No, it doesn’t. The context of the two quotes makes it pretty clear that it does not. Winning the war on terror means making the world safe from international terrorism. Not winning the “war” means not doing so through exclusively military means. If you could find the 3 or 4 sentences which lead up to the question in question I’m sure it would clear this up.
I’m sure it is playing out as a major blunder politically. The article was written as if Bush has changed his mind. We are discussing it in that context, and I’m sure the WhiteHouse is very concerned. (elucidator mentioned that they felt the need to release a clarification). But the fault for the misunderstanding is more the reporter’s and ours. We are so hungry for quick soundbites with which to nip at our politicians, that we are willing to commit agregious logical errors to do so. At the same time, I’m sure Bush’s handlers wish he would not be so casual with reporters.
I’m not sure if those were the speakers, but I’m sure some conversation like this occured.
Do I want more??? Yeah try posting something that supports your claim that Bush wants to “reduce terrorism to acceptable levels”. When did he say anything even remotely of the kind? So I ask again; what are “acceptable levels of terrorism” and who makes that decision?
Both of the quotes I gave you mention making America and or the world safer. Making the world safer means reducing terrorism to levels where we feal safe. Is that really so bizzare a position?
So now do you say that you always meant the war was winnable, too, in all your posts in this thread? Or that you’ve misinterpreted Bush both for the last three years, and yesterday, and you actually realize you’ve disagreed with him? Or is there a third option?
From your cite: "*White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan fired back, saying the statement didn’t convey the full context of the interview.
“Well, he was talking about winning it in the conventional sense,” McClellan said during a news briefing aboard Air Force One. “We face an unconventional enemy. And it’s - I don’t think you can expect that there will ever be a formal surrender or a treaty signed, like we have in wars past.”*"
This sounds exactly like what I said. Can you explain to me the difference?
Yes, there is. This is not the pit, so I’ll leave it up to your imagination.
Now I’m hecka confused. I was just about to write that not even I think Bush is dumb enough to even be discussing a conventional military victory in the WoT, but Scotty McClellan seems to say he is. Zut’s cite gives a far more reasoned explanation for what he said. But he seems to have flip-flopped back , saying that we will win it again.
I agree that he hasn’t changed his mind. I think it is a case of poetic justice - he says something nuanced, for once, and actually appreciates the complexity of a problem, and gets all sorts of crap for it.
?
Can you explain what you thought his position was? How did you understand the war on terror when you thought Bush had been advocating an easy victory?
Except, again, this is in a different context than the original quote. Here he is talking about the war on terror as a campaign to make the world safe from terrorism. In the original quote, he was talking just about that aspect of the war on terror which consists of military actions.
Fair enough. But I think this is not the first time. Go and look at some of his speeches reproduced on the white house or his campaign’s web site. This is the exact same “nuanced” message he has been talking about all along.
Let me see if I can explain what I am talking about. The war on terror means many things. It means the military action in Afghanistan (I’ll ignore Iraq for a moment in order to be more clear on the nuance question). However, it also means diplomatic efforts to maintain and convert other nations to a larger cause. There are many nations which did not send money or troops to Afghanistan (or Iraq) but which are nonetheless allies in the war on terror. When a person uses the phrase The War on Terror, they can mean either individually or both without being contradictory. For instance, If I say “We will fight the war on terror with bombs and infantry divisions.” Or if I say “We will fight the war on terror with intelligence gathering capability.” Or if I say “We will fight the war on terror with money, expertise, and diplomatic endevours.” I am talking about the same war, but in different contexts. For the first type of war, I can say that we will win the military conflicts, but we will not win the war this way. For the second, I can say that we will win because of our superior intelligence technology, but we will not win that either. Finally, for the last statement, I can say we will never “win” this type of war because it is a never ending struggle to make the world a better place. By altering the context of the statement, I can say we will win and we will never win the war on terror. It is only by dropping the context (or perverting it) that such statements are contradictory.
I’m not sure that makes it clearer, but I hope it helps.
The shrub is back at it. Now he is saying we’re gonna win again:
In a speech to the national convention of the American Legion, Bush said, "We meet today in a time of war for our country, a war we did not start yet one that we will win. “In this different kind of war, we may never sit down at a peace table,” Bush said. “But make no mistake about it, we are winning and we will win.”
But thanks to pervert we all now know that “winning” in Bushwa means “acceptable levels of terrorism”. I just wish he’d hurry up and define “acceptable levels of terrorism”.
So, “we can win the war on terror” and “we cannot win the war on terrorism” are both true statements? Ridiculous. And if you’re ging to come back at me with “yes, in proper context” then we might as well just accept any statement like A = Ā as being true in proper context, and nothing can be taken at face value until clarified by press secretaries.
And this is the exact same thing he has always said. Thank you for noticing.
Your welcome.
If you would like to argue that the War on Terror does not have dfinitivie enough goals for you liking, I can respect that. The problem I have is your insistence that this is some sort of change on the part of President Bush.
When I first saw the interview/quote in question, I was impressed. I thought Bush may actually have more sense than I thought he had. When I saw Kerry say “Absolutely” when a reporter asked him after the bush interview if we could win the war on terror, I thought Bush had him trapped for sure since the war on terror is something that we likely can’t win since there will always be nutjobs with explosives or ideas.
Now that he’s gone back to the “We can win” notion… there just aren’t enough :rolleyes: to express how I feel.
As pervert wrote, this is called “nuance” and in case you haven’t noticed before, GW is noted for his superb nuance.
In fact I don’t think terrorists or terrorism can be defeated by the GW method of attacking the handiest and easiest target. I think terrorism is an activity taken to further an idea.
The idea in the case of the US seems to be that we support Israel to the detriment of Arabs generally; that we are stomping all over the holy places in Saudi Arabia; that we are exporting our Hollywood culture to the detriment of good Islamic traditions; etc.; and all orthodox attempts to get the US to correct what are seen as abuses have been to no avail.
It seems to me that military force will only exacerbate those feelings and will mean a constant need to use military force into the future.
I have never thought that Bush was advocating an easy victory, and have never said so. So let’s eliminate that line right now. A conventional military victory is the defeat of an army. That’s usually not easy, but even if it is, Bush did not mean that in his quote, and I don’t recall him ever saying anything to make me think that we could win the WoT in this way. McClellan was just putting the best spin he could on it.
That’s absurd. Conventional wars, especially today, have a large intelligence component also. Should we separate the intelligence effort in WW II from the battlefield effort? The war in Afghanistan was fought with intelligence, with proxies, with special forces, and with a limited amount of direct American military involvement. How many wars was it?
The act of sitting down at the peace table is irrelevant. I can’t imagine anyone seeing that as an indicator of winning the WoT. There is one measure of how well the war is going, which is the number of terrorist acts, and, to some extent, the threat level. Military action, covert action, intelligence, proxies, all contribute to reducing these. The trouble with the invasion of Iraq is that it is not clear the military victory actually helped in the WoT - the invasion of Afghanistan did, and the argument there is that resource in Afghanistan would have reduced the threat more than moving them to Iraq. In WWII, attacking Spain, while perhaps justified on human rights grounds, would have done nothing to further the war against Naziism.
If Bush is really saying that there are two different wars, and it makes sense to say you can win one but not the other, then he is deluded. I don’t think he is. The closest thing sensible I can get out of your attempt at justifying this is that you can win a battle and lose the war, or vice versa. That’s also obvious.
Perhaps the simplest explanation was that Bush was moving his own goalposts. I don’t blame him for not defining the victory conditions - it wouldn’t go down well to say we win if there are only ten bombings a year, or something like that.
Note the reference to staying on the “offensive until the terrorist threat is fully and finally defeated” (bolding mine). Note the mention that “we will push on until our work is done” (bolding mine). Note that these words inescapably imply that the war on terror will come to an end. Note that it will be just plain silly to try and reconcile these statements with shrub’s recent’s admissions that the war on terror will be never-ending.
This appears to be a major problem in this thread. I can’t speak for buns3000 (or, obviously, anyone else) but I think we are getting the nuance. We’re not arguing (at least I’m not) that there actually is an end to the WoT. The main beef I have is with Bush repeating the phrase “We will win” when we cannot “win”. If you were to ask me if “We will succeed” would be a better phrase, I would say yes. Is it a matter of semantics? Yes. Do semantics really matter in a case like this? You betcha.
There are implications involved with the phrasing that Bush (and company) have chosen, and he is trying to ignore them, while reaping their benefits. What benefits you ask? I think that the main reason people feel more comfortable with Bush’s “plan” on combatting terrorism (opposed to Kerry’s) is centered on the above phrase droning on inside their heads. “Well, Bush has been saying ‘We will win’ over and over again, and Kerry is just saying we can fight terrorism. Obviously Bush has the better plan.” :dubious:
No, they don’t. Not to me, anyway, and I’m hardly a lover of this Administration.
(In addition to my explanation in my earlier post on this thread, note the word “until.” It’s a goal. Just because the goal exists doesn’t mean you’re going to reach it.)
If the posts on this thread are correct, he HAS said, directly, that the War on Terror is winnable. That would be a foolish thing to say. You don’t need to read in stuff on his vaguer remarks this way.
