SPOOFE: hopeless. Check. World Eater: hopeless. Check.
Why is it that adults who otherwise are apparently rational, when presented with the concept of “Bush could have excused himself and walked calmly out of the room,” are unable to receive that concept in a way other than “Bush should have run screaming from the room leaving panicked children in his wake”?
Seriously. I’ve been saying that for weeks (or is it months now?), ever since it first came up here. Others have been saying it for just as long. MaxThe Vool said it in this very thread. But sure as night follows day, multiple people respond to it yet again with the 100% phony bullshit “if he’d run from the room in a panic you’d yell about it then too!”
Hey, you try spending four years of your life defending the policies and behavior of a vapid dolt like George W. Bush for four years, and see how well your sanity holds up after the fact. It’s like a real-world version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” only you have to maintain the charade 24/7/365/4…
It is in fact the very focus of criticism from quite many leftists who, not understanding the nature of the combat operations in Afghanistan, have made the bizarre claim that Bush fucked up the Afghan front by invading Iraq — that he somehow abandoned one for the other, or depleted one to enrich the other. But as General Franks has explained, Afghan operations have always been mainly special forces operations designed to recruit Afghans themselves, first to topple the Taliban and then to search for Bin Laden. As Franks has said, the lessons from the Russian experience in the heavily mountainous nation of warlords and tribes dictated what ought to be the proper course of action. There was no massive military invasion of Afghanistan, but only a military infiltration. Nevertheless, leftists have found fault with Bush, saying that he botched Afghanistan by invading Iraq when in fact he did not.
Which is all very nice but doesn’t answer the question put ie:
My bolding for clarity.
The point is, there could have been much more concern about the decision to go to war with Afghanistan at all. When I heard about the attacks on the twin towers, my first thought was ‘who is Bush going to go after for this?’ As it was, he presented a good case for going after the Taliban for harbouring the terrorists and this was accepted, and supported no less, by most of the world. Now, of course, it seems more and more likely that Saudi Arabia had a lot more to do with the harbouring of terrorists than anyone else so that original decision could legitimately come under question. **MaxTheVool ** is, I think, wondering about this - not about whether it was then a good choice to attack Iraq.
And I’m sure some people think that he did it because he is God’s Chosen One.
That was just an example. There are plenty on both sides of the political compass who agreed with the war in Afghanistan. Granted, there are some that did not. I don’t think the point was ‘some people are bashing Bush about this in particular’, I think it was ‘some people are suggesting that any arguments made against him are simply knee-jerk reactions because he is Bush therefore, whatever he does is wrong’.
The funny thing to me, as a disinterested observer, is that the debate itself has taken exactly that tack. The sides have split as usual. The goalposts are moving all over the place. There are enough straw men to cover all of Kansas. And nothing will be resolved.
Yes.l You have made eminently clear that you are disinterested in this topic. So much so that I was prompted to call you a fellatrix over the issue. Twice.
I do not think “disiniterested” means what you think it means my friend.
“Free of bias and self-interest; impartial” — American Heritage
Although the term is increasingly coming to mean the same as “uninterested”, the Usage Notes point out that “In traditional usage, disinterested can only mean ‘having no stake in an outcome’, as in Since the judge stands to profit from the sale of the company, she cannot be considered a disinterested party in the dispute.”
Well, I didn’t notice anyone at all in this thread suggesting a shootdown. Nevertheless. I some idea how populated the eastern seaboard of the US is. I also know to what extent the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 on November 12, 2001 “laid waste to large streches of suburbia”. A grand total of five people on the ground were killed in that particular wasting.
Help me out here. Five is a bit less than 2,700, isn’t it?
Obviously you know World Eater so very well. :rolleyes:
Why do you paint anyone who disagrees with you on this as “defending a vapid dolt like George Bush for 4 years”? There’s several people (like myself) who disagree with Bush on a lot of stuff, but don’t think that the 7 minutes means squat. According to this Kerry basically admitted to doing nothing for close to 45 minutes after it happened (on re-read it looks like it assumes he watched the 2nd plane live). I’m not knocking Kerry for this and realize that he wasn’t POTUS at that time; just pointing out that it’s one thing to say “I would’ve done XYZ” and actually doing so.
Living on Capitol Hill at the time and working in NoVA I can tell you that everyone was waiting for updated info before doing anything- go home? pack up the car and get the fuck out of dodge? I sat at work for over two hours waiting to hear if it was safe to return to DC as there were reports of explosions at State Department, roads were being closed, and the big signs on 495 read only “AVOID DC AREA”. That’s why I don’t fault Bush, not because I’m a partisan hack but because I looked at the evidence and made up my own damn mind.
Not to belabor the point or anything, but isn’t this a completely fucking stupid argument?
Let’s say there was a major fire happening. It’d be completely normal and expected for the the Chief of the Fire Department to do the same as “everyone”, and sit on his ass waiting for someone to tell him what to do?
How about the Chief of Police? Crime wave happening, people too scared to leave their homes, Police Chief cowering under his desk until he gets an update on the situation on the radio news?
Gotta call you on this one. Of course it is not the leader’s job to do everyone else’s job (would that my boss would figure this out). No one expected Lt. Bush to grab the nearest F-102 and shoot down the bastards himself.
What we do wish he has done was to lead - and it’s kinda hard to do that while sitting around listening to a recitation of Spot Dicks Jane’s Goat or whatever.
But this five-to-seven minute “gap” isn’t nearly as disturbing as the fact that Bush and his aides then spent fifteen minutes cobbling up a press statement (see 9/11 Commission staff report “Improvising a Homeland Defense”). I know I said this elsewhere, but it bears repeating: The world’s going to hell in a handbasket and they waste fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to spin it? Unconscionable.
In response to whoever it was who griped about the lack of response to the OP: I think it was a damned fine essay, among the best I’ve seen here lately, and scarcely to be improved upon.
And it was exactly those Special Forces teams that were pulled out of Afghanistan in the spring of 2002 - teams whose members spoke Farsi and Pashto fluently - that they pulled out and sent to Iraq to scout out the invasion, rather than leave them there to hunt for the ‘marginalized’ bin Laden.
So no matter what we had done, Karzai was going to be little more than the mayor of Kabul, and a figurehead with respect to the rest of Iraq. No matter what we had done, the warlords and the drug lords - and in some places, the resurgent Taliban - were going to be the real rulers of Afghanistan. No matter what we had done, Afghanistan was going to have an opium-based economy by now.
Not to belabor this point, but I think your criticism is dishonest, your analogies suck, and you’re full of shit. You’re not saying that he should’ve necessarily done anything differently, just that he should’ve done the same thing 7 minutes earlier. At which point I’m guessing your faith in his presidency would’ve been restored.
Keep in mind that you’re operating with full hindsight. And I’m not claiming by any means that Bush’s actions were heroic (they weren’t) or the best choice, only that they were completely reasonable under the circumstances.
The OP concurs that the 7 minutes is far from the be-all and end-all of reasons to want Bush replaced this November.
As you point out, Kerry wasn’t President. But the key difference is this: he had no operational authority at all. What was he going to do, sponsor a Congressional resolution? While the action was going on, every member of the legislative and judiciary branches was by definition a spectator.
But Bush wasn’t. He had the ultimate operational authority - he was President of the United States. What’s more, he’d sought out that authority. So now, he has to be President - not at his own pace, but in real time. So yeah, I think it’s reasonable to judge him on what he did when the game he chose to play, came to him in a big way.
Yeah, but you and I couldn’t pick up the phone and find out what NORAD or the FBI or the FAA knew. Bush could. Or could have, except that he was sitting in a classroom for seven minutes, staring into space with a copy of My Pet Goat in his hands.
And then, as BJMoose points out, spent fifteen minutes cobbling together a statement to the press - a job that could have been farmed out to the press secretary’s office back in DC with a 30-second phone call, and the results faxed back for Bush to make any final changes before going live with it.
