God, Rysdad, don’t remind me! The utterly hideous grim reality of 8 long years of peace and prosperity!
… The utterly hideous grim reality of 8 long years of peace and prosperity!
…and cigars.
Well, you see, Stoid, the planet isn’t in any real danger. We humans will always find a way to survive. We don’t NEED to care about any other living species; not when we have to look out for number one. Thus, environmentalists are evil, because they think lesser species even approach humans in importance. They sacrifice jobs and the economy for something that has no short-term visibility, and which therefore has no value or meaning.
And everyone knows that nothing they say is supported by any good science anyway.
Could it be, ‘lu’, that Rysdad was a victim of welfare reform? 
And an utter lack of international policy that got us into the mess we’re in now?
Well, true, can’t say ol’ Fearless Misleader lacks an international policy. No sirree, Bob, can’t say that. The effusive love and admiration that flows in our direction, the absolute and unparalleled hymns of unabashed adoration that is universally heaped upon us…yeppers, that’s definitely GeeDubya.
Statesmen have dreamed about uniting the Islamic world around a single goal, a uniting concept, and thought it impossible. But GeeDubya has boldly proven them wrong! It can be done, and by God, he’s the man to do it!
Ah, yes! The Shining Citadel on the Hill!
But he’s still president, and unless something really tragic happens, he’ll probably get re-elected.
I’ve been outed!
elucidator, you’re a smart fella. It’s difficult to believe you can’t grasp the simple issues of fact I brought up, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and leave it at that.
Absolutely not. In fact, people in my family who haven’t voted in years are dusting off their voter cards just to get a chance to vote against him. That gives me real hope.
Bob - I think you are misunderstanding why so many people think the election was stolen.
Basically, if a majority of people in Florida intended to vote for Gore, but were prevented from making their votes count by various misdeeds, frauds, and not having their votes counted, then it is accurate to say that the election was stolen. It does not necessarily have anything to do with what happened afterwards regarding the Supreme Court.
Sometimes, believe it or not, it’s actually good policy to be liked around the world. Other countries’ leaders…and as important…people both liked and respected Clinton. Recall the days when foreign populace would come out and cheer for Clinton? Can you imagine any country on earth where that would happen for Bush? Any?
I’m not saying Clinton’s foreign policy was the most effective ever, but it is fucking light years’ beyond the Bush administrations’.
And have the first half of my precious, precious twenties eaten up by an oppressive Republican regime? Hell no! What would even be the point of living?
Sure, as far as it goes. The problem is when “being liked” is the whole goal. I’d love for the US to be loved, and it is by many. And yes, GWB has done a poor job of making people love us.
But the other side of the coin is that not everyone will love us: so long as the US is without economic, military or cultural rival, we will be hated by a certain percentage of the world. Thus has it ever been throughout human history, and I submit that hoping that somehow human nature has changed is naive.
And those who aren’t going to like us damn well better fear us.
I didn’t vote for GWB last time, and I might not again. But I definitely will if the alternative is someone who is afraid to make people afraid.
Given how much George has already f’ed up the country in one term in office, I’ll be damned if I give him a second term to really screw things up.
(And Bill Clinton can have all the interns and cigars he wants if he can get this nation back on track, I say. Just squash those Republican smear campaigns…)
True, but your solution is as simplistic in a way. So you’d vote for Bush even if the world hates us just because they’d fear us? The fact that we have countries who like us can help us with those who don’t. We don’t have to police the whole freakin’ world - that’s what allies are for. True allies. Not the ones you buy.
Anyway - even the above paragraph is simplistic. What it boils down to is how you view the outside world. Bush is making it so, sure, the world fears us, but if you’re an American you better be careful travelling abroad. I don’t think I’m going to vote for that, thanks. I happen to realize there are places in the world I’d still like to visit besides Alabama and Kansas.
furt: "But I definitely will if the alternative is someone who is afraid to make people afraid. "
Making people afraid has not exactly done wonders for the Palestinian situtation, now has it? People in this region are hardly unused to suffering or oppression: they have it both at the hands of imperialist foreign regimes and from their own tyrants. Saddam, after all, was good at making people afraid and you see how far he had to extend that strategy to make it work for him.
I have no problem with the threat of force and/or the use of force under appropriate circumstances. But the idea is to use both in a smart way: so that the benefits outweigh the costs and help to achieve the stated aim (which, btw, is cultivating peace and stability, not fomenting fear and anger). Using power in a dumb way, as the Bush administration has done, is counterproductive beyond belief.
I guess the world should’ve like him a little more.
1993
Feb. 26, New York City: bomb exploded in basement garage of World Trade Center; Al-Qaeda involvement is suspected.
Oct. 3, Mogadishu, 18 US soldiers are killed and 84 are wounded.
(October 7 Clinton’s response: withdraw troops
President Clinton decides to cut his losses. He sends substantial combat troops as short term reinforcements, but declares that American troops are to be fully withdrawn from Somalia by March 31.)
1996
June 25, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia: truck bomb exploded outside Khobar Towers military complex, killing 19 American servicemen and injuring hundreds of others.
1998
Aug. 7, Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: truck bombs exploded almost simultaneously near two U.S. embassies.
2000
Oct. 12, Aden, Yemen: U.S. Navy destroyer USS Cole was heavily damaged when a small boat loaded with explosives blew up alongside it.
So now GWB has to clean up the mess Clinton left.
It’s not so simple as nation X likes us and nation Z doesn’t. The fact of American predominance insures that there will always be antipathy towards us in ALL nations. That’s just the reality of human nature: people resent those who are richer, more powerful, etc, even if they’ve earned it and even if they’re nice about it. Now you can LESSEN the number who dislike you, but it’ll never go away. You just have to deal with it.
And you have to deal with the fact that certain people will outright hate you, just as there are people who hate based on skin color, religion, or choice of football team. Whatever. No skin off my nose … until those people get angry enough to want to hurt me. Then I fight back: against them, against their supporters, against the guy who gave them money, against the guy who made them think they could get away with it.
All allies are bought, in the sense that part of what makes them your ally is that you share interests and you can help each other.
For many nations – such as France – weakening US strength is a strategic goal.
Has the US done something to piss off France and Germany that we didn’t do to piss off Denmark and Poland (who have sent combat forces to Iraq) ? Or just to take English-speakers, have we offended Canada & NZ but not the UK and Australia? I don’t think so; I submit that all of them made decisions based on their values and their own interests, including the benefits of close ties with the US versus the weakening of relations with France et al.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by rexnervous *
**
Pshaw. I’ve lived in several overseas nations myself and will do so in the future. It was never completely safe for an American in the Middle East before. It is less so now, but the question is, will it be safer in the long run? I think it is a fair question, but I think in the long run, defanging radical Islam (and Iraq is step one of that staircase) will make it safer, hopefully through a happier, better-off Middle East, but through a cowed one if necessary.
Same here, and I’m vegetarian.
Screw that. Before voting for dubya, I’d eat a nice shiny new cat turd sandwich.
Or maybe I misunderstood your question. Yes, before voting for Junior Bush, I’d eat Junior Bush.
How’s that for mettle?
I voted for Nader last time around, knowing that Gore stood no chance of winning North Carolina. There’s a small but nonzero chance that the Democrats will run another conservative candidate this cycle, that I won’t be able to vote for a Democrat this time around. But ain’t no way in hayull I’ll vote for Bush.
Daniel