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Diggler posted attacks on American targets. I don't think those two counted as such (haven't
read much on either)

The article posted by the OP is absurd. A country is not made weaker because people are saying their leader sucks. Indeed, it’s a really important part of democracy. Even if he's quite good, which Bush fairly obviously wasn't,

And claiming a president tried to reach out to both sides, and using a single line from an acceptance speech that doesn’t even mention actual bi-partisanship, just a vague notion of governing everyone, something common in most every acceptance speech. It also flies in the face of his actual presidency, defined by partisanship and his with us or against us attitude.

Many of the current woes of the US are the direct result of an unwillingness to challenge the office of the President.

dogma wrote:Terrorism is the result of Imperial dominance, not soft foreign policy.

To some extent, sure. But if it was all about mistreatment of Islamic states and people, why is Russia only enemy #2? Up until the invasion of Iraq, Russian actions in Chechnya alone were worse than anything the Americans had done. And remember 9/11 came before the Americans had started their

It certainly plays a part, but it isn't the only factor. A perception of decadence plays a big part. Concerns over moderate Muslims succumbing to that decadence. Frustration at the weaknesses and failings of ME nations. It all plays a part.

malfred wrote:Diggler posted attacks on American targets. I don't think those two counted as such (haven't
read much on either)

They weren't. But what about the attacks on US targets in Iraq? Because there was a big deal made about fighting terrorists in Iraq so you didn't have to fight them at home, and the number of foreign fighters in Iraq. So if they were terrorists, shouldn't their bodycount be considered when talking about Bush' reduction in terrorist numbers?

dogma wrote:

DarthDiggler wrote:Gorgon-

Between WTC 1 and 2 you also had the African embassy bombings and the USS Cole attack. That's 4 attacks in 8 years before the current dry spell.

Well, if you want to drag terrorist attacks in other nations into the equation there have been how many in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel over the last 7 years?

No we were talking about attacks on American targets. Iraq and Afghanistan are wars.

sebster wrote:
To some extent, sure. But if it was all about mistreatment of Islamic states and people, why is Russia only enemy #2? Up until the invasion of Iraq, Russian actions in Chechnya alone were worse than anything the Americans had done. And remember 9/11 came before the Americans had started their

It isn't so much Islamic states as it is Middle Eastern states. There is a cultural commonality within much of the Levant which does not extend beyond the Lut Desert and Albor Mountains.

In any case, America's war on terror may not have begun until after 9/11, but our intervention in the ME has been consistent since the end of WWII. This wasn't so problematic when the USSR seemed to be the more imposing titan. But after the fall of the Soviet Union it became much more difficult for pragmatism to moderate anti-Imperial sentiments. Hence the correlation between support for Palestine and the down-turn in soviet influence.

sebster wrote:
It certainly plays a part, but it isn't the only factor. A perception of decadence plays a big part. Concerns over moderate Muslims succumbing to that decadence. Frustration at the weaknesses and failings of ME nations. It all plays a part.

I agree, but the only factor which the United States can reasonably affect is the overall invasiveness of our foreign policy. The greater the reach required to lay blame at the feet of the West the harder it will be for conservative leadership to forestall change.

DarthDiggler wrote:
No we were talking about attacks on American targets. Iraq and Afghanistan are wars.

American soldiers aren't American targets? Because if that's the case then you also have to disqualify the attack on the Cole, and the Khobar Towers bombing. Embassies are dubiously civilian these days, but I'll grant you that.

C'mon, Bush is clearly the worst president we've had in the last 50 years. There is really no comparison.

Let me state, upfront, I have no political affiliations. Socially, I tend to side with democrats, economically, I tend to go with the republicans. I believe the greatest president in the history of the country was Teddy Roosevelt. So that's kind of where I'm coming from.

To begin with, the man is an outright idiot who has ridden his family connections to everything he's ever had. He couldn't even own a baseball team successfully.

He stole two elections. He never won a popular vote, and the circumstances in which he won electoral votes are high suspicious, both in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004.

And, he did so in such a disgraceful manner. This man, who was AWOL from his National Guard unit for most of the Vietnam war (and, was in the Nat. Guard in the first place because his daddy pulled strings so he didn't have to serve overseas) oversaw the outright slander of a man who served his country overseas during a time of war.

Regardless of how Kerry protested when he got back from Nam (and many veterans from that war joined the anti-war movement afterwards), this was a man who served his country with distinction, and Bush's campaign in this regard was completely out of line.

His econmic policy has essentially be "print more money and hope it doesn't crash until I'm gone." To be fair, he almost did it.

His domestic policies have been ill-conceived and aimed at putting money in his friend's pockets. No child left behind is a joke. He has pulled money out of successful social programs and dumped it into his faith baed initiatives which borders on violation of separation of church and state.

His foreign policy has been to bully anyone and everyone, including long-time allies, leading to a worldwide anti-american sentiment like never before. And, after 9/11, we pretty much had worldwide sympathy, so that's how badly he has mismanaged our foreign image.

His staff have included the most corrupt and unethical people I can recall. Rove and Cheney are two seriously scary individuals. Cheney, in specific, has made millions from the U.S.'s presence in Iraq.

Even his approach to the job shows a lack of understanding of the powers of the President. The 'signing statments' which he has used extensively, and in some cases to basically say, "well, you passed this law, but I don't like it, so I won't enforce it" also border on unconstitutionality (if not actually being unconstitutional).

I'm surprised that his approval rating is as high as it is.

dogma wrote:

DarthDiggler wrote:
No we were talking about attacks on American targets. Iraq and Afghanistan are wars.

American soldiers aren't American targets? Because if that's the case then you also have to disqualify the attack on the Cole, and the Khobar Towers bombing. Embassies are dubiously civilian these days, but I'll grant you that.

I said they were WARS. Stop putting words in other peoples mouths to spout off your partisan ideals. Step outside the classroom and into the real world please.

DarthDiggler wrote:

dogma wrote:

DarthDiggler wrote:
No we were talking about attacks on American targets. Iraq and Afghanistan are wars.

American soldiers aren't American targets? Because if that's the case then you also have to disqualify the attack on the Cole, and the Khobar Towers bombing. Embassies are dubiously civilian these days, but I'll grant you that.

I said they were WARS. Stop putting words in other peoples mouths to spout off your partisan ideals. Step outside the classroom and into the real world please.

I'm not putting words in you mouth, I'm asking for clarification. Simply calling something a war does not change the fact that it involves American targets. Moreover, if Iraq and Afghanistan are wars, who are we at war with? Terrorists? I thought terrorists could only commit terrorist attacks. What suddenly makes them legitimate acts of war?

Arguing that we haven't had any terrorist attacks since 9/11 because of Bush is no different than the "rock that keeps tigers away" argument.

It's not like America was completely overwhelmed by large scale terrorist attacks before 9/11 and Bush stepped in to put a stop to it all. If Bush did such a great job, how do you account for:

- Why Bush refuses to testify to the 9/11 commission, and why the commission itself was "set up to fail" (9/11 commission chairman Thomas Kean's own words)

- Why Bin Laden was never caught

- Why the historically conservative, high ranking military officials interviewed for No End in Sight all state that the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war was so poor that they made every possible mistake they could've made at every single step of the way

dogma wrote:It isn't so much Islamic states as it is Middle Eastern states. There is a cultural commonality within much of the Levant which does not extend beyond the Lut Desert and Albor Mountains.

Okay, but how does that reconcile with Russia's invasion of Afghanistan?

In any case, America's war on terror may not have begun until after 9/11, but our intervention in the ME has been consistent since the end of WWII. This wasn't so problematic when the USSR seemed to be the more imposing titan. But after the fall of the Soviet Union it became much more difficult for pragmatism to moderate anti-Imperial sentiments. Hence the correlation between support for Palestine and the down-turn in soviet influence.

Yeah, true. Both sides played games in the middle east, but at the end of the game it seems the animosity is mostly against the Americans. I guess I'm not even suggesting there aren't reasons to hate the Americans, but wondering why they don't hate the Russians more?

I agree, but the only factor which the United States can reasonably affect is the overall invasiveness of our foreign policy. The greater the reach required to lay blame at the feet of the West the harder it will be for conservative leadership to forestall change.

I think we agree here.

Must be nice to have the power as a mod to in one moment shut down a thread that you think will be inflamitory, and start another right after it on the basis of one fits with your world view and the other does not.

sebster wrote:
Okay, but how does that reconcile with Russia's invasion of Afghanistan?

To be honest, I'm not entirely certain. It is, as you say, a complicated issue. On one hand you have the remnants of Pan-Arabism that bleeds through into Iranian politics, and supports their push against Israel as a manifestation of the West. On the other you have the idealist extremism of of groups like Bin Laden and crew, which is more reminiscent of Khomeini's push which overthrew the Shah. In that sense I suppose we're seeing a shift to a more moderate kind of Islamism that at least recognizes that virtuous force is not the only path to their goals. The kind of pragmatism which comes with success through the assumption of authority.

sebster wrote:
Yeah, true. Both sides played games in the middle east, but at the end of the game it seems the animosity is mostly against the Americans. I guess I'm not even suggesting there aren't reasons to hate the Americans, but wondering why they don't hate the Russians more?

To some extent I think it may be as simple as proximity. During the Cold War the USSR was a more immediate geographical issue than the US. Once the Soviets fell out of the picture as a power projector the US suddenly got a lot closer to home. They don't hate the Russians because they think they beat them.

Moreover, the Russian press was largely limited to Central Asia. And while there is a large Muslim contingent within that population, it remains distinctly separate from the ME on a cultural level; largely due to the slow contraction of Ottoman authority. As such, Russia may not be looked upon too fondly by globally-minded groups like Al-Qaeda, but more regionally oriented groups like Hamas couldn't care less so long as Russia stays out of their affairs. As such, there just aren't as many discreet entities who take issue with Russia, and so there is less collective resistance to their influence.

Fallen668 wrote:Must be nice to have the power as a mod to in one moment shut down a thread that you think will be inflamitory, and start another right after it on the basis of one fits with your world view and the other does not.

More like, some people treat political topics as an open license to flame. You don't get informative, productive discourse when people treat politics like an intellectual member-waving competition.


Edit:slightly ot.

Understand, the point of the thread is not to say Bush is awesome, but that the level of vitreol thrown at him is substantially out of proportion and flies in the face of tradition and the respect we normally give presidents, at least officially. There are countless Presidents who've done the same thing. History will bear out Bush, he may be relegated to Carter land, or reformed like Eisenhower and Truman as being excellent. but none of them have had waste treatment faciities named after them. Its insulting to the Office of the President.

Fallen668 wrote:Must be nice to have the power as a mod to in one moment shut down a thread that you think will be inflamitory, and start another right after it on the basis of one fits with your world view and the other does not.

I tell you it really is. I mean, ask the kids, I've had a Gorilla complex for years, but now its like ultimate power. Some wishes are granted, some denied. Some people raised up, some people ejected into the wilderness. Why I've even had a wheel installed that I use to randomly determine the fate of some poor hapless individual or thread depending on how cranky I am that day. Now that does vary of course. Ragnar uses dice, yakface has a carefully created computer hooked to a brownian motion generator, and Malfred has...oooh you don't want to know what Malf uses...

Redbeard wrote:
His staff have included the most corrupt and unethical people I can recall. Rove and Cheney are two seriously scary individuals. Cheney, in specific, has made millions from the U.S.'s presence in Iraq.

Rove and Cheney are scary. Rumsfield, too.

My coworker met Rumsfield at the Pentagon (my coworker was a guest with limited access) and
he had that feeling you get when you're in the presence of somebody who was bigger than
their physical presence suggested.

I imagine it's like that with all presidents as well. The office is bigger than the person inhabiting
it. I try to remember that, but it's difficult given the tenor of any message pushed by the White
House in the last 8 years.

Unfortunately, I'm afraid that Obama will need to have the same level of secrecy and authoritative
control in order to do anything that he promised to do.

Ah, well.

Frazzled wrote: and Malfred has...oooh you don't want to know what Malf uses...

I don't even know sometimes.

Honestly, I'm just looking forward to having a president willing to do news conferences and such. It's well-documented that they expose Bush to very few of these because he's gaffe-prone (see his comments about our response to a Chinese attack on Taiwan, our strong money policy, etc.).

I guess I just think Bush is the example of what you get when you elect a man of only middling ability thinking that "he'll surround himself with good people." Frankly, I think those people around him manipulated him quite a bit, and that had pretty disasterous consequences. Some of that is on his own shoulders -- the man obviously isn't interested in details or nuance and has an anti-intellectual streak. Still, maybe he is a bit of a tragic figure. Imagine being in a job over your head and your advisors (all of which have their own agendas and some of which are flat-out paranoid) are telling you all kinds of things and running amok.

I suppose my venom is truly directed at the whole adminstration more than Bush the individual. Bush doesn't have the skill set to really be the sole individual behind everything that went wrong during the last eight years. Cheney, on the other hand...

Everything I've read suggests that while Obama is inexperienced and will rely on his advisors, he has the capacity and desire to analyze and understand issues, yet is also clearly in charge. I think that gives him a chance to be a good one. Hey, if we're wrong, it's only four years. It'll go by before you know it.

Or does President Bush have a genius skill set in selection, those advisers didn't manipulate
him so much as mirror him, and maybe he knows exactly what is going on but stays from
the public view because he dislikes challenges to his authority?

I don't know these things. My limited understanding of politics has always come from
NPR, left leaning websites, and the glory of the Internet. From what I've heard over
the years, his administration seems to be run like a Chicago boss where loyalty
is rewarded over initiative, but listening to a story recently it makes me think
that all Presidential administrations will be like that anyway.

Anyway, pardon my ignorance. I'll remove myself from the thread now.

/yoink

JFrazell, if it makes you feel any better, I actually loathe Thomas Jefferson more than George W. Bush, and have heaped ridiculous amounts of scorn on his name. Just because someone is President does not mean that they deserve respect.

Then again, I'm bitter and intensely dislike a great many public figures on both sides of the aisle (recently it's been Bush, Cheney, and Pelosi, but the list is long).

Frazzled wrote:Understand, the point of the thread is not to say Bush is awesome, but that the level of vitreol thrown at him is substantially out of proportion and flies in the face of tradition and the respect we normally give presidents, at least officially.

I think that time is kinder to bad presidents, and that your comments about traditional respect for the president may not be accounting for things that were done and said about past presidents in their day.

There are countless Presidents who've done the same thing. History will bear out Bush, he may be relegated to Carter land, or reformed like Eisenhower and Truman as being excellent. but none of them have had waste treatment faciities named after them. Its insulting to the Office of the President.

I disagree, it isn't insulting to the Office, it's insulting to the man. And, when you're entrusted with such a position, and abuse that trust and bring this sort of scorn upon the office, then perhaps you deserve the insults. I find how Bush has turned the Office of the President into such a farce far more disgraceful.

What bothers me is that the mainstream media rabidly attacks Bush and has generally given Clinton a pass. I think a lot of the negative comments about Bush could equally apply to Clinton (rewards loyalty over initative, abused his power, was an embarrasment to the nation). But, the left-leaning media won't touch Clinton. As people have said before, if Clinton was a Republican, NOW and all the media outlets would have attacked him for taking advantage of this 'innocent' young girl. Instead, they give him a free pass because he's a Democrat.

I'd love to see Colin Powell have a voice in the administration. Even if he only shows up for a roundtable meeting once a month, him having a small voice gives better results than giving a big voice to the back-stabbing ambitious political hacks that inhabit all administrations.

The Reublican-dominated Congress spent millions of dollars dragging Clinton's private life through the media and courts because they wanted to put political pressure on him. If that was going to be an embarrassment to the nation they shouldn't have done it.

Conversely, Bush took advantage of his political domination to launch the nation into a disastrous foreign war on flimsy premises, and then did nothing about Hurricane Katrina.

The French (to take an example) don't care in the slightest who the President sleeps with, but they care a lot about the USA pressurising them to get dragged into dangerous and expensive foreign excursions.

To sum up, if the media criticise Bush a lot, it's because he deserves. That is a different issue to naming a sewer pipe after him.

Whatever the political bias of the media, they are fully entitled to criticise the administration on the basis of its performance.

Clinton wasn't impeached because he got it on in the oval office. He was impeached because he was caught lieing under oath in court.

And he wouldn't have been caught lying under oath in court if he hadn't been forced too by having his sex life investigated by the Republicans.

The whole affair was got up as an excuse to attack an otherwise untouchable president. Don't forget they also spent millions investigating Clearwater (or whatever it was called) -- a genuine financial scandal -- and got nowhere.

So, er ok. Thats like saying when the mob guys hit a witness its not their fault because the government made them do it.

So, you'd agree it would be OK for a special prosecutor looking into the Bush administration's handling of the war (and any criminal negligence/culpability therein) to diverge into Cheney's ties to profiteering off said war, or (to reach the same level of unrelatedness) the Bush daughters' sex lives? Because, you know, they're related... somehow... in some way... but hey, "we don't need no steenking connection!", evidently.

The special prosecutor overstepped his authority and should have been slapped down for it. If a Democratic Congress had sanctioned what he did, the Republicans would have screamed like a bull gelded with an axe.

lord_sutekh wrote:The special prosecutor overstepped his authority and should have been slapped down for it

Yeah, but Clinton still lied under oath, which is still against the law, and he knew better. They are connected, but unrelated problems.

Starr commited the illegal act first. It's fruit of the poisonous tree, and thus inapplicable. But hey, what's rule-of-law when political points can be scored?

1. Sure. I'll get the popcorn. Public hearings will insure a balanced Congress in 2010. But we'll haveto call each and every member of Congress to the stand. Bring it.

2. Starr committed an illegal act? Cool prove it. But Clinton's still guilty.