Word of advice, when addressing Clothahump, you might want to cut down on all those complicated multisyllabic words.
Oh, I was aware of that thread. But even in that, not too many people were taking thoughtless potshots at Bush. Not that I saw, anyway.
I really don’t think we (the Dubya-bashing sector of the SDMB) take every opportunity to bash “Dubya”. I think the thread about gas-guzzling “Dubya” proved that.
So, now that this thread has reached its third page, there’s hasn’t been one reply that showed “Dubya” being decisive, authoritative or inspiring in the days, weeks or even years after Sept 11, 2001. My God, a few days after that horrible day, don’t you think Dubya Bush could at least have had someone write a great speech to rally the people? Instead what have we heard? “Bring it on.” OR “You can run but you can’t hide.” (about Osama Bin Laden who’s has been running and hiding for 4 years now.)
So, as I’ve said on every page of this thread, if you want to call me a “Dubya basher” - fine. But the thing that would really put me in my place is countering my assertions with some great action or speech made by Dubya that truly rallied the people.
Hell, Tom Clancy thought it up before that.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0425147584/103-6219013-1395810?v=glance
xploder, how was Pearl Harbor worse? 9/11 killed more people.
Kudos on the Tom Clancy reference.
I guess it depends on how you look at it. On 9/11 we lost more people but at Pearl Harbor, of ninety-six ships present that morning, eighteen were sunk or severely damaged including nine battleships. Of 394 army, navy and marine aircraft on the island, 188 were destroyed, another 159 damaged.
Over 2300 military personnel died, 2008 of whom were sailors.
Being that this was almost the complete Pacific war fleet, and it was mostly destroyed, I can arguably say that Pearl Harbor was worse. Especially when we subsequently lost Wake Island, Guam, Singapore, the East Indies, the Phillipines and other Pacific bases at the START (for us) of a global war.
While the casualties on 9/11 were horrific, and I never meant to intimate that they weren’t, the debacle at Pearl Harbor could have quickly lost us the war in the Pacific. One reason it didn’t was because all our carriers were out to sea when it happened.
Also, in Arthur C. Clarke’s book The Trigger Effect (co-authored with someone whose name I can’t remember), hijacking and crashing an airliner is given as a possible plan of violent extremists. Inconceivable, it wasn’t.
Much of what you say about Pearl Harbor is not true. We would not have lost the war even if we loast the carriers, it would have been much longer however and with much greater loss of life so you are probably correct that Pearl was probably worse than 9/11. Please see http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=332475 starting at about post 10 for detailed debate on the effects of Pearl Harbor attack and the Carriers.
Word of advice, Cervaise: when addressing me or speaking about me, try to have something intelligent to say instead of ignorant, childish bullshit like that.
:wally
What I actually said was:
Note the bolded part. I didn’t mean to imply that we would have lost all of WWII just from that one attack. My apologies if I wasn’t clear enough.
Now off to read that thread…
Huh? What do you mean, precisely?
A reasonable analysis. But is that what we WANT? Should we attempt to elect, as president, the most average and regular American? Or should we attempt to elect someone who is stronger and smarter and better and purer and more righteous than most of us?
Are you still talking about the classroom here? Because the public had NO IDEA WHAT HE WAS DOING AT THE MOMENT. He was not being broadcast live on national TV, projecting calm, reassuring people, calming unrest. He was in an elementary school classroom!
This concept, “it doesn’t matter what Bush does, you all will criticize him no matter what” pisses me off SO MUCH because it SO EASILY PROVEN FALSE. The easiest example being to compare the reactions to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Heck, just read all the posts in this thread, and see how many of them say something like mine did, which is “some things he did OK, some things not so OK”. Yes, a lot of poeple really don’t like Bush. Yes, that dislike sometimes crosses the border into irrationality. But that doesn’t mean that we just unthinkingly auto-criticize everything he does. Heck, someone brought up the recent thread about how much gas Bush’s SUV caravan uses, and there were TONS of people who posted “I hate Bush as much as the next guy, and I think this is a non-issue”.
Balderdash! Tommyrot! Do you think any would have cared if Bush had alarmed some schoolchildren (and NOT caused a national panic because there were no live national cameras on him), given that those schoolchildren would, about half an hour later, learn about 9/11? This is perhaps the single most ridiculous claim I’ve ever heard multiple SDMBers repeatedly make. I find it so laughable that I wrote an entire parody about it, which no one got.
And yes, I agree that this whole Pet Goat issue really isn’t that big a deal. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to let total BS arguments about it slide by.
The headline “President Simpson Wins Superbowl” explodes my bowels in terror…
-Joe
But Lisa would make a good President, she just has to watch out for Nepotism.