“No President Would Have Been Better.”
A friend of mine pointed me to some interesting commentary. This particular quote left me laughing, in that “it’s the sad truth of it” sort of way.
And by that, I literally mean NO president. That is, if the office were just left vacant for 8 years, the country would be in profoundly better shape.
September 28th, 2007 at 10:48 am
Windspike says this:
“it’s the sad truth of it” sort of way.
How can it be the truth, sad or otherwise, as we cannot know where the road not travelled would have led. It can only be an opinion of how the country would have fared if the office had of been left vacant. Interesting that the right would have opined that the office of the President would have been better of being left vacant in the Clintons (the co-presidency) years as well as Carter.
You what they say about opinions being like assholes. Everybody has one but those out of power seem to shout it out the loudest.
September 28th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Well, manapp, your president and your party is losing power so fast my asshole getting windburn. Actions speak louder than words, and the action at the polls says the GOP is a failure, the wars are failures, and everything you believe is wrong.
JMJ
September 28th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Man, given your propensity to “shout” as well, i don’t think that you are entirely guilt free in the blame you shovel. Moreover, I would have a fairly solid argument to stipulate that we were substantially better off at the tail end of both the administrations that you mention than we are at the tailend of this one. The one big bright and shining example is Iraq. We were not in Iraq in either the Carter or the Clinton administrations. Today, we are flushing billions of dollars a week down the Iraqi toilet to what gain?
September 28th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
It’ll never happen. Who would we have to blame?
Uh-huh.
At the end of Carter’s term: Islamofascists took over Iran; Saddam Hussein had taken over Iraq; the Soviet Union was in Afghanistan; the CIA began, in earnest, getting out of the the spy business; FISA began hamstringing the NSA; interest on homes was approaching 20% (my parents left real estate as a result); unemployment was through the roof; Vietnam had become a thoroughly Communist country; 2-3 million Cambodians had been murdered by Pol Pot.
But we weren’t in Iraq.
At the end of Clinton’s term: Islamofascists had expanded and taken over Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Sudan; Pakistan and India had developed nuclear weapons and threatened to use them on each other; North Korea was well on the way in its violation of its nuclear weapons agreement with the U.S.; Iran was further on its way in violating the Nuclear Proliferation treaty it had signed by expanding its ability to develop nuclear weapons; the Oil-for-Food scandal was in full gear with recommendations by some allies to remove sanctions from Iraq, still under Saddam; Saddam was funding Hamas (and God knows who else); Yasser Arafat had completely double-crossed everybody and created the current problems between Israel and the Palestinians; Communist China was expanding and improving its weapons thanks to Bill Clinton; “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was made policy thanks to Bill Clinton and the congressional Democrats that wrote it; people receiving Social Security and who were barely over the poverty line had to declare 85% of their Social Security benefits and the government-paid Medicare premiums as taxable income, thanks to Bill Clinton; Somalia had gone through 8 horrific years, thanks to Bill Clinton. And, most importantly, our intelligence services had gotten so impotent (which had been going on since the Ford administration; thanks Sen. Church) that intelligence gathering was a joke, or if there was reliable intelligence, nothing of consequence was done about it (not killing Osama bin Laden, not killing Saddam Hussein, not killing Yasser Arafat, not demanding Iran end its nuke violations or support of Islamist terrorism, not demanding North Korea to end its nuke violations, not knowing if Saddam had WMDs or not, not demanding Saddam end his support of Islamist terrorism, not demanding Afghanistan end its support of Islamist terrorism), thanks to Bill Clinton.
But we weren’t in Iraq. And Elian Gonzales was forced to live in the “paradise” that is Cuba. And we had troops in Kosovo, which are still there (and which may be forced to take sides if Kosovo declares independence from Serbia).
Then 9/11 happened. And everything changed.
September 28th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Steve,
I knew I could count on you to come up with the usual litany of items that deflect the point of the post. Thank you. Of course, you would like to take the blame game route, and point fingers. But your faithful W, Rove and Co frown on that game. But that doesn’t deter you. Oh, no.
Are we better off for being in Iraq now?
September 28th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Steve your statement is some what factually in-correct while the revolutionary guard was able to take over Iran due to botched operations the CIA did not leave the spy business during and after Carter they just divested the assassination segment of the company. In fact our nation ran very successful training and support operations in Afghanistan and began backing Saddam’s regime in the same way to counter balance any influence a hostile Iran would have on shipping through the Persian Gulf. In fact both conflicts in the 1980s are related in this sense as a disruption to shipping oil to the west has long been a strategic goal of the Russians. This same strategic goal is now shared by the Chinese and remains a prime reason that Iran still receives political and trade backing from Russia and China when it comes time to debate with the security council. It also appears that backing up Iran helps to keep the Shea insurgency fluid thereby preventing the US from getting involved in other corners of the globe.
Case in point China keeps us out of Darfur and just look at Myanmar today: here is a democratic revolution that we should lend aid to because its one in which the people are choosing democracy and attempting themselves to throw off the tyrannies of a communist backed junta. Its very clear that the Myanmar government is beating peaceful protesters and rounding up monks. If we had a president with the fore sight to stay out of Iraq we would have had the military weight to throw around as it is needed. Instead we received an entire cabinet that was hell bent on getting the US back into Iraq ant any cost before they ever got into power (and if you don’t believe me just visit the PNAC site and read, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.” ) We would have been better off if the President did not have a cabinet that shared a military agenda coming into office. Of course the Irony is that they have destroyed America’s Defenses in their zeal because it has let our greatest adversaries keep us bogged down. As a result, tonight, freedom seeking people fighting for their own liberty on the other side of the world are left with out any real strategic support from this nation of liberators, although they have our thoughts and prayers.
September 30th, 2007 at 8:12 am
Windspike,
You brought up Carter and Clinton and how great their legacies were. I put in the historical facts to show that what they left behind was a mess that had to be handled by someone else because they wouldn’t take care of the dirty work.
September 30th, 2007 at 8:20 am
BYOC said:
Assassination is part of the spy business, so what I said is correct.
The following is a completely ridiculous statement:
Bull. Leftists always bring up Vietnam whenever there is a hint of the U.S. military doing anything. Leftists wouldn’t have the U.S. military used for anything except maybe search and rescue operations, then bitch about how much money is being spent on something other than their policies.
September 30th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Steve you are obviously not a buisness man with any real to divest a segment of your industry does not mean you abandone it (because you most likely have an interest) but merely that you may subcontract as needed. For this reason alone we still have an operational marine sniper school - what that means is that instead pof a cyanide blow job in the alley way of East Geramany we’re skull bustin with a 50 Cal.
And YES what you have stated is in fact historically inacurate and simply serves your agenda a a diletant propagandist for the left over hangeroners of the RED REVOLUTION insighted by spent corporate communists. Case in point where does Veitnam even fit the equation of Iraq except in your little mind.
You cannot actually claim that our current policies spurned by the Bush administration have left us eith a strong stance in global politics. Frankly as I see it the rest of the world has come to take him and his cabinet as a joke - and guess what they represent all of us.
September 30th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
P.S. if you want to criticize the typos all I can say is that my fingers have gotten as fat a limbaugs ass. You try typing with Limbaug ass finger syndrome.
October 1st, 2007 at 8:37 am
You obviously don’t read this blog very often, or just ignore it. The “liberals” have been pointing out how much of a “Vietnam quagmire” Iraq is, and other “progressives” have been saying the same thing since before Operation Desert Storm. If I bring up Vietnam, it’s to mention the other lessons that needed to be learned after we left Southeast Asia, and to criticize the lefties for using Vietnam invalidly.
October 1st, 2007 at 10:02 am
Ah yes the old Vietnam comparison chart . The truth is that every one has co-opted this comparison in some way and your a shining example since as you introduced the V-word into this conversation.
For the record I never said quagmire (Which it may be but, thats not what I said) I am suggesting that our greates adversaries (Russia & China) are keeping us involved in a proxy war and giving aide to a bunch of totalitarian peons like Kim, Chavez, Ahmadinejad. If we had been greeted with flowers we could have gone home victorious. Instead as CNN reported in the days of mission accomplished that Iran sent qauds forces in country to make a play for Iraq after our withdraw. One need not be an analyst to theorize that the manufacturing arm of the re-supply for the insurgency involves Russia & China laundering small arms and ammo through Iran. Further Iraq - as it was with Saddam- provided a balanced deterent to the Shiite. Now we are faced with the possibility of a Shiite super state (Pan Persia) The Irony being that the Baathist also wanted a pan Persia. This is what I mean by the foresight to keep out of Iraq. Its one of the reasons I’ll wager that Bush I abandoned the uprising after Gulf I.
But the real question is why keep us wraped up in a proxy war? Two reasons: 1 Iraq is said to be the worlds second largest oil reserve. If failure in Iraq leads to the creation of the Shiite super state; then the west will be denied access to or will be forced to pay excessivly more for access to this oil reserve. (arguably on of the reasons PNAC chose Iraq for their seeding) 2 Keeping the US military tied up in a war that they cannot afford to walk away from due to reason 1 means that they will not have the resources to flex their muscles in your back yard i.e. Myanmar, Tiawan, Darfur etc.
Sadly I do not see the Iraq war as a good comparision to Vietnam, my personal belief is that it is more like the Afgan Russian conflict in wich we fought a proxy war that made the Soviet Union over spend so much money the conflict that communism collapsed in eastern europe and the USSR lost its federalisation as a cummunist state. I think its fair to say that if this country is bankrupted democracy could fall as well.
There fore the only real tactically correct solution that I have heard of to date is the Biden plan. By partitioning Iraq along ethnic lines with a loosely federated government we can prevent the formation of a Shiite super state and have a legal basis for remedy if Iran lost its fool head and say tried to invade the Sunni or Kurdish areas. Second it will help draw down our troops in Iraq thereby making our forces fluid again.
October 1st, 2007 at 1:34 pm
ill steve,
our intelligence services worked well enough to warn that fool w and his idiotic underling cunt the loser rice that al qaeda planned to attack us using hijacked airplanes. what did the republican fools do? they ignored that warning and started manufacturing lies in order to convince fools like yourself that iraq was a threat. clinton hooked this country up and your role model w (i’ll bet the ill steve household eats their evening dinner under a picture of w discussing what a great president nixon was) has destroyed this country.