Maybe some of you pinkos can help me here. I don't really like President Bush that good. I want to say bad things about him, be good loyal opposition and all, but I'm having a hard time right at the moment. A lot has been going right for him recently, starting with that catching Saddam thing.
Particularly, getting Gaddafi to open Libya up to weapons inspectors, throwing open the doors, and voluntarily destroying bunches of chemical weapons, and shutting down a surprisingly advanced nuclear program looks awfully good on President Bush. On the surface, it looks like him knocking off the Baathists has made a big payoff here on the side.
Now, this isn't right. President Bush didn't do anything to cause this. He should get NO credit at all for this breakthrough, and it's nothing anyway. Right? Don't make me give this SOB credit for making the world safer. I won't do it.
Come on, some of you pinkos and Bush haters help me out. I'm drowning here. I can't figure out any reasonable explanation except to say that the hawkish policies of the Bush administration have led directly to this major voluntary disarming of an ugly dictator. There HAS to be some explanation that makes Dubya look bad.
I just can't find it.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Chris
That's because the hatred and dislike of the man is irrational and based on lies in the first place. Welcome to the world of adults.
2 - BJ
The agreement seems like a big step forward. I hope it works out, and I have no problem giving Bush credit where credit is due.
Questions:
1. Why is this strategy OK for Libya but not Iraq? Both are led by murderous dictators who oppress their people and pose regional threats. Neither pose much of a strategic threat to the US, although they conceivably could if allowed to pursue their aims unhindered. Neither can be trusted as far as you can throw them. If they differ at all, it's that Gaddafi has actually been behind terrorist attacks on Americans.
2. This weekend, Cheney described the North Korean situation, blustering, "I have been charged by the president with making sure that none of the tyrannies in the world are negotiated with. We don't negotiate with evil; we defeat it.'' So how is Libya different? Is Gaddafi no longer a tyrant? (Is that why no one from the Bush Administration mentioned flight 103 when they bragged about the Gaddafi deal?)
3 - Al Barger
BJ, the difference between Gaddafi and Hussein is that Gaddafi decided to co-operate. Lord knows Bush TRIED to get Hussein to co-operate, but he absolutely would not.
Of course, Gaddafi wasn't being all that co-operative either- until we made an example out of Hussein.
Any of these nasty thugs having a bunch of biological or chemical weapons is inherently a threat. They're evil and unstable- governments acting on the whim of a single strongman.
Gaddafi may still be a tyrant, but without nasty WMDs, he will be much less of a threat to anyone. And hey, he's going to get bunches of carrots for shaping up.
If North Korea has smart leadership (not very likely, I'm afraid), they'll be looking at Libya and Iraq and looking at a change in strategery.
4 - Jim Carruthers
I was in New York City the day the 'murrican people elected Al Gore President, so I can't get really worked up about this kerfuffle from Al. Face it, you've got a bogus government, running a regime of mass destruction, headed by an idiot son of an asshole.
Given that the capture of someone who looks likes Saddam Hussain was staged for the cameras, and the constant stream of lies, well, you should just give up and shoot the the son of a bush.
I can go vacation in Cuba, but it is a crime for Al to go there, unless he is a guest of a prison camp there. What's up with that?
Why can't Al be imprisoned in Cuba, just because it would make me smile?
5 - san
Because we might attack North Korea? Now *that* does scare me.
6 - Craig Lyndall
"Why is this strategy OK for Libya but not Iraq?"
I agree with Barger on this one. Without making an example of Iraq, I don't know that Libya ever would have happened.
I am never sure how much credit the president should get for different things and this case is no different. I am not willing to give Clinton credit for the economy that was basically gift-wrapped by Bill Gates. I can't give Bush the blame for the economy that happened post 9/11.
So, as far as this foreign policy stuff goes, what can you give a president credit for? I guess they make the initial decisions regarding it, but what of the successes and failures that follow? I don't have an answer.
7 - eddie corbett jr.
If you would like to read an explanation for the hatred directed at President Bush please go to arp2.org editorial section.
8 - eddie corbett jr.
saddam, over 10 yrs. of diplomatic failure.
libya, 9 months of diplomatic success
saddam would not let it work for iraq.
simple as that.
9 - Craig Lyndall
I couldn't even finish the whole thing. Clinton lying about his personal life was bad. What the right did to impeach him and try to get him out of office was far worse in my opinion. Bad for our country. Bad for politics and will look very stupid and tit for tat in the history books I think.
10 - san
Hey, any president appointed by God to lead the country is good enough for me.
11 - eddie corbett jr.
craig, thank you for your attempt at reading the editorial. you are exactly what the article is talking about. if you read the entire posting you will realize why you passion for clinton has turned into hatred for bush.
thanks,
regards
12 - Craig Lyndall
I don't love Clinton and I voted for Bush, so thanks for attempting to make an example of me, but you are wrong. I am a republican and you seem to be the kind of guy who makes me look bad. Thanks.
13 - Jim Carruthers
It really amazes me how prescient this Onion story is:
14 - Tom Johnson
Doesn't anyone get tired of this idiotic "Bush sucks/isn't president/bogus government" bullshit? At some point, is anyone going to shut the hell up about this? Let's put it this way: there are some who may agree with you, and there are some who don't. Those who don't agree with you are not going to be swayed by anything you say, no matter how childishly patronizing it is. Here's how you can make a difference: vote. On election day 2004, get up, get dressed, and go vote. You can vote for Bush, or you can vote for whoever the Dems decide upon, or you can even vote for one of the non-contenders if you really feel like it. Other than that, your bitching, moaning, protesting, and insulting has worn very thin, and you're just wasting your energy. Save it for something that will make a difference. Go make some pancakes or something.
15 - Jan Eggers
On Tom's last comment:
"your bitching, moaning, protesting, and insulting has worn very thin, and you're just wasting your energy. Save it for something that will make a difference. Go make some pancakes or something."
I wonder if the people of Iraq were told the same thing when they dissented from the ways of the Saddam government
(actually, they were probably imprisoned, tortured or killed). This "my country right or wrong" approach would be perfect for any totalitarian regime--Hitler would have loved it (in fact, Goebbels wrote extensively about techniques to manufacture this sort of thinking). As for the pancakes, I'm totally there.
"Those who don't agree with you are not going to be swayed by anything you say, no matter how childishly patronizing it is."
It's a good thing Martin Luther King, Jr. didn't adhere to this principle.
If Bush is a good, honest, worthy leader, then he will stand up to the dissent and second guessing--just as men who were leaders before him have. How many such leaders have been unjustly brought down by dissenters? Please don't say Nixon.
As for the nature of the criticisms of Bush, I agree that they should be based on logic and fact. When people, both those for Bush and those against Bush, focus on his character (ethos) by labeling him or attempt to sway by appealing to emotion (pathos), I believe they are attempting to mislead. Let us strive to be Vulcan in our rhetoric.
For some reasons (I know they are not always so Vulcan, either) to doubt Bush as a leader, go to these sites (but be ever critical):
http://www.zmag.org/biochomsky.htm?Fname=Noam&Lname=Chomsky&commentary=3&article=5
http://www.bushwatch.org
I leave you with a quotation from Frederick Douglass:
"Those who profess to favor freedom, yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
16 - Eric Olsen
I believe Tom was referring to the "Bush stole the election, Gore has been the rightful president for the last three years but he has been laying low in hopes of dethroning Bush on New Years Eve in a Romanov type manner" type of stuff that was immaterial the moment the Supreme Court said it was. The comment that this was an unsatisfactory ending to the election, that Gore won the popular vote and the like, was worth making the first 100 times, but got old the next day and accomplishes nothing at this point. We are much closer to the next election than the last one, so I think that was a reasonable point to make.
Regarding the post: we all have things we object to about Bush - I have many and have made them - but when it comes to foreign policy, he has pushed every button correctly and at the right time. Give him some credit.
17 - Jan Eggers
Beware of absolutes.
I agree that Bush has been somewhat effective in achieving his objectives (or rather the people behind Bush have been effective (I truly believe that he is too stupid to be making any of the calls)). However, I do not agree with some of those objectives and the means used to achieve them (I feel the same way about the foreign policies of Clinton, George Herbert Walker Bush and Reagan).
The connection of Saddam to terrorism and 9/11 has been a point of contention for quite some time now. I don't care to argue it (this would be absurd, since we are not privy to all of the information). But it is questionable (see http://www.fair.org/press-releases/beyond-niger.html), and I expect our government to clarify such issues rather than leaving them to seem as if they were meant to be misleading. If, in talking about effective foreign policy, you are talking about fighting terrorism, then how can you be so sure The White House has pushed every button at the right time? Iraq may have been the wrong button.
Colin Powell offers a defense and clarification of the Bush Administration foreign policy (http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040101faessay83104/colin-l-powell/a-strategy-of-partnerships.html). In it, he emphasizes that the war on terrorism is not the only objective in US foreign policy. If you then choose to see the conquering of Iraq and Saddam not as a certain victory over terrorism but as a necessary action against a dictator who defied the conditions he had agreed to after Desert Storm, then I might be more inclined to see it as a foreign policy success--except for the fact that we turned our back on the UN and alienated a huge chunk of the world in the process. As for the preemption, I tend to agree with those who feel that Saddam wasn't even close to a threat to the US (see http://www.zmag.org/ZMagSite/mar2003/hermanprint0303.html).
As for Bush's overall foreign policy, The Project Against the Present Danger offers the following list of US foreign policy actions that are problematic (http://www.presentdanger.org/choice.html):
--Abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty while squandering billions in chasing the chimera of national missile defense.
--Undermined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty while expressing support for testing new nuclear weapons and refusing to rule out a nuclear first strike against nonnuclear nations.
--Derailed negotiations to improve international inspection systems to monitor and prevent the production of biological and chemical weapons.
--Repudiated an international scientific consensus and withdrawn from global efforts to curb global warming.
--Renounced the U.S. signature on the treaty to create an International Criminal Court and campaigned aggressively to exempt all U.S. personnel from its jurisdiction, even threatening to veto UN peacekeeping operations if it does not get its way.
--Dismissed the need for broad international cooperation in its war on terrorism, preferring to act alone or with selected allies.
--Treated human rights as an obstacle to rather than an essential component of civic security at home and abroad.
--Undermined the Oslo peace process, condoned the Israeli reoccupation of Palestinian territory, and rejected UN Security Council resolutions supported by previous administrations that provide a framework for conflict resolution containing strict security guarantees for both Israel and the Palestinians.
--Slighted global efforts to mobilize an offensive against the spread of AIDS, instead privileging the financial interests of pharmaceutical companies over the need for affordable life-saving medicines.
--Suspended U.S. support for the UN's family planning programs and balked at supporting the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
--Continued to pursue a global economic agenda that is of, by, and for transnational corporations and blocked efforts to build international rules to enforce labor and consumer rights and environmental protections.
That does not sound like such a wonderful foreign policy to me. It may well be effective in achieving its goals, but it scares the crap out of me.
See also The Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy (http://www.realisticforeignpolicy.org/archives/000017.php#000017). They bring up that trendy word, empire, again.
For more Bush criticisms, see
bushin30seconds
(http://www.bushin30seconds.org/aboutbush.html).
18 - debbie
"I agree that Bush has been somewhat effective in achieving his objectives (or rather the people behind Bush have been effective (I truly believe that he is too stupid to be making any of the calls))."
I guess Yale and Harvard are over rated.
"The connection of Saddam to terrorism and 9/11 has been a point of contention for quite some time now. "
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/527uwabl.asp
It's obvious that this is what our intellegence showed, you know it and I know it. Clinton said the same things for the last 3 or 4 years he was in office. To claim that Bush made up the perceived threat is just ridiculous, it just confirms that you have a tin foil beanie at home.
It appears that we may need better intellegence... :) but to make this out to be a plot by the evil George... is loony.
In our war against Terrorism, we said that we going going after terrorists, nations that harbor terrorists, those that finance terrorists. It's well known that Saddam financed terrorists.
If Iraq is given the chance and grows into a free, democratic form of government, think of what this could mean to the whole region. How much hope could this spread to the people in the surrounding nations? Where there is hope - there is action!
19 - JR
"I guess Yale and Harvard are over rated."
You just now figured that out?
20 - Hal Pawluk
While it helps position Bush opponents in a more negative light, painting them with the broad brush of being Bush haters is not particularly helpful in creating a useful dialog.
I'm one of those that thinks Bush is as useless as teats on a boar, but that's not hate, just calling it like I see it.
I am impressed that his handlers have trained him so well that he can now give a very convincing, compelling speech (don't ask any questions, though, and I hope you don't notice the wind-up key as he walks away).
But he is just the front man, and it's the whole administration and the way they operate that scares me.
For example, in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription), generally known for its far right Republican editorials, we read:
This administration has a propensity for changing facts to suit their needs, and this is just one example and not the first time they've been called on it. Feith's recent "report" on evidence for why the US had to invade Iraq immediately and preemptively is another. Go back over the time of Bush's tenure and you'll find numerous similar examples from Ashcroft, Wolfowitz, Cheny, Abrams, et alia.
Their approach to problems is changing facts and PR spin.
And sadly, it works on far too many.
21 - Al Barger
Hal, a great deal of the talk against the president obviously comes from some crazy personal animus against HIM, not any particular policies.
Which is certainly not to say that there are not plenty of perfectly good reasons to rag on him. If you want to talk about that huge new drug entitlement program, I'll soon enough have the veins bulging out of my forehead- and don't even get me started on McCain-Feingold.
Once in a while, however, he does some good that can't be denied, as with Libya. I'd just like to see some of the pinkos give him a spot of credit maybe one time.
22 - Hal Pawluk
Once in a while, however, he does some good that can't be denied, as with Libya
I think Libya getting rid of their CBWs is great, as they were unequivocally, self-admittedly a terrorist state.
But can you tell me why you give Bush credit for this? I wouldn't think that the initiative was his, based on his extreme lack of foreign policy experience.
I suppose you could say it happened on his watch so he's responsible, but I'm more interested in things that he himself might have initiated. So far, he may have had something to do with giving the tax breaks to the rich rather than the middle- and lower-income taxpayers, but I don't really know about anything else that might have first come from him.
Any guidance?
23 - JR
"Hal, a great deal of the talk against the president obviously comes from some crazy personal animus against HIM, not any particular policies."
Isn't it possible the personal animus stems from objections to Bush's policies?
24 - debbie
"But can you tell me why you give Bush credit for this? I wouldn't think that the initiative was his, based on his extreme lack of foreign policy experience."
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/africa/12/22/gadhafi.interview/index.html
Pay special attention to the paragraph:
Asked about his decision, Gadhafi acknowledged that the Iraq war may have influenced him, but he insisted he wanted to focus on the "positive."
That is why he deserves credit, it is because of his foreign policy that they decided to take this action.
25 - Hal Pawluk
Debbie: so you think he's coming up with the foreign policy?
I see.