did you smell the stink of burning flesh?

Punk.

 

[ladelfina]

youbet, you don't know me. "People like me" are, to you, some imaginary group yukking it up when NObody is doing that. Instead, people against both the Iraq war and the Vietnam war have wanted desperately to save our young soldiers' lives and not squander them needlessly.

"Funny" (in the dictionary "people like me" have) can also mean "strange", "odd", "peculiar" or even "tricky" or "false" (as in funny money).

You want sick? THIS is sick:
Glenn Greenwald - Political Blogs and Opinions - Salon

Fred Kagan yesterday went to National Review -- home to countless tough guy warriors like him who fight nothing -- to argue against Senator Webb's bill. There is no need to give our troops more time away from the battlefield, Kagan types. Besides, doing that would be too administratively difficult ("this amendment would actually require the Army and Marine Corps staffs to keep track of how long every individual servicemember had spent in either Iraq or Afghanistan, how long they had been at home, how long the unit that they were now in had spent deployed, and how long it had been home").

If troops want more time at home, Kagan says, there is an easy way to achieve that: "win the war we're fighting." Of course, that would not even work, because Kagan and his friends at the Weekly Standard and the American Enterprise Institute have many more wars planned beyond Iraq for other families' sons and daughters to fight. For that reason, Kagan actually had the audacity several months ago to type this:

The president must issue a personal call for young Americans to volunteer to fight in the decisive conflict of this generation.

That's the history of our country for the last six years at least. The Fred Kagans and his dad and his brother and his wife and his best friend Bill Kristol sit back casually demanding more wars, demanding that our troops be denied any relief, demanding that the President call for other families to volunteer to fight in their wars -- all "as an intellectual or emotional exercise," as Webb put it.

That's all revolting enough. But to then watch Fred Kagan sit around opposing Senator Webb's attempts to relieve some of the strain on our troops -- all because it would require too much paperwork to figure out and because they haven't yet won Fred Kagan's war and thus deserve no breaks -- is almost too much to bear. But it is worth forcing oneself to observe it, as unpleasant as it might be, because within this ugly dynamic lies much of the explanation for what has happened to our country since the 9/11 attack, and the personality type that continues to drive it today.

Kagan is apparently quoting or paraphrasing Gen. Odierno on the "win the war" bit. He continues (on expanding the number of military personnel):

...grudgingly, the administration has announced an extremely modest program of expansion on a five-year timeline. If the critics of the current strategy who purport to be so concerned about the strain of the forces were serious, they would be pounding their desks and demanding a more aggressive program for expanding the ground forces. The fact that most of them have made no such demands speaks volumes about the real motivations of amendments such as this one.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDA1MjFhNjFhZjQzMjdhMTQ5MWJkYWQ4OTNmZTk0ZDc=

This is how surreal these people are. Note also the sleight-of-hand that lays the blame for the under-manning of the ground war at the feet of "the critics".

For those who don't know who Kagan is, he's one of the wingnut co-founders -- along with Bill Kristol, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, Scooter Libby, Perle, Bolton, Wolfowitz, Eliot Abrams, etc. -- of the PNAC. (Maybe some of you recall convicted felon Abrams as one of the Iran-Contra architects, now he's some Deputy Secretary-of-goddamned-State). Pretty much draft-dodgers all.. yet they really believe 100% in a kind of modern, exclusively military-driven, magical Manifest Destiny that does not stop at the Pacific Ocean. It stops nowhere. It stops at nothing. In their purity of ideology, there is not, nor should there be, a natural or rational limit.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm

That's why Webb's bill infuriates them. It implies resources have rational limits, here notably acknowledging the impossibility of fighting men/women to be expected to go on forever like Energizer bunnies. It implies America is not super-human, and that does not compute.

OAP is right to say "it is not over yet." They want to 'take out' Iran and Syria. It's easy for people to get sucked into the immediate Iraq/not-Iraq debate and lose sight of the fact that for the PNAC crowd Iraq is just a first, necessary, piece in a much larger puzzle they want to see put together.. and if you think Iraq is costly in terms of lives and dollars, you ain't seen nothin' yet. In their dreams, we would and SHOULD be waging war against half the world. If the majority of Americans were only truly cognizant of this..

 

[F-One]

OAP,

A PM would be great, I try to get as many angles to info to better understand the issues and I think this would be an interesting one. By the way due you know or read Pat Lang's blog - interesting comments from him and others - not that I agree with all - as I said I try to get various info to learn.

Thanks
F-One

 

[ladelfina]

hooo boy.. as if it couldn't get stranger, now we have "Incas".

Attytood: More proof "the surge is working": Right-wingers claim even the CIA is afraid to go outside without trigger-happy Blackwater

---
Plus, bonus-find-of-the-day, wherein we see where the "N more years!" Bush meme has root:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/hail-caesar-by-digby-ive-been-getting.html

Anointing a president-for-life will help counter the "drawbacks of democracy"!!!
That we don't appreciate the genius of Bush is due to our own "inadequacy"!

Just dumb-founded. Would never have thought to read words like this coming from an American.. I mean, isn't this why we oppose Castro, the Stalinists, etc.?

Frank Gaffney (noted in the post as a Family Security Matters board member) is -surprise!- also a PNAC guy (and Reagan-era Ass't. Sec. of Defense)!

Reviewing Atkinson's anti-PC book, Free Republic (site that right-wing sis sends me links to) has this to say: "FSM Contributing Editor Philip Atkinson’s expert evaluation is an important contribution to one of the premier issues of our times."

Must go shower now.

 

[dumpster56]

What is so damn absurd is that there are so many that give the president a pass on the finding and killing of osama bin laden and ayman al zwahiri. These were the guys who started the mess on 9/11, but we never finished the real war, getting them and every last person who went thru their terror camps in the late 90s. when we went into afganistan we got all the names when we found the camps. we should have hunted them all down in every part of the planet and made them disappear in the night. But no we used our big military to attack saddam. An arab socialist moron but who was boxed in.

We are past 6 years sitting in Iraq and hearing we have to win. In Iraq. Win What?? I always thought when you went to war you were to kill everything in sight until the other side put up the white flag. Right? Well that IS NOT the policy in Iraq or Afgahnistan for that matter. Uh its time to come home tax gasoline big time get americans to cahnge their habits where it comes to energy, rebuild the railroads take care of our own and tell the rest of the world to well GROW UP and build a better society for their people but america will be back on our side of the pond.

Oh here is the new report from bin laden and al zwahiri..
Bin Laden tape to declare war on Musharraf - Yahoo! News

Oh we are told we cannot go into pakistan. Uh right.

Bush supporters a question? Why are these two still alive and making videos?

 

[FinanceDude]

s
Oh we are told we cannot go into pakistan. Uh right.

Bush supporters a question? Why are these two still alive and making videos?

Start posting SOLUTIONS rather than complaints, and maybe we can have a decent discussion....instead of continuing to post "the boy who cried wolf" statements.............

 

[Rustic23]

Where are the Bush defenders?

Why would someone waste their breath on a group that have all ready made up their minds?

I dare say, after reading the post here, if someone attempted they would be shouted down with insults. Looks at some of the things said when someone points out misstatements.

For the most part, it appears that most posters in this thread believe they are more intelligent, had more information, new more about the middle east, and are better prepared to make decisions than the executive branch. You don't change closed minds.

Take one statement: 'Bush is stupid'. That is what the liberal press has told us and it appears most have consumed the argument. Bush is not an articulate speaker. But in a nation where less than 30% have a college degree, and less than 5% have an advanced degree, Bush's credentials do not come off as stupid. If you would like to attack his common sense, or decision process, fare game. However if you were only told:

a. has no high school diploma
b. has no college degree
c. has a degree from Yale and MBA from Harvard

I dare say most would not pick a and b the actors and actresses that make such a statement.

 

[FinanceDude]

Where are the Bush defenders?

Why would someone waste their breath on a group that have all ready made up their minds?

I dare say, after reading the post here, if someone attempted they would be shouted down with insults. Looks at some of the things said when someone points out misstatements.

For the most part, it appears that most posters in this thread believe they are more intelligent, had more information, new more about the middle east, and are better prepared to make decisions than the executive branch. You don't change closed minds.

Take one statement: 'Bush is stupid'. That is what the liberal press has told us and it appears most have consumed the argument. Bush is not an articulate speaker. But in a nation where less than 30% have a college degree, and less than 5% have an advanced degree, Bush's credentials do not come off as stupid. If you would like to attack his common sense, or decision process, fare game. However if you were only told:

a. has no high school diploma
b. has no college degree
c. has a degree from Yale and MBA from Harvard

I dare say most would not pick a and b the actors and actresses that make such a statement.

Good post........ Plus, I'm sure that MOST of the REAL stuff that goes on everywhere is not known to the average citizen of the US..........

 

[ladelfina]

Rustic23/FinanceDude, if you are saying actors and actresses (excluding Reagan?) should not be the most heedworthy sources for foreign policy discussion, I will agree with you most wholeheartedly!!

Maybe people's minds won't be changed 180 degrees. But I DO like to hear well-thought-out and sincere comments from people I probably don't entirely agree with on all things (like Wags!). You can cherry-pick both pro- and anti-Bush commenters anywhere and come up with statements that are too generic or black-and-white. But most posters in this thread haven't insulted other posters, and I think we all probably have a pretty good education. So I'll keep talking and I'll keep listening.

There are no end of educated, patriotic people within the administration who were not heeded. When Bush didn't like a general's assessment, he got a new general. You don't assess a situation as a rational adult with a HUGE responsibility by throwing out data you don't like and relying solely on ideology. This is pretty clearly his modus operandi in life, and frankly, it's worse than stupidity; mere stupidity could be excused.

Nords: tid-bit on Colin Powell

Bush's deployed his fetish for punctuality as a punitive weapon. When Colin Powell was several minutes late to a Cabinet meeting, Bush ordered that the door to the Cabinet Room be locked.

cookie756.html

If we are talking about the Epic Battle for Western Civilization (as we supposedly are), the Bush promoters have gotten pretty quiet recently, considering. Shouldn't they be stepping into the breach with redoubled fervor?

 

[retire@40]

And the forum spam continues....

 

[FinanceDude]

And the forum spam continues....

 

[brewer12345]

Boy, am I glad I took a pass on this one...

 

[Martha]

Boy, am I glad I took a pass on this one...

Happy birthday Brewer.

 

[brewer12345]

Thanks, martha.

 

[Zipper]

I think Bush is stupid.

How the hell could you have voted twice for such an obvious dimwit?

 

[REWahoo]

Note: With the addition of Zipper's carefully phrased comments we have now officially reached the point on this thread where the arguement turns to "Your mom wears combat boots!" and "My dad can beat up your dad!", to be followed immediately by the exchange of several volleys of "Oh Yeah?"

Enough already...

 

[retire@40]

...Enough already...

I vote to lock this thread.

 

[wildcat]

I have it on self-destruct mode. Everyone has 30 second left...

 

[youbet]

I vote to lock this thread.

Please........

 

[ERD50]

Just dumb-founded. Would never have thought to read words like this coming from an American.

I thought we worshipped free speech? So why be surprised when someone voices an opinion?

-ERD50