Treespeaker wrote:
Let's take, however, a quick look at his cabinet's sucess in the foriegn policy arena (in terms of diplomacy rather than military action, that is). I think today's Chicago Tribune really did a nice job of framing the situation in its description of Bush's meeting with Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri and Muslim clerics in Indonesia. Every one of the clerics he spoke with seemed to be under the impression that US policy, especially in the Middle East (re: Israel; Iraq) was the primary cause of heightened Muslim atagonism.
I am curious as to how this is bad. Terrorist are quite anti-US and anti-Israel as it is; should we, then, not directly attack our enemies for fear of them stepping up attacks against us? This isn't really an arguement against him, imo, so much as a side effect of carrying out something thats long overdue. (As a sidenote, even Clinton got the picture by the end of his administration, and had drawn up plans/justifications to go to war with Iraq at least, as a sponsor of terrorism, source of oil, etc etc, the idea of going into there is not new; avoiding it on the basis that we might anger the people who already hate us is, I believe, stupid.)
That Guy Who Should Be Paper wrote:
Now, obviously, these men are speaking from a biased viewpoint. Then again, the War on Terrorism does seem to have prompted more uprisings, suicide bombings, etc. in nations like Indonesia or Iraq than it has ended.
Now, I find it ironic that Treespeaker demands or at least expects IMMEDIATE results from the war on terror. We attack them in the heart of some of their terrorist things? Obviously, they should stop attacking us, right?
The idea being, really, twofold: countries that fund and/or harbor terrorists need to be the first to fall (questions about Saudi Arabia should be reserved for another thread, that I'd actually appreciate if treespeaker started) before terrorism can start to die off; it is a war of ideals, really, and you can't combat the ideals if the terrorists and their supporters have such a concrete grip on the public in those areas.
Now, admittedly, they're going about this rather haphazardly, hoping for the so-called domino effect to take place and save us lots of work, but I think its a step in the right direction, given the size of our military etc.
Speaker of teh Tree wrote:
Let's talk about the Bush administration's rhetoric for a moment. When Bush was elected, God crept into one or two speeches every now and then, generally in the context of "God bless America." No real biggie, as far as I'm concerned. September 11 and all that, we're all of a sudden hearing Him called upon in most of Bush's speeches, including State of the Union adresses etc. etc. etc. Most alarmingly, religious division is clearly a part of his mind, given his proclaimed interest in a foriegn policy doctrine released last spring to "bring peace to the Muslim world."
Uh, hold on...the middle east can't be described accurately as
the muslim world? If he had said he wanted to bring peace to the African world, would that be racist? I dunno, it seems to be when an area is predominately conflict-filled, unfree, oppressive etc, and also predominantly muslim, brining "peace to the Muslim world" isn't such an inaccurate saying.
Treespeaker wrote:
Then of course we get men like Rumsfeld or, even better, Lt. Gen. William Boykin with his comments early this year that "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol" in reference to a Muslim man's faith in Allah's protection.
These generals' views do not nessesarily reflect the opinions of the politicians they work withIt should be noted, thats the army, independant of the Bush administration; it would be pretty much the same people saying that stuff if Gore or anyone else was elected. You can blame the higher-ups in the army for that, sure, but not hold Bush responsible. Except for, perhaps, not warning them to not be dumbasses.
Treespeaker wrote:
While we're on the Bush administration, let's look at lying to the public. Okay, weapons of mass destruction was bullshit. Everyone knows that by now. Hell, the DoD out-and-out told us that the U.S. had no conclusive proof that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq at the time of invasion.
This was a bad political move, inspired by faulty intelligence (okay, even the UN was claiming Iraq almost for certain had weapons of mass destruction, if you'll recall, and the weapons inspectors complained of being given the run around again, since no major intelligence agency concluded there
wasn't WMDs in there, and Saddam was sure acting like he had them, a lot of people claim that was enough justification to go in there) and politicing.
See, Bush had a plethora of reasons to go into Iraq, many of which would have played better than the WMDs...however, the WMDs were the only legal (in terms of the UN) reason to go into there.
It should be noted historically, nobody has had a problem simply ignoring the UN and doing their own thing, so Bush obviously felt no compulsion to go to the UN, for legitimacy or otherwise.
Now, this is getting into the realm of opinion here, I feel Bush did it on the advice of Colin Powel, who felt UN approval was the best way to go (perhaps it was, but as we have seen even assuming Iraq had WMDs, under no circumstances were certain countries willing to go to war, thus making the entire debate moot; lets move on to other reasons.)
Treespeaker wrote:
So there's really not much El Presidente can do to wiggle out of that one. Uraniam from Africa, as mentioned in the State of the Union adress--same deal. He had to come out and say "well, I didn't really have any proof when I said it, and now it seems to not be true."
See above. Best intelligence seemed to point towards it, and Saddam was acting like it. If I recall, though there was no conclusive proof of WMDs, the combination of nobody in the world saying that he didn't have them, for sure, and his reactions towards UN inspectors etc.
Lets not forget that it was no secret he was persuing nuclear weapons; see the Israeli bombing of the Osirak reactor (I find it hard to believe that Saddam would set up a nuclear reactor for the good of his people,) various uses of WMDs throughout his history etc etc etc. Claiming that it was quite obvious that Saddam destroyed all his weapons and was trying to be a nice guy is rather stupid.
Given all this stuff, I feel it is the least likely possibility that he actually destroyed all his weapons in 91; the grandstanding, intelligence estimates, attempts to aquire other WMDs throughout his history, and all that, do not point to some rational, nice guy who's gonna destroy all his WMDs on his own to be nice and play fair, and abide by his word.
There are other possibilities; I have read reports from around TEH INTARWEB that there were lots of Iraqi convoys between Syria and Iraq, among other things. It is possible he could have just buried them out in the desert somewhere, and given how busy our troops are right now its not surprising we wouldn't have found them.
Given, however, he exaggerrated claims at the very least.
Treespeaker wrote:
And, again in this morning's paper, we see that Donnie Rumsfeld isn't quite as sure that the War on Terrorism is the U.S.'s staunchest defense against evil that we've heard it is. In fact, his memo last week out and out said "we lack metrics to know is we are winning or losing [the war on terrorism]." Okay, so all that stuff about threat levels, and knowing what the hell we're doing in general--yeah, we actually have no idea how to fight terrorism.
Thats absolutely not the conclusion he came to. He said, we do not know how to measure success in this war, and to be frank he's right; how do you measure success against entities that do not hold territory, who's numbers you are unsure of, and who's ideals get taught in many schools around the arab world?
You're not only misconstruing what he said, I think you're outright lying in order to further your own beliefs; nobody can seriously believe "we cannot measure how successful we are" = "we don't know how to fight."
Treespeaker wrote:
1) The world hates our President. Islamic resentment is up, and we're seeing even more terrorist threats than ever before. Israel of course is full of bombings, Indonesia just last year suffered the worst attack since Sept. 11, and occupied, pacified Iraq under the Coalition is suddenly a magnet for terrorist bombings.
The world has been resentful towards us for quite a while, for various reasons. This just made it all bubble to general public knowledge, but this isn't something INCREDIBLY NEW THAT BUSH MADE HAPPEN.
The idea being, "better there than here," but hey, whatever.
Also note, I am curious as to why we should not overtly go after terrorism in order to not provoke people who already hate us?
Treespeaker wrote:
2) Let's face it, the Administration is the Christian Right. No doubts about it, in the minds of our President and his staff, our God has a bigger dick than their God. This is not an endearing quality in the top executive of the nation, especially not when foriegn policy right now hinges on proper treatment of different religious as well as secular leaders.
Of course, its not like politicians ever pander to certain segments of the voting public in their domestic speeches...I mean, sheesh, whoever heard of that? Obviously, Bush is always crystal-clear truth-teller, and never ever a politician trying to gain support from a political side that has complained about being ignored by him.
Sheesh, who could argue with such a clear-cut point? There is absolutely no room for interpretation on that kinda stuff, ever.
Treespeaker wrote:
3) Bush and his entire administration have lied to the public not once but consistently. We've seen repeated cases of assertations being made with no real proof. Often, we get to see the apologies and corrections for said assertations. It'd almost be funny, if it weren't my government lying to me.
It should be noted, those assertations were exaggerrations; exaggerratioins are rather different than outright lies, which would imply we had conclusive proof that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction at all. It can be said, yes, there was no conclusive proof; however, given Saddam himself, his attitudes and past actions, can you really claim its likely he destroyed them all?
So first off, you are confusing a lie, which requires absolute knowledge of the falsity of the claims, and an exaggerration, or if you'd prefer harsher language a misrepresentation of the facts. However...GASP, a
PRESIDENT NOT being 100% truthful?!
I am shocked. Almost too shocked for words.
-MiB