Saturday, December 30, 2006
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Brought to You Courtesy of the Red, White And Blue
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Posted by:
Dean Barnett at
10:40 AM
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Chalk one up for the good guys. Saddam Hussein met his end last night, proving the cliché “better late than never” has its times and places.
In the annals of history, such moments of poetic justice are rare. For every Mussolini who winds up on a meat-hook, there are probably a dozen Stalins, Arafats and Castros who get to die without having to reckon with the horrors they created.
There is one reason why Saddam Hussein’s life got the ending it deserved twelve hours ago: The righteous force of the United States of America.
PRESIDENT BUSH GETS A LOT OF criticism for his handling of Iraq and the larger war on terror. Much of it is deserved. The rules of engagement and the ultimate end-game in Iraq have never been clearly articulated. The occupation has been a mess, not because the nature of the mission has been poorly defined, but rather because it’s been barely defined at all. The policies dealing with Iran specifically and the wider war against Radical Islam in general have been mushy to date and again poorly articulated.
But President Bush has his strengths. The weak-kneed among us, like the NewYork Times editorial board and the president’s father, never knew what to do with Saddam Hussein. George W. Bush did – kill him. At his best, Bush shows a focus and a harshness that scares the stuffing out of the rest of the world.
Our enemies were watching last night. I bet Bashir Assad was picturing his neck in that noose, knowing full well that George W. Bush’s ire would be something that John Kerry, Arlen Specter and any other sympathetic Senatorial dhimmis would be unable to save him from. Kim Jong Il and a host of loonies in Iran probably took notice as well. For them, the sad fact is that they remain alive only at the pleasure of George W. Bush. I doubt that thought gives them much comfort.
I’VE NEVER OFFERED THE FOLLOWING SPECULATION in print, primarily because I didn’t want to jinx things. But I think the main reason we haven’t had a repeat of 9/11 or something worse in over five years is because George W. Bush scares the s**t out of his enemies. When domestic liberal whine, “He scaaaares me,” they really mean it. The world’s bad people feel the same way. The American reprisals to a terror attack that took place under George W. Bush’s watch would likely be swift, brutal and disproportionate.
Our enemies may be crazy, but they’re not stupid. I bet the next 9/11, which will probably be magnitudes worse than the previous 9/11, will wait until George W. Bush is gone from office. Our enemies see the rest of our leadership class as anxious to curry favor with those who threaten our destruction. And while the road-to-Damascus Senators are the worst offenders, practically our entire “elite” structure is suspect. The Baker Group was bi-partisan. The media? Don’t even get me started. If our enemies were to conclude that a major attack on U.S. soil would cause many of our political factions to sue for peace, they would be wrong. But they wouldn’t be unreasonable.
Bush’s successor will be tested. That’s almost a certainty. And while Bush’s communications skills and policies have too often been wanting, the country may someday pine once again for a President who was feared.
Compiments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com
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"So it's my fault that Iraq turned out like it is?
That's ridiculous on the face of it."
Well, when I said "you" I really meant "you" in the general sense of the anti-war left. The ridiculous, infantile harping on wholly insignificant, meaningless-and-you-know-it non-incidents like Abu Ghraib et al. sure don't help our war effort, do they? Having prominent U.S. Senators disgustingly equating the club-fed-like "prison" at Guantanamo with Stalin's gulags? Telling audiences of kids that you'll be "stuck in Iraq" if you don't study hard and get a good education (sure, maybe it WAS a "botched joke", but, considering how easily Bush-is-dumb insults come to the effetocracy of the left, this just shows Kerry to be even more of an imbecile than his test scores and college grades)? Another dimwit luminary of the Donk Congress claiming that no one with the ability to get a good job would ever volunteer to go to Iraq?
When Pat Buchanan, long ago exiled from the Republican Party and whose opinion is not endorsed or parotted by any Republican office-holder or seeker, says something off the reservation, I can't stop hearing about how it's emblematic of the orthodoxy to which every one of us identical robotic wingnuts subscribes. But when Dick Durbin, Charley Rangel, and John Kerry make statements that clearly impair the morale of our troops and paint the United States as an immoral actor or its military personnel as, alternatingly, mindless, bloodthirsty butchers or poor, Bambi-eyed, inner-city children that had to choose between the military and prison, libs attack me for pointing it out (or they simply agree with the America-hurting opinions of these jackasses).
"We're not going to defeat these people in a ground war."
Because you say so, General McClellan. After all, you do remember that ground war that kicked the Taliban and al Qaeda out beyond Thunderdome in Afghanistan in, what was it, 45 minutes? So you'll forgive me if I just don't buy into the nonsensical BS that the world's greatest ground war fighting machine is simply incapable of winning a ground war just because that admission is necessary to propping up your worldview.
Sure, we've never lost a ground war, but, this time, despite all historical evidence to the contrary and the fact that our military has never been more powerful, there's just no way we can win. Got it.
And don't forget -- in addition to having ground forces unsurpassed in the known universe, we also have air and sea power that can boast the same. It's funny, but somehow I doubt that the routinely massacred and thinning forces of al Qaeda would agree with your grim assessment of our prospects.
And, just like your friends, you go on thrashing the strawman that anyone here is advocating pure military action in the absence of leveraging international cooperation, intelligence gathering, and law enforcement to combat terrorism. And, to compound your hallucinations, you have to then assert that Bush, who has been vastly more successful on all three of those non-military fronts than any of his predecessors, has clearly abandoned them utterly because, um, uh, duh, we invaded Iraq. Or something.
"There are too many of them and they're too willing to die."
And the U.S. military, sporting a kill ratio of what, 50-1, is helping them with that lofty goal like they never imagined possible. Oh my, you're right, we ARE "helping" the terrorists by giving them exactly what they want -- death! I guess the only way we can win, then, is by allowing them to live. Victory somehow seems so hollow.
"This is a war that isn't going to be won with tanks and F-16's but with patience and intelligence sharing. This was where Reagan, Bush41 and Clinton were smarter."
First Pete and now Repeat. George W. Bush's anti-terrorism record, in terms of arrests and good-old-fashioned killing, has been far more successful, by any objective measure, than that of any of the three men you mentioned. It is simply not disputable, and yet you continue to dispute it. I know it's crucial for you to pretend that Islamic militants and their enablers, deader, more miserable, and with less freedom than they've ever had in the past 50 years, have never been happier or more self-assured, but every known fact stands in stark contrast to your if-I-repeat-it-enough-it-must-be-true fantasy.
What's so amazing about this charade is that you have to concoct the notion that Reagan/Bush I/Clinton (!) had anywhere near the law enforcement and intelligence victories against terrorism that W has had; it's almost psychotic. It's as if your rabid opposition to the Iraq War forbids you from acknowledging that, military forays aside, more terrorists and their supporters (not to mention big-shot white-collar corporate criminals, but I don't want your head to explode) have been put behind bars under Bush (and largely thanks to his dismantling of the Clinton JD's suicidal "don't ask and don't tell" policy of mutual obstruction between intelligence and law enforcement agencies) than were ever dealt that fate under any other modern administration.
This ongoing delusion of yours manages to stand out among so many.
"As for your claim that the cost of the war is infintesimal compared to entitlement programs, I say OK- let's let Americans choose between the two."
Uh, sorry, but the American people don't get to decide what are and what aren't the federal government's obligations under the articles of the Constitution. I know that, as a liberal, you'd like the lowest common denominator to simply vote themselves in a brave new area of bread and circuses to assure Democratic victories in perpetuity, but, hopefully if our nation is going to continue to survive, the mob will be ignored when larger matters of import and duty are involved.
We already had a president who's foreign policy was entirely dictated by polling data and focus group analysis, and it gave us numerous Islamic terrorist attacks, a stripped-down, grossly ineffectual, touchy-feely intelligence apparatus used primarily as a petri dish for affirmative action (rather than, you know, gathering intelligence), a nuclear North Korea, an Arafat-as-Mandella transformation... the list of Clintonian buffoonery is endless.
But hey, it sure keeps you popular among the ignorant when you don't ever take any action that might result in Oprah being interrupted. |
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So it's my fault that Iraq turned out like it is?
That's ridiculous on the face of it.
We're not going to defeat these people in a ground war. There are too many of them and they're too willing to die. This is a war that isn't going to be won with tanks and F-16's but with patience and intelligence sharing. This was where Reagan, Bush41 and Clinton were smarter.
As for your claim that the cost of the war is infintesimal compared to entitlement programs, I say OK- let's let Americans choose between the two. |
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"You're joking!"
Oh no -- I'm super serial.
"Bush gave Bin Laden just what he wanted"
A home in the posh cave district of god-forsaken Pakistan? Constant night terrors? Reflexive bowel release every time he hears a car backfire? The relocation of thousands of his buddies and proteges to holes in the ground? A $25 million price on his head? A zip code located on the border of two countries which have deployed thousands of well-armed men to hunt him down? No way to receive any Ramadan cards from well-wishers, much less dialysis treatment that doesn't involve a pen spring and a distributor cap?
Curse that Bin Laden and his massochistic, menial desires that make no sense to the rest of humanity!
"a ground war that would sap our strength"
I'd say that your tireless, irritating whine-fest about the futility of projecting an invincible military force to deal with a military problem has played a significant role in that outcome. Lord knows it's sapped my strength. Congratulations?
"divide the nation"
Oh, puh-leeze. You clowns have been pathologically opposed to every Republican office-holder from dog-catcher on up for the past 40 years. Or are you claiming that your petulant, thumb-sucking antics from, say, just after the 2000 Presidential election were the result of an invasion initiated in 2003? How prescient.
"and bankrupt us."
Yawwwwwwwnnnnn. The amount of money spent on the Iraq war is infinitesimal compared to either our GDP or the amount we flush down the toilet on auto-piloted boondoggle "entitlements" like Medicare and Social Security. If our treasury ever goes bankrupt, not a single economist (well, maybe Paul Krugman, but he's a blithering idiot first and an economist, like, eighth or so) will list this campaign as among the causes to blame.
If liberals are soooo concerned that the exercise of an explicit constitutional duty of the federal government is just too expensive, it sure would be swell of them to get on board with advocating that we slash-and-burn through all those extra-constitutional ones that suck up vastly more revenue. Given your obvious commitment to fiscal discipline, I'm sure we can count on you. |
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"Well, OBL actually sounded much more like Republicans and conservatives, echoing their nonsense about how the U.S. was a "paper tiger" for pulling out of Somalia"
Wow. Just wow. Not even a sailor could untie this logical knot. Let's see if I've got this sequence right:
(1) OBL, in citing one of the reasons he had confidence in the ability of his flunkies to pull of 9/11, calls the United States a "paper tiger" for pulling out of Somalia. Of course, as we now know thanks to you, he was just lying as part of some grandly complicated reverse psychology scheme that, shockingly, falls into line with your viewpoint (by the way, if you have a copy of "Bin Ladenisms: Exactly What To Take And What Not To Take Seriously", I'd like to borrow it.).
(2) Republicans, those nuts who actually listen to what their enemies have to say (rather than liberals that simply plea with us to listen to them and then villify us for doing just that), take his words under advisement in evaluating the anti-terrorism policies that failed in allowing 9/11. Liberals everywhere are outraged, as their incessant insistence on "changing course" when realities demand apparently doesn't apply when an existing policy (the one slavishly adhered to by Clinton and for which you are such a big fan, remember) fails so badly that several thousands Americans are murdered in New York City.
(3) OBL reiterates HIS OWN ORIGINAL CLAIM in a pre-2004 election ad paid for by the DNC (admittedly, the print was fine, the video quality was poor, and the disclaimer speaker rushed his delivery).
(4) Snapdigger claims that OBL sounds like REPUBLICANS as a result?
I think LMAO perfectly captures the appropriate response here.
"how the U.S. was weak because it tolerated so much gayness and feminism, etc."
Oh yes, you hear this every day over here at Republican central, right after we each get done quoting out of the Necronomicon.
"And, again, whatever his quality of life personally, OBL cares more about his evil ideals, and given that Bush removed OBL's enemy Saddam and replaced him with a more Islamist-friendly government, Bush is more in line with OBL's ideals."
Well, I guess I just have trouble getting over how depressed and desperate Zarquawi, OBL's hand-picked slaughter minion in Iraq, sounded each time he sent one of his "do you still like me? circle one" letters back home from the front. I suppose it's possible that OBL, a Sunni extremist who views Shia as verminous filth (or is his little outreach program to the Shia in Iraq one of those special moments when OBL was actually being straight-up with us?), was willing to trade a Shia-dominated Iraq for the mass devastation of the organization he helped to build and lead for so long.
Nope. Sorry. Doesn't hold up unless you pretend that OBL would do absolutely anything, including reducing himself to misery and losing thousands of his men, in order to fiendishly trick the United States into replacing that great-enemy-of-the-global-jihad Saddam Hussein with an even more unpalatable apostate government.
"Or do you think it's just a coincidence that Al-Qaeda finally pulled off its dream attack -- a big U.S. soil attack that would finally terrify and traumatize the U.S. -- after Bush abandoned most of Clinton's counterterrorism policies?"
Are you sure you've got the right blog, snap, because this is the kind of lunacy I'd expect to see on a truther site. So, if I follow you, al Qaeda's grand plan was to gain admittance to the country under Bill Clinton's watch, train to fly jetliners but not land them under Bill Clinton's watch, allow their visas to expire under Bill Clinton's watch (I mean, just DARING our mighty law enforcement apparatus to snag and deport them -- what balls!), and then to just tread water until some dumb rube from Texas came along and accidentally turned off Clinton's randomized airport tripwire beam system which activated the super-invincible anti-terrorist killbots. That about it? Or are my embellishments a bit much considering how much easier it would be to embarrass you here without being snarky?
Considering that not a one of Bill Clinton's policies stopped these butchers from getting in and then, in several cases, remaining illegally in this country, and doing all of the multi-year prep-work in which they engaged prior to 9/11, what, exactly, was supposed to stop them from actually going through with it? I mean, they got away with the first 99% of it without so much as a visit from the INS. All that was left was for each to buy a freaking plane ticket and get through TSA's kabuki theater with a boxcutter (or are you perhaps suggesting that it was Bush's abandonment of Clinton's draconian "no boxcutters on planes" policy that allowed the whole tragedy to go down?). Everything afterwards was a fait accompli, unless you want to argue that Clinton would have been willing and able to scramble fighters to shoot the secondary planes out of the sky.
Wow, I guess in order to buy your accounting of the matter, Clinton redefined the bend-but-don't-break defense: just let your enemy do absolutely everything they need to do to commit mass murder, but only THEN do you swoop in at the fateful moment and put a stop to it all (ostensibly for a photo-op, complete with a patch of sand and imported little pebbles that can be fashioned into a cross). Honestly, it doesn't get sillier than this. I mean, your hysterical efforts to defend Clinton's anti-terrorism record are just getting sad, and I still submit that not one of your rational lefty compadres on this board would leap to your defense on this point.
"Your points merely prove that Clinton's approach wasn't perfect. But in terms of tangible results -- prosecution of terrorists, for example (as opposed to Bush's strategy of calling poor schmucks "terrorists" and throwing them in jail without charges), it was much more successful than Bush's."
You are inarguably factually wrong here, and I'm calling you on it. Again. Produce this glowing record that only you pretend exists or stop making this absurd claim. Show me this long list of arrests of Islamic terrorists or their supporters accumulated during the Clinton years, and then try and pretend that it comes anywhere near the number of human pimples that have been sent behind bars during Bush's tenure (to say nothing of the grossly lobsided kill ratio of terrorists in Bush's favor). Leave out the Millenium Bomber if you want to have any hope of being taken seriously.
"Except that you want us to pursue policies that will make terrorists think we're not "paper tigers,"
Uh, yes, because the more they FEAR us (not "love" as you so disingenuously keep trying to brand it), the less they will attack us. Fear, unfortunately, is the mother of peace. If terrifying them with acts of mass brutality and aggression convinces them to abandon their little international Stone Age death ritual, then bombs away. Bill Clinton gave them absolutely no reason to fear us, and we got repeatedly smacked by them under his disinterested watch. Fear works. Better to instill it than to need it.
"By definition, then, you are more concerned about terrorists "loving" us than liberals are: Liberals say we should pull out of Iraq, while Conservatives say we have to stay there forever because otherwise the terrorists will say mean things about us."
Did you enjoy intentionally dumbing that down so you could paint your ideological opponents as insecure idiots? Not that you'd pay attention, and not that I'm sure I should waste my time trying to get it, but I'm certain that the arguments for staying in Iraq (and advocating, say, switching our focus to Anbar province, or withdrawing to the Kurdish regions to watch the Sunni-Shia slaughter with popcorn in hand, are both arguments to "stay in Iraq" but significantly different arguments, so I'll supply the nuance that you neglected to include) are a little more complex than is convenient for your position. I myself see some advantages to creating a situation where Muslims are slaughtering each other rather than us infidels; maybe we should have thought of this sooner.
And for someone that is oh-so-concerned about handing propaganda victories to our enemies, ignominously pulling out of Iraq like a dog with its tail tucked between its legs not only serves our national interests not one iota (what with us leaving an "Iranian client state" behind, as you claim), it would be the king of all propaganda victories for the Islamists. Leni Riefenstahl weeps at how much harder she had to work at it.
"That's your straw-man liberal, a breed that really doesn't exist much outside of universities."
And in the blogosphere. And among "civil rights" activists. And among many prominent journalists and pundits with significant audiences. And among numerous Democratic members of the House and Senate. And among the insidious fifth columnists in our Arabist State Department. And among roughly 90% of the delegations to the U.N. And among the vast majority of our more enlightened betters living in Western Europe. And among roughly three-out-of-every-four of my friends who long ago graduated from the indoctrination factories of academia. If what you say is true, and they really are made out of straw, maybe I need to start carrying around some matches with me. It should give me an edge in our next confrontation that I haven't been able to gain by simply being better informed and more rational than they are.
"In the real world it's conservatives who are constantly talking about terrorists' grievances (they hate us because we pulled out of Somalia, they hate us because we're "weak") "
Oh, come on. You're stretching so badly now I can hear your tendons pop from all the way across Ted Stevens's InterTube. No conservative, ever, has claimed that terrorists "hate" us because we pulled out of Somalia (are you serious?). Conservatives -- because, again, we're just nuts about giving mass-murdering zealots the benefit of the doubt when it comes to threat assessment (better safe than sorry; that whole bit) -- have simply pointed out that OBL claims that his FEAR of the United States's power was diminished when he witnessed how quickly we would withdraw in the face of a few casualties. The idea being: show enough American body bags to John Q. Public on CNN, and his stomach for military intervention will disappear. The politicians will cave out of job security fears, and the threat from the otherwise invincible American military will dissipate.
This is, of course, the same craaaazy theory that has been repeated ad nauseum not just by Bin Laden but by numerous other Islamist aparatchiks involved in our ongoing conflict. I mean, sure, it's a principal reason we lost Vietnam despite never losing a single military engagement in that war, and, sure Vietnam is an example routinely held up by our enemies in order to encourage them to "stay the course" in the face of staggeringly lobsided casualties, and, sure, the word "Vietnam" is actually used more than the words "a" or "the" among prominent Democrats with significant face-time on camera (once again demonstrating the eerie similarities between the rhetoric and attitudes of our enemies and those of the Donkey party), but it's still a nutty concept, I guess, because it topples a key piece on your chessboard.
Are you prepared to go on record as saying that it's implausible that our enemies actually look for evidence of our weakness before deciding how, where, and to what scope and scale they should conduct their attacks? Think wisely before answering, because this, among the sober-minded, is a rhetorical question.
"they hate us because we're "weak") "
Lame. Again. Conservatives, in general, don't share the personal insecurities of liberals; we're far less interested in the opinions of others of us than we are in being true to our principles. Islamists hate Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Eskimos, Smurfs, atheists, and "impure" Muslims because they don't drink their particular brand of crazy; we're not partners in the sick and twisted human hive that they're compelled by dogma to install in the world. Conservatives are not trying to gain their affection; we simply want to slaughter enough of them so that the whole global jihad thing loses its shiny luster. But I suppose the whole "break an enemy's will to fight by visiting unfathomable violence upon him" notion, which has been part of war doctrine for millenia, is just silly too.
So, in summary, your conflating "grievances" (and I was obviously talking about their endless braying about the Joooos "stealing their land" and other pretenses of convenience, because that's what pretty much everyone means when they talk about Muslim "grievances") with their emotional fondness for our fondue recipes is absurd and a torture of the common usage of the word. To wit, OBL was clearly not "aggrieved" that we pulled out Somalia; if anything, he was giddier than a Palestinian mother whose pride- and-joy just killed himself and not one but two sons of apes and pigs behind the Israeli "imprisonment wall". But if you need to paint conservatives as the ones needing Sally Field-like validation from the same people that I keep telling you I want put to death with extreme prejudice, well, um, rock on, snap.
"Ah, but you've named two groups that don't do terrorist acts against the U.S."
First of all, I'd hardly dismiss Hizballah's bombings of our embassy and marine barracks in Lebanon, especially as tensions between the U.S. and Iran grow (what with Ahmadinenutjob running a ticker countdown to the annihilation of Israel and all -- more silly, meaningless bravado, of course). Hizballah, an army that most nations would be thrilled to have fighting on their behalf, has recently vowed to take their little dog-and-explody show on the road (more yea!).
Secondly, your dismissal of Hamas and Hizballah as irrelevant because of their disinterest in U.S. targets is diversionary, because my point was that these organizations are much more accurately described as armies than as criminal gangs as you suggested. That point stands, and it's a pretty big black eye in your bout to portray the mass-murderers in al Qaeda et al. as substantively no different than those bands of maurading youths that make life in South Central LA so uncomfortable.
"I fully understand, say, Israel treating counter-terrorism as a military issue, because in the Israeli context terrorism is part of an actual honest-to-god war."
Well, I have to give credit where credit is due. Once one reaches this state of understanding, it's at least theoretically possible to convince them of the utility of, where appropriate and in conjunction with law enforcement and intelligence-gathering tools, applying military force to combat terrorism. Notice all the wiggle room I left in there so that one could still accept the sometimes-we-need-to-burn-them-in-their-nests doctrine without having to be gung ho about Iraq or any particular application of that doctrine.
First, however, we need to convince you that, just like Israel, we are also engaged in an honest-to-God war, no matter how much more nebulous and shifting that war's form is compared to those of the conventional past. I don't anticipate an easy road.
"But when it comes to terrorist attacks against the U.S., they're mostly big spectacular elaborately planned capers -- that is, criminal acts."
Sigh. I push and shove against the impasse, but it gives up no ground. There are probably tens of thousands of people that could be convicted for either direct or indirect complicity in that little "caper" on 9/11, including high government officials, "civil rights" activists, "philanthropists", spies, lawyers, educators, arms smugglers, UN diplomats; you name it. Vito Corleone never had so much help. One day, I hope, you'll stop pretending that these are all isolated, acute, spasmodic events cooked up in some inattentive mother's basement by a couple of dejected kids listening to death metal and sucking the nitrous out of Cool Whip cannisters while watching The Basketball Diaries in slow-mo. You'll have no choice; the evidence will be so compelling that even your reflexive resistance to it will be overcome by your reason.
The next attack, which is almost a certainty given the perfect success rate we need to prevent it from happening (a depressing statistic that is only made more grim when one is deluded into thinking we should just play defense and hope for the best), may very well
turn Manhattan into an open-air museum with less traffic than Euro Disney. I wonder if you'll come back here in its aftermath and confidently assert that it's time to deploy the FBI (the one that was unable to prevent it from occurring) and get us some good old fashioned civil trial justice. Nothing says national security like the doling out of a few arrests and prison sentences while the American bodies pile up in the morgue.
In any case, both of us have probably expended far too much time and energy in this discussion (and made no progress in either direction), and there's a whole other life out there to be living. Happy New Year, snap. |
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You're joking! Bush gave Bin Laden just what he wanted: a ground war that would sap our strength, divide the nation and bankrupt us. |
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"Additionally, it would be fascinating to watch you explain the Suskind Delusion, in which an OBL who sounded nearly indistinguishable from numerous prominent Democratic politicians prior to the 2004 elections (I wonder if, as part of our super-effective law-enforcement-only approach to terrorism, we could try to prosecute him on plagiarism charges) and whose quality of life has never been worse, was actually trying to help Bush get re-elected."
Well, OBL actually sounded much more like Republicans and conservatives, echoing their nonsense about how the U.S. was a "paper tiger" for pulling out of Somalia, how the U.S. was weak because it tolerated so much gayness and feminism, etc. And, again, whatever his quality of life personally, OBL cares more about his evil ideals, and given that Bush removed OBL's enemy Saddam and replaced him with a more Islamist-friendly government, Bush is more in line with OBL's ideals.
"How can you continue to stand against the tide here? The Clintonian law-enforcement-only approach was an utter disaster, with a batting average slumming below the Mendoza line."
Your points merely prove that Clinton's approach wasn't perfect. But in terms of tangible results -- prosecution of terrorists, for example (as opposed to Bush's strategy of calling poor schmucks "terrorists" and throwing them in jail without charges), it was much more successful than Bush's. Or do you think it's just a coincidence that Al-Qaeda finally pulled off its dream attack -- a big U.S. soil attack that would finally terrify and traumatize the U.S. -- after Bush abandoned most of Clinton's counterterrorism policies?
"Like I said, I don't want terrorists to love us; I simply want them dead."
Except that you want us to pursue policies that will make terrorists think we're not "paper tigers," and you're extremely concerned with their thinking well of us. By definition, then, you are more concerned about terrorists "loving" us than liberals are: Liberals say we should pull out of Iraq, while Conservatives say we have to stay there forever because otherwise the terrorists will say mean things about us.
"But since we're painting with broad ideological strokes, I find it amazing that you would claim that CONSERVATIVES are the "please love us" brigade when it's liberals that are constantly telling me that I need to learn to "listen" and "understand" the poor, poor Muslims of the world, whose ever-growing list of grievances leaves them no choice but to strap bombs to their children and then ululate in the name of their blood-soaked false god when that kid finds himself some nice pulpy Jews or Western tourists to blow to bits."
That's your straw-man liberal, a breed that really doesn't exist much outside of universities. In the real world it's conservatives who are constantly talking about terrorists' grievances (they hate us because we pulled out of Somalia, they hate us because we're "weak") whereas it's liberals who want terrorists captured, tried and convicted.
"Hamas is a terrorist organization. It is also an army by any pragmatic definition (if you're going to get hang your argument on something as thin as "it's not an army unless they're all wearing matching uniforms", then let's just stop right here). Hizballah is a terrorist organization..."
Ah, but you've named two groups that don't do terrorist acts against the U.S. I fully understand, say, Israel treating counter-terrorism as a military issue, because in the Israeli context terrorism is part of an actual honest-to-god war. But when it comes to terrorist attacks against the U.S., they're mostly big spectacular elaborately planned capers -- that is, criminal acts.
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"VJay, unsurprisingly, doesn't get the point here."
Well, had you initially explained it nearly as well as you did in this last post of yours, it might have been possible for me to "get the point". I'm glad that I could finally coax you into coherently expressing your position here; it only took several attempts (and you're welcome).
We'll simply have to agree to disagree with what is and what is not in our national interests. Me, personally, as Commander In Chief charged with the welfare and security of 300 million people -- had I received intelligence (even from Russia) that an avowed enemy of the United States currently in open defiance of his cease fire obligations had plans to attack U.S. interests, the jets would have been fueling up on the carriers without any pointless dithering with the U.N. But I'm not as big on taking chances with losing American lives as some are, I guess.
Now, having ably acquitted yourself on your original reason #1 why Bush has given the terrorists "everything they want" (and, make no mistake, I still disagree with your reasoning, but it at least rises to that level), you only need now to tackle the much, much more difficult task of justifying #2, #4, and #5 (I'll let #3 pass, because I think it's indisputable that Iraq is now more Iranian-friendly than it was under Saddam, but the only way it becomes a "client" of Iran is if we simply pull our troops out and submit to the new status quo).
Additionally, it would be fascinating to watch you explain the Suskind Delusion, in which an OBL who sounded nearly indistinguishable from numerous prominent Democratic politicians prior to the 2004 elections (I wonder if, as part of our super-effective law-enforcement-only approach to terrorism, we could try to prosecute him on plagiarism charges) and whose quality of life has never been worse, was actually trying to help Bush get re-elected.
And then there's this gem, which is one of those gaffs the cruel kids on the playground never let you live down:
"By any standard, Clinton's "law-enforcement" approach worked better than Bush's approach"
Again, given that we were attacked by Islamic terrorists, repeatedly, throughout the Clinton administration, and given that his law-enforcement-only approach to combatting said terrorism netted no major victories on that front, and given that OBL is a free man (if he isn't dead and burning, thanks to the cowboy diplomacy of George W. Bush) precisely because to Clinton's slavish adherence to the same doctrine to which you have pledged a blood oath, and given that the 9/11 hijackers were here, plotting and training for the attack, many of them on expired visas, right under our noses for years (how 'bout that law enforcement?), and given that many of those repeated attacks were clearly acts of war that occurred outside the boundaries of the country (even though U.S. embassies are technically part of U.S. soil), where "law enforcement" apparatuses like the FBI have limited or non-existent purview...
Do I really have to continue? How can you continue to stand against the tide here? The Clintonian law-enforcement-only approach was an utter disaster, with a batting average slumming below the Mendoza line. How can you go on to so swaggeringly defend such a pathetic lack of results and even go so far as to suggest as we should return to the halcyon (for the Islamists) days of that doctrine?
Got any fawning praise for Jimmy Carter's Middle Eastern foreign policy while you're at it?
"Conservatives have it backwards; they want us to do things that are clearly not in our interests (invade Iraq; stay in Iraq forever) so that the terrorists will think we're "tough" and therefore love us. Odd, that."
I don't know why you keep repeating this strawman. You're attributing a philosophy to conservativism that no conservative espouses, and then claiming some logical victory when you expose it. Like I said, I don't want terrorists to love us; I simply want them dead. Not in jail tried in civil courts as if they were common purse snatchers, as you seem to incoherently want to be the way things are done, where CAIR and the ACLU and every other anti-American group working on behalf of our wartime enemies can leverage the weaknesses of our legal system so that we'll be fighting them with the other arm tied behind our backs (the first being bound by our ridiculous ROEs in combat). Dead. Deep fried in Hell. If they "love" me for that sentiment, then I guess we can add massochism to the long list of their mental illnesses.
But since we're painting with broad ideological strokes, I find it amazing that you would claim that CONSERVATIVES are the "please love us" brigade when it's liberals that are constantly telling me that I need to learn to "listen" and "understand" the poor, poor Muslims of the world, whose ever-growing list of grievances leaves them no choice but to strap bombs to their children and then ululate in the name of their blood-soaked false god when that kid finds himself some nice pulpy Jews or Western tourists to blow to bits.
Because, after all, there is no "good" and "evil", there's just "oppressors" and their "victims", eh comrade?
"Okay, let me put it another way: a group of Italian mobsters kills a lot of people in an American city. Are they criminals, or are they part of an army?"
Easily the most indefensible of your arguments, and it's based on your repeated the-earth-is-flat premise that Islamic terrorists have more in common with run-of-the-mill criminals than with foreign armies. Since that premise is patently false -- reiterating:
"Or, in more accurate terms that don't intentionally muddy the waters so that you can go on pretending that a terrorist can be just anyone from anywhere, a terrorist, or at least the ones willing and capable of pulling off operations the scope and scale of 9/11, is a Muslim fanatic that is a member of a well-financed, well-supported organization of Muslim fanatics. His organization has at least a loose militant hierarchy (much like an army), is offered support or at least tacit harbor by at least one governmnet (much like an army), and his goals are also pursued by many, many other well-financed, well-supported organizations that operate on military, political, social, and legal fronts."
-- your analogy trying to compare Italian mobsters (who, last I checked, weren't motivated by inflicting maximal death and destruction on America and have therefore never even considered a 9/11-type attack) is ludicrous. Criminal enterprises virtually without exception are about pursuing profit and power along the path of least resistance; if anything, they go out of their way to AVOID committing mass murder of civilians (because they're trying to avoid entanglements with law enforcement, in whose domain this type of illicit behavior DOES fall). Even the most savage and amoral among them, like LA street gangs, have never given a single sane person any reason to fear that among their goals was the destruction of a major U.S. city.
Our enemies, however, WANT to blow up buildings and incinerate our people in mass quantities. They don't avoid the attention of law enforcement any more than the Japanese did when they bombed Pearl Harbor. They're all geared up for a real, honest-to-God war, and you're hoping, apparently, that by playing the "if I don't let you know that you're bothering me, you'll stop punching me in the arm" game. Advantage: them.
Hamas is a terrorist organization. It is also an army by any pragmatic definition (if you're going to get hang your argument on something as thin as "it's not an army unless they're all wearing matching uniforms", then let's just stop right here). Hizballah is a terrorist organization that is not only an army but a militant proxy of Iran, a nation that declared war on us three decades ago; we've been paying for ignoring that declaration ever since (just think, bomb the hell out of Iran in the late 1970s, no need to support Saddam in a proxy war against Iran, no Persian Gulf War, no 2003 invasion of Iraq, oil crisis forces us all to drive manually-powered Flinstones cars and averts global warming catastrophe -- the list of perks goes on). Al Qaeda is an army that was able to bolster its military efficacy with the harbor and support offered by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Make no mistake; we are fighting a war against armies, no matter how much the definition and composition of those armies differs from the traditional, not a bunch of guys sending out emails claiming to be a Nigerian prince with billions of dollars to dispense. They are armies not only because of their organizational structure but because their primary, and really sole, purpose is to inflict death and destruction on their enemies.
"*Shrug* given that liberals don't want us to *stop* doing stuff about terrorism"
And it's not like conservatives want to stop bringing law enforcement and intelligence operations to bear in fighting terrorism (both of which are now vastly more effective now that Janet Reno and Jamie Gorelick are no longer hamstringing cooperation between the two functions -- funny that). You only need to pretend that we do to prop up your argument against us.
"(indeed, we want to get rid of Bush's ineffective torture-and-invade policies and return to effective law-enforcement policies that actually put terrorists in prison)"
Wow, I hate to keep pointing this out to you, but Clinton's "effective" law enforcement policies did a pitiable job of putting anyone in prison. I've challenged you to produce this glowing record, which, to my knowledge, consists of waiting for a foreign government to bag Ramsey Yousef almost a decade after he bombed the WTC, and you just keep falling back to this revisionist fantasy in which the treat-Islamists-like-carjackers policy actually worked.
I guess Clinton's humility was his greatest weakness. That's probably why he sent Sandy Burger into the National Archives to steal and destroy documents that attested to just how "successful" his cruise-missiles-into-tents and hope-some-random-border-agent-searches-the-sweaty-guy's-car-for-drugs-and-finds-bombs-instead anti-terrorist approach was.
"a) Spend all their time on invading Muslim countries, which does nothing to stop terrorism, and"
Well, considering that the terrorists that threaten us are, what, 99% Muslim, I'd say that a good place to start looking for, and, hopefully, killing them, is in Muslim countries. And again, your suggestion that killing terrorists does nothing to combat terrorism is just nutso.
To tie it all together here: our enemies are armies of Muslims that want to inflict maximal death and destruction against our people, our interests, and our allies. Those same armies are directly supported and/or harbored by predominately Muslim countries principally located in the Middle East. They have declared war on us, practically begging for us to notice, while only roughly half this country seems to have gotten the message (and I don't conflate favoring the Iraqi invasion with recognizing the Muslim menace; one can favor the former without recognizing the latter and vice versa). They are not internet gamblers or other assorted seedy characters of ill repute to be targeted by our law enforcement agencies. They are militants trying to kill you (without even hating you in particular -- how rude!) while you stand there and pretend that you have every bit as much to fear from the likes of John Gotti (or mildly increased solar activity) as you do from the likes of Mohammed Atta. Pure theater that last bit.
"So basically, we want to fight global warming *and* terrorism"
But the first one does not represent an immediate threat (even IF I conceded the existence of this threat, and even IF I conceded that mankind's behavior was significantly responsible for it, and even IF I bought into the notion that we could do much to avert it without risking creating a catastrophe ourselves or by dramatically reducing our quality of life, there's no way I or anyone should believe that whatever serious negative consequences it may produce will materialize any time in the next 100 years), and you're obviously terrible at the second one. So why should we climb on board your magic carpet ride again?
"But what it comes down to is that we should do what is in our interests."
Whenever I find myself thinking ill of you, snap, I'll just remind myself that you at least have this one right. |
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Clinton was tested shortly after he came to power in January of 1993 with the first unsuccessful bombing of the Twin Towers. Bush was tested shortly after he came to power in 2001 with 911. It would be nothing short of folly to suggest that the next prez will not be tested. Be looking for a serious hit in 2009. If Hillary is our President then, I'll be laughing my a$$ off at her incompetence and crying forthe unnecessarily spilt blood on the altar ofthe Democratic Party's lust for power at any cost and the American People's collective stupidity for electing this idiot. |
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One VJay point I forgot to respond to (or, if you prefer, display my ignorance by responding to) was this one:
"Curiously, you didn't concede the unavoidable fact that your #1 reason why Bush has given the terrorists 'everything they wanted' is utter bunk given the fact that he could have more easily spun such a tale from our invasion of Afghanistan alone."
VJay, unsurprisingly, doesn't get the point here. Bin Laden can claim lots of stuff as a propaganda victory. But sometimes our national interests outweigh that.
So, yes, invading Afghanistan was a propaganda victory for Bin Laden, but it was in our interests, so we were right to do it anyway.
Yes, pulling out of Somalia was a propaganda victory for Bin Laden, but it was in our interests to pull out of Somalia, so we were right to do it anyway (just as we should now follow our national interests and pull out of Iraq).
The difference with Iraq is that it did not serve our national interest in any conceivable way (particularly in early 2003, when the U.N. inspectors went in and found no WMDs; any rational leader would have called off the invasion at that point), and so it was *nothing* but a propaganda victory for Bin Laden. And because the propaganda is for once sort of based in truth (unlike Afghanistan, our invasion of Iraq was really an unprovoked invasion/destruction of a Muslim country), it's even worse for us.
But what it comes down to is that we should do what is in our interests, and not worry about what the terrorists will say about us. But if we act against our own interests, it certainly compounds that folly when it becomes a propaganda victory for our enemies, and we should note and learn from that. Conservatives have it backwards; they want us to do things that are clearly not in our interests (invade Iraq; stay in Iraq forever) so that the terrorists will think we're "tough" and therefore love us. Odd, that.
"Sure they do, because you say so. That seems to be the bar for all of your arguments."
Okay, let me put it another way: a group of Italian mobsters kills a lot of people in an American city. Are they criminals, or are they part of an army?
"Watching someone pretend that possible environmental disasters that may occur sometime in the distant future are a more serious thret than Islamic terrorism: priceless"
*Shrug* given that liberals don't want us to *stop* doing stuff about terrorism (indeed, we want to get rid of Bush's ineffective torture-and-invade policies and return to effective law-enforcement policies that actually put terrorists in prison), I don't see the problem. Whereas conservatives want to
a) Spend all their time on invading Muslim countries, which does nothing to stop terrorism, and
b) Do absolutely nothing about global warming.
So basically, we want to fight global warming *and* terrorism, whereas you want to make both problems worse, and kill hundreds of thousands more Muslims into the bargain. Again, odd, that. |
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"You guys really get hysterical about global warming, don't you?"
Well, when someone tries to pretend that man-made climate change, which has never cost a single human being his or her life, is a more immediate threat than one that has fairly recently massacred thousands of Americans alone, then I guess my "hysterics" are derived from the fact that someone can be so utterly clueless as to claim that the former "threat" is more serious than the latter.
"I'm not really certain what's so "conservative" about global warming denial"
It's not a liberal/conservative thing. It's more of a commitment to factual reality than to pseudo-scientific fairy-tales invented to chase grant money with making apocalyptic predictions derived from inferior models and massaged data.
"The facts are that a) Global warming is happening"
It's as much a "fact" as every other ridiculous claim you've made on this thread, which has been nothing more than baseless assertion after baseless assertion on your point (and not even a half-hearted effort to substantiate any of it). It's really difficult to take you seriously at this point. I mean, the idea that "climate change", which has been occurring since the Earth cooled, is come kind of problem, much less a problem that is significantly man-made, is something that rational people tend to laugh at until they're presented with, you know, evidence to that claim.
"b) Global warming is not good,"
Because you say so? I mean, considering that we're only now emerging from a mini-ice age, I think it more reasonable to not only expect but to welcome a little warmth. Not to mention that a slight warming in our climate could dramatically increase the amount of agrigable land on the planet. I know, I know -- all climate change is BAD in your world, but it's been changing dramatically since well before we apparently found a way to make it happen. There's still more snow on the Alps now than at the height of the Roman Empire (damn those Romans and their CO2-belching vehicles), and, I hate to break this to you and the rest of the eco-zealots, but sustained "global warming" (if it is indeed occurring at all, which is nowhere near a scientific fact) would be occurring even if we gave up all our creature comforts and devolved back to hunter-gatherer status like crazy old unkie Al wants us to do.
I know libs, especially the godless variety, often feel the pathological need to grossly overinflate the cosmic importance of their brief time on the mortal coil, but I assure you that of the billions of variables influencing our climate, most of which are probably unknown much less accurately measurable much less within our miniscule power to influence, the fact that you drive a Prius instead of a Navigator doesn't register among them.
"c) It is within our power to do something to stop it or at least slow it down."
And this is where you guys make the transition between being merely ridiculous to being truly dangerous. Whatever "geo-engineering" remedies the pseudo-scientific community may come up with, my money's on them hastening our destruction rather than forestalling it. Such is the nature of unintended consequences when little people try to play God. Good thing they didn't go through with their grand schemes to melt the polar ice caps to slow down "global cooling" all the way back in the 1970's, huh? Oh, right, I keep forgetting -- THIS time they're certain that they know what the hell they're talking about.
"Therefore, normal people tend to think we should prioritize the stuff that is happening"
Agreed. Militant Islamists are at war with us, as evidenced by thirty years of attacks against our interests and citizens. Therefore, normal people (and, frankly, you're just out-and-out nuts if you think that your definition of "normal" in this instance is shared by more than a tiny fringe group of fools).
"(global warming)"
Speculation. The surprises never end.
"and stuff that we can do (cut down on greenhouse gas emissions)"
There is no conclusive evidence that greenhouse gases produced by human beings are significant contributors to the phenomenon of "global warming", which itself has no conclusive evidence to support it.
"over stuff that isn't happening (Muslamonazis taking over the world)"
Uh, but they ARE trying to kill whole bunches of us, aren't they, silly?
"or stuff we can't do (eliminate the threat of terrorism from the world)."
Uh, but we CAN take steps to reduce that threat as much as possible, can't we? I mean, for someone who acknowledges that we may only be able to "slow down" "global warming", you sure are ready to throw in the towel on trying to "slow down" the frequency and severity of Islamic attacks against us.
"Get it, got it? Good."
Oh, I get it all right. You're a grade-A dope who finds it rational to tilt at environmental windmills with absolutely zero short-term negative consequences for any of us rather than confront the 500-pound, well-armed, Allahu-Ahkbar-chanting gorilla in the room.
"The other thing you get hysterical about is when I point out that terrorists are criminals. But they certainly have more in common with mafiosi and gangsters than with soldiers."
Sure they do, because you say so. That seems to be the bar for all of your arguments.
Number of people killed by man-made global warming: 0
Number of Americans killed by Islamic terrorists: thousands
Number of people suffering under the yoke of totalitarian Muslim rule: millions
Watching someone pretend that possible environmental disasters that may occur sometime in the distant future are a more serious thret than Islamic terrorism: priceless |
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You guys really get hysterical about global warming, don't you? I'm not really certain what's so "conservative" about global warming denial but I'll move on... the point is not that global warming is going to wipe us out. The facts are that a) Global warming is happening, b) Global warming is not good, c) It is within our power to do something to stop it or at least slow it down. "C" distinguishes it from terrorism and/or Islam, which will always exist. Therefore, normal people tend to think we should prioritize the stuff that is happening (global warming) and stuff that we can do (cut down on greenhouse gas emissions) over stuff that isn't happening (Muslamonazis taking over the world) or stuff we can't do (eliminate the threat of terrorism from the world). Get it, got it? Good.
The other thing you get hysterical about is when I point out that terrorists are criminals. But they certainly have more in common with mafiosi and gangsters than with soldiers. (Calling terrorists an "army" gives them an odd kind of legitimacy; you really do seem determined to pretend that they are something more than criminal scum.) Only in bizarro world is it considered being "soft on terrorists" to want to treat them as criminals; am I "soft" on John Dillinger if I want the FBI to go after him? Sheesh. |
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"Well, yeah. Climate change is an actual problem;"
Except for the inconvenient truth that it's not, at least among serious people with sane priorities. I know this comes to a great shock to you and the rest of the nutjobs looking for a potential apocalypse everywhere except where such a possibility exists, but the climate has been changing even before the first SUV rolled off the assembly line! I'll bet you were sitting there, watching Al Gore hyperventilating on Oprah, drooling out such wisdom as "The spot we're sitting on used to be covered by a two-mile thick sheet of ice!!!!!1111111", yelling in approval at the staggering lunacy of this twit that seems to think this revelation actually bolsters his doomsday scenarios rather than exposes it as the pseudo-scientific joke that it is and has been from day one.
Global warming, I mean "climate change" (gotta hedge those bets for when the next solar cycle produces lower global temperatures!) freaks are so pathetic.
"the idea that the Islamists will take over the Western world is a crazy paranoid fantasy believed only by a) Crazy Islamists, and b) Crazy American conservatives."
Well, considering that not a one of us is the least bit threatened by the infinitesimal "climate changes" that have occurred in the past century (I guess the new standard for you loons is that the climate is only unendangered when it doesn't change at all), and considering that all of us with funcdtioning synapses recognize the threat posed by Islamofanatics with the capacity to inflict mass destruction, I'd say that you, like the rest of the denizens of your up-side-down, square bizarro universe, have a little bit of a problem with common sense.
And no, snap, I don't think the Islamists can take over the entire Western world. But that's really not the point, now is it? As long as they believe that they are commanded by their faith to at least make the attempt, they sure can inflict a whole helluva lot more damage than a 1.5 foot (or whatever spot on the board is found by the dart this week) rise in sea level over the next century.
What's hilarious is that the next time anyone points out, obviously and by your own damning words, that you clowns aren't the least bit serious about national security but instead focus your efforts on make-believe fantasies that may or may not ever threaten us in a thousand years (e.g. "climate change"), you'll get your panties in a bunch and whine in protest. Pavlovian hilarity.
"normal people know that the West is still strong and that Islamism is as much an existential threat as Global Rsstafarianism."
Well, "normal" people in your intellectual circles may think that the West is still strong, but the informed among us recognize that the West, at least in Europe, has a very serious and growing problem caused by its own suicidal demographics, multicultural idiocy, counterproductive immigration policies, and growing submission to Islamic demands. So you'll forgive me if I dismiss your flippant comparison between Islamism, a global-by-nature, supremacist movement that has already conquered half the world once before, and "Global Rastafarianism" as the ramblings of a child.
"Well, yeah. OBL is a liar and a propagandist."
But we shouldn't have invaded Iraq because it gave OBL a propaganda victory, right? Curiously, you didn't concede the unavoidable fact that your #1 reason why Bush has given the terrorists "everything they wanted" is utter bunk given the fact that he could have more easily spun such a tale from our invasion of Afghanistan alone. I'm shocked.
"When he says he'd hate us less if we didn't act in our own interests (it was of course in our interests to leave Somalia, but conservatives, who hate America, don't care about America's interests), he's lying through what's left of his teeth."
I'm sorry, but can you please shoot off a flare or something when your "argument" veers from doing nothing more than wildly speculating in ways that coincidentally support it? I mean, I've met some smug, smarmy, self-assured liberals in my time, but the degree to which you so confidentally claim to divine OBL's or anyone else's true motives or opinions is breathtaking in its arrogance. But hey, it's really all you've got, so speculate away.
" don't know why you conservatives trust OBL so much"
Hitler was a propagandist. Hitler made all kinds of wacky promises to the German people in his public rant-and-rave sessions. Hitler was dismissed as unserious by the very same tea-and-crumpets-in-my-time crowd to which you apparently belong. It never ceases to amaze how liberals are so willing to simply pick and choose which unambiguous statements made by our enemies they're willing to accept as real and which they choose to scoff at out-of-hand. It's almost as if you're more committed to reinforcing your pre-conceived notions of reality than confronting it as it is. Again, shocking!
"why you believe Ahmadinejad's nutty rants."
Try and follow along now, snap; I'll go slowly. Ahmadinejad belongs to an Islamic sect that even the original Ayatollah Khomeini thought was too radical. Ahmadinejad is clearly pursuing the development of nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad believes, per his own repeated and unambiguous statements to the effect (I know, I know -- WE'RE the ones that are nuts for actually listening to what people say rather than deciding for them what they REALLY mean), that he sees himself as a catalyst for a good old-fashioned rapture that his "religion" dictates will bring the final dominion of Allah over the Earth (yea!). Now, I know that it's difficult for you and I to identify with this level of psychosis, but, alas, the limits of our empathy do not in any way diminish the threat, no matter how much you want to pretend that everyone is really sane and has the same priorities at heart.
And, of course, if in 10 years and following direct threat after direct threat to annihilate us, Iran launches its newfangled for-electricity-producing-purposes-only weapons (or gives them to a proxy to do the deed) and we San Francisco or New York are transformed into places where long-oppressed radiological mutants can finally call home, you'll plug in to the blogosphere or whatever medium is popular at the time and berate us for not taking him seriously.
Yeah, I'm just speculating on this, but why should I let you have all the fun?
"Uh, yeah. The difference is that "terrorists" are not an army (that's one of the reasons that the war on terror isn't a real war); you don't have to join a particular organization to be a "terrorist," unlike an army."
Sure, they're not part of a formal army in the traditional sense, but, by pure coincidence, virtually every single terrorist that threatens our interests happens to belong to the same exclusive club. See if you can guess which one it is; based on your stupifying nonchalance about this obvious-as-the-nose-on-your-face menace, I think you might actually be surprised.
"But a "terrorist" is merely someone who plans or commits terrorism"
Or, in more accurate terms that don't intentionally muddy the waters so that you can go on pretending that a terrorist can be just anyone from anywhere, a terrorist, or at least the ones willing and capable of pulling off operations the scope and scale of 9/11, is a Muslim fanatic that is a member of a well-financed, well-supported organization of Muslim fanatics. His organization has at least a loose militant hierarchy (much like an army), is offered support or at least tacit harbor by at least one governmnet (much like an army), and his goals are also pursued by many, many other well-financed, well-supported organizations that operate on military, political, social, and legal fronts.
So sorry to, once again, have reality intrude on your neighborhood of make-believe, where terrorists are nothing more than lone actors with no discernible common characteristics and little or no institutional support.
"and therefore if you kill one, it's perfectly possible for two more guys to decide to plan a terrorist act."
You're completely detached from reality at this point. You're just too far gone if you think that anyone, anywhere can just up and become a terrorist of consequence tomorrow, or that the procedure for replacing lost German soldiers is somehow so much more prohibitive than replacing lost jihadis. And the whole non-sensical, self-serving argument that killing terrorists breeds new ones has always been based on the notion that we make those fence-sitting Muslims (you know, the ones that are currently bakers and candlestick makers but are just.one.grievance.away from deciding to become butchers) SO MAD that they sign up for the common cause that you pretend doesn't exist. Funny, though, but the mass killing of Japanese soldiers, which were comparably fanatical to the Islamopsychopaths of today, didn't make Joe Japanese Citizen SO MAD that he signed up in droves and produced an explosion of Japanese resistance.
The whole "kill a terrorist; create two" is nothing more than an illogical, historically unsupportable meme invented in the ivory towers of academia and the left-wing nutjobosphere so that people like you could come here and parrot it with the confidence that legions of the equally clueless were in agreement with you. After all, if you oppose a war, why not invent conditions that guarantee that war simply cannot be won? Brilliant!
"That's why it makes no sense to say that success is "killing terrorists"; if someone hasn't plotted or committed a terrorist act, he is by definition not a terrorist, so many of the people we've killed were not in fact terrorists."
Well, since I'm not dumb enough to treat "terrorists" as the common criminals you think them to be, I guess my thinking is a bit more nuanced. I guess, based on your disjointed reasoning, the fact that Zawahiri hasn't technically committed a terrorist attack against us (hey, who knows, he might not have even known about 9/11), then he's not really a legitimate target in this war (which is, granting the idiocy of a euphemism like "the war on terror", actually a war against doctrinal Islam). And since every one of the 9/11 hijackers died in the attacks, I guess the whole war in Afghanistan was a campaign against innocent non-terrorists, especially considering that the vast majority of animals we have and continue to slaughter there had never, ever committed an act of terrorism against us. What a crazed cowboy that Bush is; 9/11 should have ended at the morgue.
"That's why it's law-enforcement rather than war; because the process for becoming a terrorist is the process of turning to crime, not joining up with an army."
I'm not going to change my arguments to suit your ignorance, but your dismissal of Islamic terrorists as nothing more than criminals is insane. No one legitimately fears the Crips getting their hands on a radiological, biological, or nuclear weapon and detonating it in the heart of a major city. No one legitimately denies the ambition of our Islamic enemies to do the same. In your ongoing parade of buffoonery, this is where you jump the shark several times over. I'd love to see toady or any of the other more rational lefties that frequent this board come here and defend your asinine characterization of card-carrying Al Qaeda soldiers with urban American street hoods. My guess is that, if they're lurking, they're quietly urging you to quit while you're way, way behind. You're embarrassing them.
But I do encourage you to become actively involved in politics. Convincing Democrats to run on a platform of "Islamic terrorists: Just like those kids that keep knocking over your mailbox with a baseball bat" would do wonders to keeping the White House in Republican hands for the next 50 or 60 years. But enjoy those solid majorities among the childless, nihilists, and the Hizballah cheerleaders in Dearborn. |
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"I am thrilled that Saddam is dead but it sure would have been better if he had been tried by military tribunal and put away by summary execution by professionals rather than cave men."
Agree wholeheartedly. |
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My objection lies in the lack of respect for ritual and propriety. The executioners abandoned any pretense of human dignity by behaving like the thugs that they are. The execution should have been conducted by executioners who represented Iraq, not Shiites. This was just tribal payback and will not do anything to foster a united Iraq. I don't blame Bush or Americans. This is just another example that the Iraqi government cannot take control of anything and is afraid to upset Muqtada Sadr. These people have yet to take the first step out of the cave. |
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"But maybe you're right. The sooner we stop getting the vapors over this transient little Islam nuisance, the sooner we can focus on tackling REAL threats like "climate change"."
Well, yeah. Climate change is an actual problem; the idea that the Islamists will take over the Western world is a crazy paranoid fantasy believed only by a) Crazy Islamists, and b) Crazy American conservatives. I don't know why you agree with terrorists that we Westerners are so weak and frail that the Caliphate is a possibility; normal people know that the West is still strong and that Islamism is as much an existential threat as Global Rsstafarianism.
"When OBL states in no uncertain terms that he was emboldened towards 9/11-like escapades against the United States by the "paper tiger" image he attributed to us after our retreat from Somalia, well, that's just empty rhetoric (ostensibly because it conflicts with your own baseless opinion)."
Well, yeah. OBL is a liar and a propagandist. When he says he'd hate us less if we didn't act in our own interests (it was of course in our interests to leave Somalia, but conservatives, who hate America, don't care about America's interests), he's lying through what's left of his teeth. I don't know why you conservatives trust OBL so much, or why you believe Ahmadinejad's nutty rants. Liberals, again, know that these guys are morons; conservatives seem to admire and trust them.
"I know, I know. This is the part that you remind me that, by killing terrorists, we've created even more of them!!!!!!11111 Apparently, Islamic terrorists, unlike, say, German or Japanese soldiers, multiply like some kind of hydra whenever you cut off one of their heads."
Uh, yeah. The difference is that "terrorists" are not an army (that's one of the reasons that the war on terror isn't a real war); you don't have to join a particular organization to be a "terrorist," unlike an army. If you kill a German soldier, that's one less German soldier and there's a whole procedure for replacing him. But a "terrorist" is merely someone who plans or commits terrorism, and therefore if you kill one, it's perfectly possible for two more guys to decide to plan a terrorist act.
That's why it makes no sense to say that success is "killing terrorists"; if someone hasn't plotted or committed a terrorist act, he is by definition not a terrorist, so many of the people we've killed were not in fact terrorists. That's why it's law-enforcement rather than war; because the process for becoming a terrorist is the process of turning to crime, not joining up with an army. |
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In the circle of life where we all travel "from dust to dust", Saddam demonstrated that he was as good as anyone at the dust part but couldn't put anything worth living for in between. Good riddens. He's rotting already. But if the only reason we kept him alive for three years was to put him on a show trial, it was a legal and propaganda disaster for reasons lots of other people have pointed out. Then there was the execution. The security was so porous that Saddam was filmed via cell phone, probably by a Shiite, which was released on the internet minutes after the deed was done. Worse yet, Saddam took the plunge to the chants of "Muqtada! Muqtada! Muqtada!" I am thrilled that Saddam is dead but it sure would have been better if he had been tried by military tribunal and put away by summary execution by professionals rather than cave men. |
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"Curiosity: Why all the kvetching about the NYT blowing surveilence programs (and the grandstanding about the terrorism they've stopped) if the *real* reason we've not had another terrorist attack is because of George W. Bush's vengeful gaze?"
Well, I guess when you invent the arguments of your ideological opposition out of whole cloth, it sure is easy to knock them down. Congratulations on this titanic feat.
But just to humor you for a second, I guess my grandparents would have been silly to kvetch if the NYT exposed our cracking of the Wehrmacht Enigma code, even though the *real* reason that the Allies defeated the Nazis was the sustained naval, air, and ground campaign against them.
"Also: As 9/11-style attacks generally require their perpetrators to die in the process, what do they care about retribution?"
Hmmm, what a dastardly logical puzzle in which you've ensnared us wingnuts. But see if you can follow this tricky bit of reasoning: not everyone involved in 9/11 actually took part in the attack. Ergo, there are at least a tiny handful of bad apples out there (just some isolated, fringe Muslim "Lone Gunmen" ostracized by the "moderates", I'm assured) that have at least a little to fear from retribution.
Because, you know, they're still alive.
"Once again, I'd like to offer my services as a right-wing pundit."
I'm just not sure that punditry of any kind is really up your alley. I mean, here you are on a conservative blog, lecturing conservatives about what you proclaim to be the incoherence of their worldview, and doing so with a post that pretends to play "gotcha" by boldly offering up logical fallacies and other assorted silliness. Since it's reasonable to assume that you would selectively choose an arena in which you were relatively certain you could make an impressive display, I'm forced to conclude that this tripe is the best you have to offer in the way of punditry.
Chin up -- plenty of other careers out there. |
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Curiosity: Why all the kvetching about the NYT blowing surveilence programs (and the grandstanding about the terrorism they've stopped) if the *real* reason we've not had another terrorist attack is because of George W. Bush's vengeful gaze?
Also: As 9/11-style attacks generally require their perpetrators to die in the process, what do they care about retribution?
Once again, I'd like to offer my services as a right-wing pundit. Seems like the easiest job in the universe, as you apparently don't have to do a whole lot in the way of having a coherent worldview. |
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"Whenever it's pointed out that Bush has helped the terrorists, Bush cultists always bring up the toppling of the Taliban. "
Because it's highly relevant. So sorry that it tarnishes one of the vapid talking points on which your whole viewpoint rests.
"Except that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al had to be talked, nay, pressured into doing that by people like Powell; they wanted to hit Iraq first (because it was easier)."
Not only can you not prove this (we're all shocked, I assure you), it isn't even relevant, because the fact remains that we did invade Afghanistan; we did topple the Taliban; we did seize from Al Qaeda the most strategically important base of support they had in the world. And I seriously doubt that Colin Powell, of the freaking State Department for crying out loud, had the influence necessary to wrench the collective arms of the President, Vice President, and Secretary of Defense behind their backs and make them cry "uncle" until they agreed to go into Afghanistan first. But hey -- you've drawn your conclusions; you only need to reverse engineer the "facts" that support them.
"and he soon got bored with it and invaded Iraq, which is why the Taliban is roaring back and Bin Laden hasn't been captured."
Yes, of course. Bush invaded Iraq because he was "bored". It had nothing to do with his CIA chief telling him that Saddam's possession of WMDs was as certain as the sunrise, nothing to do with Putin telling him that Saddam planned to attack U.S. targets, nothing to do with the fact that 9/11 completely obliterated the suicidal notion that we should just sit on our hands waiting to be attacked (maybe we'll get really lucky and lose a whole city next time!) and only THEN project our indomitable power.
Sorry America, but we just can't intervene to neutralize threats no matter how blindingly obvious (per the preponderence of evidence and international consensus that is almost unheard of) they are -- we've got to wait for them to incinerate a few thousand or million of you first. Courage.
"But by failing to catch him, Bush essentially told the terrorists that they could do what they want and Bush was impotent against them,"
Oh, yes, they're doing very well. Tens of thousands of them are dead, they've lost their primary haven, and the position of "top military commander" for Al Qaeda Local 666 has about the same longevity as an Admiral in Darth Vader's fleet. You could just sense the confidence and bravado in Zarquawi's letters to Bin Laden/Zawahiri, couldn't you? Sure, it sounded like they were pretty beaten and desperate to me, but I guess I don't have your nuanced reading skills.
"1. Invading a Muslim country without provocation, providing a major propaganda victory for the terrorists (the Iraq invasion confirmed Bin Laden's propaganda about America being a country that kills Muslims for no good reason)"
First of all, the list of legal and intelligence-based justifications for the Iraq War (i.e. the continuation of the Persian Gulf War) is longer than your arm, but don't let that get in the way of your argument. I guess we just can't enforce cease fire mandates or umpteen U.N. resolutions if doing so will give Bin Laden a propaganda victory. And just go ahead and ignore that, had we limited ourselves to just invading Afghanistan (another Muslim country, doncha know), Bin Laden would have manufactured such propaganda anyway. I mean, you don't think the average brainwashed zombie in the Arab street thinks that Al Qaeda and, by proxy, the Taliban, are responsible for 9/11, do you? It's all about oil pipelines and Mossad operatives and controlled explosions and the Trilateral Commission and PNAC and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (and that's just the view from the University of Wisconsin), or haven't you heard?
But good to see you're willing to hamstring our entire foreign policy by binding it to the requirement that we must never take any action that Osama Bin Laden can spin to his advantage. You know, like stationing our troops in Saudi Arabia to defend Muslim Saudis from the secular Saddam Hussein. What WILL he think of next, and how long will it take for you to come here and tell us that we need to act in accordance with his wishes?
Second of all, I thought Saddam and Bin Laden were mortal ideological enemies that could never cooperate with each other, with Saddam villified as a Muslim apostate (which is even worse than an infidel in the eyes of these whackjobs). How could the deposing of this poseur be more of a "recruiting tool" for OBL than the toppling of the true believers in Afghanistan? Oh, that's right -- it can't. So reality kinda trashes your whole point here.
"2. Making it impossible for anyone in the Middle East to be pro-American (you want to know what happened to the "moderate Muslims?" they've all clammed up because they can't afford to be seen as supporting the corrupt Bush administration)"
Ignoring the fact that we were never popular in the Muslim world at large, I can't help but get the sneaking suspicion that you're doing nothing more than wildly speculating here (no way!). It's much the same feeling I get when I read pretty much anything you write here. I mean, Islam has been engaged in an unrelenting campaign of rape, pillage, and murder since it first graced our planet over a millenia ago; I think Occam's Razor demands that we simply accept that there aren't all that many "moderate Muslims", especially in those nations where the barbarity and intolerance endemic to that "faith" is tightly integrated into the social and political fabric.
But hey, that's just speculation too. Sure, I've got valid reasons for mine that you lack entirely, but to each his own.
"3. Installing an Iranian client state in Iraq (see above)"
Ah, yes, because this was part of Bin Laden's master plan all along as well. He simply KNEW that ChimpyMcNutsAboutKillingBrownPeople was going to allow the Iraqis to hold free elections in which they would choose an Iranian sock puppet like al Maliki. Of course, Iraq isn't much of an effective client of Iran so long as the U.S. military is stationed there in large numbers, and I've got a sneaking suspicion that they won't be leaving any time soon. And there's always time to "correct" our mistakes; I'm sure you'll join me in celebration if and when we finally "correct" the fact that Moqtada al Sadr is still breathing.
"4. Constantly telling Americans to be afraid and paranoid, and over-hyping the threat of terrorism into a global existential threat (the purpose of terrorism, like Bush's purpose, is to keep us in constant fear; a real leader would try to assuage our fears, not play on them)"
First of all, Islamic expansion is THE threat of our time, and only a fool would argue otherwise (at least you've got lots and lots of company). To pretend that the Ahmadinejads and Bin Ladens of the world are not at least as grave a threat to us as any other against which we've taken up arms is simply to scream that the Earth is indeed flat. Look at a world map (which is, suspiciously, flat), take note of all of the sectarian violence raging here, and see what characteristic seems to pop up a staggering percentage of the time among the aggressors. Take a gander at the ceaseless parade of "slaughter the infidels" appeals regularly spewed by the most prominent and respected "scholars" in the Muslim world (MEMRI is invaluable for this popcorn theater). Militant Islam is an existential threat by the very virtue of its supremacist doctrine and global goals and has been since it first started massacring and enslaving Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, et al. across Asia, Europe, and Africa. Granted, they can't roll like they used to any more, but crippling political correctness, the worldwide economic cudgel of oil, and the proliferation of destructive technology mean that they probably don't have to.
Second of all, the idea that Bush has "played on our fears" is soooo Al Gore talking point. I seem to remember that, even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, he was on television telling us not that we should be notifying the Ministry of Racial Harmony of those suspicious Arab-looking folks next door; he told us to go shopping. As someone who despises shopping, I found it truly terrifying!
But maybe you're right. The sooner we stop getting the vapors over this transient little Islam nuisance, the sooner we can focus on tackling REAL threats like "climate change".
"5. Eliminating "negotiation" as an option, thus guaranteeing the spread of terrorism (in the real world, "appeasement" -- that is, giving someone something in exchange for them doing something you want -- actually works; for example, once we "appeased" Arafat in the '70s, the PLO stopped attacking Americans and stuck to attacking Israelis); ironically, by avoiding "appeasement," Bush has given the terrorists the excuse they need to keep on with the status quo."
Oh, yes, appeasement of terrorists has a spectacular track record. After all, all those land-for-peace deals that the Israelis have brokered with the "Palestinians" are a brilliant example of the superiority of diplomacy over force. Just last week, the "Palestinians" were holding a love-and-tolerance fair in Gaza, attended by hundreds of well-armed "youths" dressed in battle fatigues (I just can't keep up with these kids and their fashion trends). One can forgive the exhuberance and carelessness of youth, but I think that their overpowered fireworks really shouldn't have been aimed towards the Jewish state; no telling what kind of accidents could happen with them.
But just like you lefties are so fond of saying, sometimes you just have to give Poland to Hitler. Please make all my Christmas wishes come true and tell me that you also buy into the Bakerian "realist" idea of Israel being leaned on to give the Golan Heights back to Syria, all in the name of, you know, defeating terrorism. Or something.
"By any standard, Clinton's "law-enforcement" approach worked better than Bush's approach,"
By any standard other than results. I mean, of all the laughable silliness in your posts, your insistence on hammering on this point is a topper. Most lefties just try to change the subject of Clinton when it comes to handling terrorism (try "but 9/11 happened on BUSH's watch!!!!!!11111" if you need an old standby); they've at least got that much common sense. You're trying to lionize his record which consists of nothing more than attack after attack against us without so much as a single substantive response or even a significant "law enforcement" victory for crying out loud. It would be pitiable had it not unnecessarily cost the lives of so many and, contrary to your ridiculous, sense-free protestations to the contrary, emboldened our enemies and encouraged them to execute bigger and more destructive attacks.
"Terrorists don't stop because they're "afraid" or because we're "tough","
No, but they do tend to stop when they're dead. In fact, recent surveys have shown a dramatic reduction in the level of terrorism among those lacking heart and brain activity, making it THE most effective terrorist-reducing tactic known to man. What is it about you lefties and your reflexive opposition to effectively stopping terrorism?
"and only people who have seen too many John Wayne movies (bad ones, not the good ones like THE SEARCHERS) would think that terrorists attacked us because we pulled out of Somalia."
Of course not. When OBL states in no uncertain terms that he was emboldened towards 9/11-like escapades against the United States by the "paper tiger" image he attributed to us after our retreat from Somalia, well, that's just empty rhetoric (ostensibly because it conflicts with your own baseless opinion). And when Ahmadinejad says he wants to see the United States destroyed and thinks the return of the 12th Imam is imminent (a glorious event that must be precipitated by the deaths of 1/3rd of the world's people), we should just dismiss him like everyone's crazy old drunken uncle.
How very "realist" of you.
"Terrorists will always hate us; fortunately good law-enforcement strategies can prevent most attacks."
Except for the inconvenient fact that, unfortunately, they've done no such thing. If it weren't for your grossly misplaced fealty to "law enforcement" as a means to fight a worldwide movement supported by numerous interwoven, cooperating, and redundant civic, legal, and political institutions like it was a bunch of punks running an internet phishing scam, then OBL would most likely have been neutralized well before 9/11 (you know, when he was repeatedly offered on a platter to Bill Clinton, who refused to take him into custody because "law enforcement" had no remedy).
You keep waiting for the flawless, never-fails "law enforcement" necessary to keep our major cities from being incinerated; me and the rest of us who actually value our lives and don't value theirs will back a guy who, despite all his many flaws, understands that a team that only plays defense is one that loses every single game.
"Too bad Bush, like conservatives, wants terrorists to love us;"
Truly Orwellian. This from the guy that earlier in the very same post was nakedly advocating appeasing terrorists. Newsflash, pal, we're the ones promoting the policies that are burying these monsters by the boatload; you're the ones hoping that the next Millenium Bomber also tips his hand by having malaria. I don't want their love; I want them dead. You obviously can't say the same, because you're pom-pomming for a policy that involved letting terrorists do whatever the hell they wanted without repercussion while pissing on one that has ensured that thousands of them will never again terrorize anybody.
I know, I know. This is the part that you remind me that, by killing terrorists, we've created even more of them!!!!!!11111 Apparently, Islamic terrorists, unlike, say, German or Japanese soldiers, multiply like some kind of hydra whenever you cut off one of their heads. Sure, there isn't a shred of hard evidence supporting this cynical, self-serving position, but I think we'd all be disappointed if you didn't fall back to it. |
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Isn't it obvious? Male profile enhancement. Women have the Wonder Bra. We're still waiting for Wonder Pants. |
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Cost far more in the end. Half measures create even bigger problems. Rumsfeld was on the right track, but he did everything with too little power behind it. Overwhelming force would have been better than just "shock and awe". Half measures give us Korea and for half a century, Germany. |
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"but rather because it’s been barely defined at all. The policies dealing with Iran specifically and the wider war against Radical Islam in general have been mushy to date and again poorly articulated..."
it is very hard to have an objective judgment on this issue, because the media slant, unethically trying to undermine this President has been overwhelming.
for example, it seems a majority of Americans seem to believe the economy is poor, when it clearly is incredibly healthy for all.
the same can be stated for the Bush Administration's policy, clearly stated, and explained repeatedly, in regards to the mission in Iraq.
but the MSM have manipulated everything in the most dishonest manner.
so much so, a vast number of Americans seem to believe Nancy Pelosi's deceit, suggesting Iraq has nothing to do with the GWOT, EVEN as al Qaeda offers public declarations regarding their morbid presence in Iraq.
it is simply hard to place all the blame on this Administration for poor communication efforts, understanding this may be the most intense level of manipulation, distortion, ever used to undermine a sitting President.
the reality of millions of formerly oppressed lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the future of the Free World, are meaningless to the unethical agenda of those Democrat Partisans working in the MSM. |
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Maybe the Libs ought to take a look at the King of all appeasers, Spain. Appeasement gets you dead. |
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Wasn't it Clinton that led the war to slaughter the Christians and help the Islamists in the Balkans? Oh, that's right, Clinton War = Good and Bush war = Bad. Last time I checked the Christians were still being attacked and the UN isn't doing sh*t to stop it!
MD |
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Back when we were preparing to enter Afghanistan I had an interesting discussion with a coworker who is a 45-year-old college student. She just got her poly sci major, which was my minor in college, so we had often discussed politics during down times.
Robin's view right after 911 had been similar to my own, shock and dismay and a grieving for the non-combatants who had been targeted. We even agreed that the Pentagon had not been a legitimate target since we were not officially at war with Al-Qeda. But when we located bin Laden in Afghanistan, her tune changed. It was okay with her that we demanded the Afghanis turn over bin Laden and gang, but when we decided we would go in and get them because they refused to turn them over, suddenly the US was wrong and evil.
"We should never be perceived as an agressor!" is the line I remember of her argument. The debate grew a bit in scope as a few others joined the discussion. It just happened that all the conservatives in the agency were nearby that day. What came out of it was that the US had essentially been wrong (from her point of view) everytime we retaliated against an enemy off our own soil. She quoted a bunch of liberal thinkers, but it came down to this -- if a nation or terrorist group attacked us on our own soil and then withdrew, we did not have the right to follow them to their own country because that would be a show of agression. "We have the right to defend our borders, but no right to act outside of our borders."
I think this is likely the mindset of most of liberal academia and the students they produce. I think it is likely the stance of most of the liberals who come to this site. They may not be aware that they think that way, because they have been indoctrinated into their beliefs and few people can ever sort out brain washing from legimately held knowledge-based opinion.
I think that's really what we're dealing with here -- a mentality that says our right to defend ourselves ends when our enermy steps out of the circle of our arm span.
Of course, realists know that this means you can never win a war. It also means that the only safety on the international scene for Americans is no presence whatsoever. We would, all of us, need to withdraw into the country, take no trips, use no foreign resources, because any action we take outside of our own nation could be perceived as agression and warrant our deaths or even attack on our own soil.
That is a recipe for the destruction of a nation, but hey, at least nobody will think of us as agressors! |
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If Clinton did such a bang up job in "counter-terrorism" I wonder why his National Security Advisor found it so necessary to stuff classified documents down his pants. |
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"By any standard, Clinton's "law-enforcement" approach worked better than Bush's approach,"
During the Clinton Administration we witnessed:
1) The first WTC Bombing
2) The African Embassy Bombings
3) The Khobar Towers Bombings
4) The attack on the USS Cole
The Clinton Administration responded with a "law enforcement" strategy every time. Not to mention Jamie Gorelik's Wall that prohibited the sharing of vital national security information between government agencies.
During the Bush Administration we witnessed the 9/11 attack, which, as I said above, was well underway while Clinton was still in office. Bush responded. And we have not had an attack on our soil since. So PICK ANY STANDARD and tell me what works better.
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I occassionally read the comment threads here just to remind myself that the left in this country is crazy, blind and stupid. Show them a fact and they just pull their tinfoil hats down further over their eyes and call you names for trying to scare them. They insist that 'dialogue' can bring about understanding between the west and radical islam, yet 'talking' to them is as productive as trying to milk a bull and they are fellow Americans, with whom we ought to have much in common!
Interesting times we live in. |
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Whenever it's pointed out that Bush has helped the terrorists, Bush cultists always bring up the toppling of the Taliban. Except that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al had to be talked, nay, pressured into doing that by people like Powell; they wanted to hit Iraq first (because it was easier). The toppling of the Taliban was the only time Bush has ever followed the "realistic" foreign policy idea -- namely, if someone attacks you, you attack them back; no pre-emption -- and he soon got bored with it and invaded Iraq, which is why the Taliban is roaring back and Bin Laden hasn't been captured.
The failure to capture Bin Laden, and Bush's statement that he wasn't concerned about Bin Laden, was the first clue that Bush was an appeaser of terrorists. True, as Bush cultists pointed out, Bin Laden himself is more a symbol than a threat. But by failing to catch him, Bush essentially told the terrorists that they could do what they want and Bush was impotent against them, so impotent that he would instead waste colossal amounts of money and lives on easy but irrelevant targets (Saddam).
Other examples of Bush doing what the terrorists want include:
1. Invading a Muslim country without provocation, providing a major propaganda victory for the terrorists (the Iraq invasion confirmed Bin Laden's propaganda about America being a country that kills Muslims for no good reason)
2. Making it impossible for anyone in the Middle East to be pro-American (you want to know what happened to the "moderate Muslims?" they've all clammed up because they can't afford to be seen as supporting the corrupt Bush administration)
3. Installing an Iranian client state in Iraq (see above)
4. Constantly telling Americans to be afraid and paranoid, and over-hyping the threat of terrorism into a global existential threat (the purpose of terrorism, like Bush's purpose, is to keep us in constant fear; a real leader would try to assuage our fears, not play on them)
5. Eliminating "negotiation" as an option, thus guaranteeing the spread of terrorism (in the real world, "appeasement" -- that is, giving someone something in exchange for them doing something you want -- actually works; for example, once we "appeased" Arafat in the '70s, the PLO stopped attacking Americans and stuck to attacking Israelis); ironically, by avoiding "appeasement," Bush has given the terrorists the excuse they need to keep on with the status quo.
By any standard, Clinton's "law-enforcement" approach worked better than Bush's approach, particularly since terrorists are gangsters and gangsterism is a law-enforcement issue (why do conservatives hate law-enforcement anyway)? But I wouldn't argue that because there weren't any Islamist attacks on American soil for a number of years after 1993, that that meant they were afraid of Clinton. They weren't afraid of Clinton, they weren't afraid of Bush; they're too crazy to be afraid.
Terrorists don't stop because they're "afraid" or because we're "tough", and only people who have seen too many John Wayne movies (bad ones, not the good ones like THE SEARCHERS) would think that terrorists attacked us because we pulled out of Somalia. Terrorists will always hate us; fortunately good law-enforcement strategies can prevent most attacks. Too bad Bush, like conservatives, wants terrorists to love us; that's why he keeps trying desperately to prove we're "tough" -- because he wants the terrorists to respect him, whereas liberals just want to catch terrorists. That's why liberals are reliable against terrorism, whereas conservatives, with their desire to be loved by the Islamists, have helped them. |
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"Saddam deserved to die, but he was the enemy of the Islamists and Bush has removed their enemy for them."
Oh, yes, Saddam Hussein was certainly one of the world's most effective checks against worldwide jihad. Except that he did absolutely nothing to thwart it save cut any deal with any actor whom he felt would best secure his stranglehold on power. I mean, the idea that Saddam Hussein, a secular dictator, would EVER cooperate with fundamentalist terrorist groups like Al Qaeda is just sooooo far-fetched, so long as one is completely invested in the silly, unsubstantiated fairy-tale that secular Islamic butchers simply cannot have common cause with religious Islamic butchers.
I mean, it's not as if Saddam tried to burnish his nutjob credentials by having a Koran written in his own blood, or by publicly offering thousands of dollars to the families of "Palestinian" suicide bombers, or by offering bin Laden safe haven after 9/11, or by being the only major world leader not to publicly condemn those attacks, or by affording comfy government digs to Islamic terrorists like Abu Nidal, or by at least floating the idea to his "diplomats" of cooperating on joint works with international terrorist organizations.
"Bush was totally uninterested in counter-terrorism before 9/11)."
Yeah, all 1/2 a year of it, and all because you say so. How underwhelming. Of course, if Bill Clinton had actually put together an anti-terrorist plan for Bush to pick up and run with, things, perhaps, might have turned out differently. Oh, I know, Clinton pretends to have done just that -- "just read Richard Clarke's book!" he raves like a pathological narcissist willing to risk committing the most egregious of lies just so he won't be blamed for his blatant fecklessness. The only problem with his remedy is that Clarke's book and Clarke himself both deny the fantasies that (a) Clinton was ever "obsessed" with getting Bin Laden, and (b) Clinton left a comprehensive anti-terror plan for the incoming Bush (guess he was too busy instructing his flunkies to steal the White House furniture, take the "W" keys of the keyboards, and hide the keys to the doors).
"And even after that attack, Bush ignored the issue of terrorism and focused instead on the oh-so-pre-9/11 issue of Saddam Hussein."
In the self-supporting fantasy camp in which liberals reinforce their deranged little worldview, "ignoring" terrorism is toppling the governnment primarily responsible for harboring the 9/11 terrorist group and driving them into the wastelands. I guess "not ignoring" terrorist attacks, then, would be such bold and decisive actions as bombing Sudanese aspirin factories, launching $20 million missiles at long-abandoned $5 tents, and refusing to take custody of Bin Laden on numerous occassions because your joke of a Justice Department, which had no problem summoning the courage to incinerate a few hundred harmless-to-the-public-at-large Americans and forcing a little boy at gunpoint back to a Communist hellhole, couldn't think of any LEGAL charges that would stand up against him.
"According to Ron Suskind, Bin Laden's appearance before the 2004 elections was meant to help Bush get re-elected."
Well, if the great Ron Suskind says so, then that must settle it. I mean, sure, all Bin Laden did was regurgitate the exact same talking points which a great number of prominent Democrats have been spewing for the past 3-4 years, but that, in your disjointed little mind, is a tactic to get BUSH re-elected? Were those same Democrats that Bin Laden was merely parroting adopting the same strategy then?
"That seems perfectly plausible to me;"
Of course it does, and we all know why.
"no President has ever done so much to give the terrorists what they want, or to hurt America's interests, as Bush has."
You're right, assuming that you believe that terrorists want more than anything else to be slaughtered by the tens of thousands and to have less institutional support than they've ever had in the past 50 years. Spot on.
I mean, you can almost picture Bin Laden and his buddies during the Clinton years, carrying out attack after attack without so much as a strongly-worded UN Resolution in response. "Why won't they give us what they want and start killing us in droves?" "Why do they allow me to continue to live in comfort as the honored guest of a government when I could be rotting in a cave with my own urine and feces collecting within five feet of the patch of hard, filthy ground I call a bed?"
"We liberals don't dislike Bush because he's too aggressive in fighting those who threaten us;"
Agreed. Your psychosis is much more complex than that.
"we dislike him because he has done everything our enemies wanted. And the proof of that is that thousands of American lives have been lost on Bush's watch, whether it was 9/11 or the Iraq war."
Setting aside that I've already sufficiently mocked your half-assed, incoherent, you-can't-possibly-even-belief-it-but-you-still-won't-hesitate-to-offer-it-as-axiomatic assertion that our enemies wanted the death and misery that has been inflicted upon them like never before since 9/11, your idea of "proof" of this delusion is breathtakingly stupid. I mean, rather than wasting your time here making us laugh, perhaps you should spend more time studying the logical fallacy of non sequitur on Wikipedia.
The idea that the lives lost on 9/11 are "proof" that "[Bush] has done everything our enemies wanted" is incredible, given your "argument" rests on the notion that Bush didn't take terrorism seriously enough (of course, he obviously took it at least as seriously as Clinton, who did absolutely nothing to combat it and on whose watch 9/11 was planned and rehearsed, but I digress...). That seems to grind with your companion point that Bush has also "done everything our enemies wanted" by invading Iraq.
I mean, do you really want to stand on a position that our enemies first wanted to be ignored sufficiently that they could pull off 9/11 and THEN wanted to make Chimpy sooooo angry that he simply invaded Iraq (that great enemy of the worldwide jihad, or so you lefties have to keep professing in order to keep your whole ramshackle house of cards from crashing down around you)? Really? Is that the lunatic depths to which you have to plunge to feel that your position is the correct one?
Fair enough; I have an invisible friend with which I play checkers on alternate Tuesdays in the summertime, so maybe we're both equally nuts. But I'm curious. Was the whole "go into Afghanistan and annihilate the government harboring Al Qaeda and massacre thousands upon thousands of their freedom fighters" also part of this plan? Just a miscalculation? A calculated loss in pursuit of the greater goal of "trapping" us in the Iraq "quagmire"?
In other news, FDR recently gave the Japanese "just what they wanted" when, in response to the Pearl Harbor attacks, he invaded Europe in order to defeat the Germans. For "proof", look no further than the American deaths at Pearl Harbor and in the subsequent war against an enemy that presented no direct threat to us at the time.
"You may disagree with that, though it's out of ignorance (if you really think Bush is more serious about counter-terrorism than Clinton, you're high on Clinton Derangement Syndrome)"
It is literally impossible to be a functioning, sentient adult and pretend that Bill Clinton was the least bit serious about combatting Islamic terrorism (but please, feel free to cite his historic victories on that front), much less more serious about it than a President that has gone to war for just that purpose. History is going to be no kinder to Clinton's "record" in this area than it has been to Jimmy Carter's. Apparently, among the delusional, defeating Islamic terrorism is best accomplished by treating the godfather of Islamic terrorism as a legitimate statesman and inviting him to the White House more often than any other statesman. It apparently consists of brokering deals between the same Islamic terrorist and our ally Israel that involve prostrating Israel in return for an intifada against her (Bush is not much better on this front, but at least he refuses to treat Hamas as if it was the government of Sweden). It consists of impotently attacking nothing of consequence to the terrorists in response to their murdering of our sailors and destruction of American embassies.
You probably think, like my left-coast best friend whose opinions are reinforced entirely by his own lofty opinion of his intellect and sophistication, that the thwarted Millenium Bombing is a good example of using "law enforcement" to combat terrorism rather than the gift of divine intervention or dumb luck that every fact of the matter renders it. |
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Those prior posters are suffering greatly behind the rose-colored glasses they wear. I mean, their third in command effectively blamed the President for 9/11!!!!
And now there is a report from the Pentagon that they found a WMD hanging on a rope(What a coicidence...)near the eve of Sadaam's execution. Yes, I said execution. That is what it was. Local paper here was pathetic,but when isn't it? Headline: Sadaam Executed: War overshadows death. Give me an f-ing break! The MSM will not be reporting anything more on that Pentagon report, but we will hear how the US "villified" A killer of millions.
9/11 happened because of the prior appeaser named William Jefferson Clinton. We also have him to thank for appeasing the NORKS and giving them nukes. How convenient the rose-colored are...just one-sided. Stuff is seen but never processed correctly due to the filtering through the lenses. |
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big mick, I think your third stooge just arrived..... |
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that we saved even more then your funky numbers. Where did you get your stats, Michale Moore's website? We also are setting up a stable democracy in the Middle East which may come in handy.
BTW- if we only focused on LA as a representation of America we could say that we have a civil war here as well. Maybe we should pull out? |
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Bush is to dumb to be the president. In the Republican quest to hang Saddam one million dead women and children a million and half drove out of the home land 3,000 dead American troops 12,000 wounded troops one trillion dollars spent and a civil war started that may last 20 years ten million dead and the Republican High point of the wole war they hung an 80 year old man. |
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Dean, Doc, Scarlett are spot on, Digger and Brian are appeasers. Gee guys, do the math, under WHICH approach--the Carter/Clinton Doctrine of avoidance, evasion, misdirection and just plain craveness, or the Bush Doctrine of bring em on anywhere anytime--has there been FEWER attacks against US interests or personel ABROAD or at HOME OUTSIDE OUR CHOSEN GROUND? Radical Islam as not SPREAD it has REMAINED centered RIGHT WHERE WE ARE ATTACKING it's CENTER of GRAVITY! In short, oh honors graduates of the Chamberlin School of International Appeasment--we are spending our casualities in the War on Islamanazism RIGHT WHERE it MAKES the GREATEST STRATEGIC sense to do so--IN THEIR BACK YARD!! Which part of "Hey We Are going to Take over the World, Kill or enslave you, rape your boy children and dress your women in black sacks--stop your rock and roll, your Pig Pickins and your Budwiser" don't you understand? These guys are Nazis!! Nazis--get it? The POWER of Nazism (and Japanese Racist Imperialism,and Stalinism, and Communism) EXPANDED and SPREAD under APPEASEMENT, not under STRATEGIC CONFRONTATION and ATTACK.
Aside to Jimbuck--check 6 for that missing 5% --recall that FDR did little to prosecute the War in the Pacific, other than manuevering things to get it started--"Germany First" was an FDR doctrine, though Germany, at that time, posed no STRATEGIC threat to the US.
There's enough research and books out there now to make it clear how deeply Stalin was in FDR's pocket and that FDR's aim was ALWAYS to save his buddy Stalin ("Uncle Joe", "a man I can do business with"). FDR's only interest in the Pacific was as a means to that end.
The TACTICAL rules of Engagement in the Pacific were the result of men like Bull Halsey (not your Jimmy Carter type of Naval Officer) who is reported to have said, upon viewing Pearl Harbor-"When this War is over, Japanese will be spoken only in Hell"--(I leave it to the Chamberlins among us to deduce how a Bush like doctrine--and a couple of nukes ENDED FOR ALL TIME the spread of Japanese Racist Militarism--could it be a similar approach to Islamanazism is indicated? When THIS war is over should the KORAN be read only in Hell?)--Halsey DID lead his men in cheers like this: "Kill Japs, Kill Japs, Kill more Japs!" Again I leave it to Digger and the Brain (our John Boy and Billy? Lewis and Martin?, Abbot and Costello?,Laurel and Hardy?, not to be lilly white, Cheech and Chong? Amos and Andy? Tokyo Rose and Jackie Chan--naw that doesn't work--can you have only Two Stooges?) I leave it to the Digger and the Brain to deduce if their approach would have been as effective has Halsey's in halting the spread of Japanese Racial Imperialism.
highlandtuck |
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"I think the main reason we haven’t had a repeat of 9/11 or something worse in over five years is because George W. Bush scares the s**t out of his enemies."
That's probably one reason why Libya gave up its chemical weapons program, and why no country (except maybe Pakistan) wants to have Bin Laden as a houseguest, but preventing another 9/11? These are folks that obviously don't have a problem with dying and they're already on our most wanted list, so I doubt fear of retaliation is deterring them.
You are right about President Bush though. He sure scares the s**t out of me. |
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snap writes "In the real world, Bush overthrew a secular dictator in Iraq and replaced him with a theocratic Iranian client state."
Well, I can't argue with that. We did the same thing in WWII, when we eliminated a secular dictator (Hitler) and replaced him with a Soviet client state. And it took 50 years to work out the remaining problem.
And snap, to say "The worst terrorist attack in American history happened on his watch (in part because, unlike Clinton and even his father, Bush was totally uninterested in counter-terrorism before 9/11).”...well, that is disingenuous, to put it politely. The 9/11 attack was well under way during the Clinton administration.....or did you mean that then Texas Governor Bush was on the watch also?
Scarlett pulverized the rest of your argument.
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I like this, letting the oppressed hold trials for their "duly elected leaders". Actually, I'm a bit envious. They seem to handle their business at warp speed compared to us. Good thing the International courts did not try him. He would have been sent to France as punishment. |
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I agree with the thrust by Barnett. I am always perplexed why any favorable view of GWB requires a sharp comment of his execution of the Iraq war. We know Lincoln went through several generals and the best of them used rules of engagement which Stalin would have understood. FDR as a former navy person understood the rules of engagement of the marines the Pacific. To date no one to my knowledge has explained in detail how Gore, Kerry, Clark or even McCain and yes, Bill Buckley would have fought Iraq free of their share of bad execution. My own poll shows 95% of us have 100% hindsite. |
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would get out of our way we could win in 1 week. hey! let's try it! then the war wouldn't be dragged out so long and the libs could stop having misplaced sympathies and move on to saving the tuna or something equally important. Oh, that's right the libs don't REALLY want to win and they don't REALLY think we deserve to win because we're the bad guys. So they hinder and hamstring us all along and then whine about how long it takes. classic. If only Uncle Walter would make a statement. |
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You say Bush did everything our enemies wanted. Huh? Taking down leaders, ridding the Taliban, making Libya change it's attitude is what the enemy wanted? Making them spend their resources in one spot instead of all over is what they wanted?
If what you say and think is the exact same things the terrorists say and think (which you admitted yourself) how is it that you are pro-American and pro-democracy and on our side? How does this stop terrorists? If we have Clinton Derangement Syndrome you have proClinton blindness cancer.
As for Presidents giving terrorists what they want, Carter and Clinton hugged Arafat. Carter thinks Castro is still misunderstood. Clinton cowered behind polls because he is self-absorbed and refused to take charge to do something about Bin Laden (D. Afghanistan).
People fear what they don't understand. That's why the feminized liberal men fear Bush. They haven't seen a full-grown man in a while. The FGMs don't mingle in lib circles. |
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Yep, snap, we can't beat the Taliban and we can't win a war against a country with a GDP smaller than Fulton County, Georgia, but by gum, we can kill a 68-year-old man. Woo frickin hoo. |
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While I agree that Reagan handled the hostage situation well, his handling of the Beirut bombings was abysmal. In recent history, Bush is the only president to take this on with more than half-measures and platitudes.
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For those with memories longer than breakfast one may
recall the difference between Pres. Carter and incoming
Pres. Reagan. Under Carter-the-timid Muslim thugs held
Americans hostage for most of a year. (They had freed the
Russian hostages within 48 hours because Russian leaders
said they'd obliterate them regardless of risk to their
people if the terrorists did not.) When the terrorists
heard that Reagan had been elected they released our
people -- out of fear.
Bush and Reagan were able to persuade enemies to fear
American power, and the willingness to use it. They had
that in common. It is why the terrorists attacked more
American interests under Clinton than under Bush.
I was explaining the realities of the *need* to liberate
and stabilize Iraq to a confused friend this morning.
I reminded him of the storied generations-long feud
in the hill country of the USA between the Hatfield and
McCoy clans, and of the running battle between the
Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.
In both cases outside interests took advantage of the
mindless hate for their own purposes and some of it
spread.
What we see in Iraq is very very very similar and if
the story is illustrated that way I believe we have a
better chance of getting Americans re-connected with an
understanding of the challenges facing the effort to
defend The New Iraq.
The MSM might better understand it as well if given
references to movie titles and children's books -- more
at their educational and intellectual level.
D.Colburn in Florida |
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