The point is that he’s saying it. Repeatedly. Rhetoric matters. He could have come out and issued some platitudes, but instead he threw a glass of cold water right in Putin’s face. I don’t think there’s any doubt that these comments were intended as a direct refutation of Putin’s “the Soviet Union was a great thing” rhetoric a week earlier.
And pointing out that the U.S. is not totally consistent on supporting Democracy is really just counter-productive, even if it’s true. You have to start somewhere, and when a President says the right things, he should be supported.
Actually, my point was that this is part of a larger, co-ordinated effort by Bush and several European allies to put pressure on Russia, making them aware that we’re not going to tolerate tanks rolling in the streets of Vilnius. Or Tblisi, for that matter.
As to the question of what Bush would have done differently than FDR, what does that have anything to do with the subject? You’d might as well ask what Scylla would have done differently than FDR.
Excellent strawman though! Since we’re thowing them around all over this thread, do you mind me asking the (equally asinine) counter-question of what do you think Clinton would’ve done in 1783, given that he expressed regret (whom, unlike Bush, didn’t even have the cajones to apologize!) for slavery?
He would have run against Thomas Paine’s radicalism and Alexander Hamilton’s conservativism simultaneously. Parson Weem’s story would have been about him, essentially the same but not having anything to do with either a cherry tree or a hatchet, as well as a more generous definition of “lie”.
I’m being supportive. I support that he’s saying the right thing and I hope he continues to do so. I’m just not expecting anything to come of it because I’ve heard it before.
And today, he’s in Moscow, schmoozing with Pooty-Poot.
In Riga he talks one way, in Moscow another. And no, I wouldn’t have expected anything radically different from Kerry, kissing up is what they do. Its just that a keening craving to see GeeDubya as a collossus on the world stage is doomed to disappointment, Elmer Fudd is not Churchill. Hell, *Churchill * wasn’t Churchill.
What do you mean? The article says he ‘pressed him on Democracy’. Isn’t that compatible with his rhetoric? If Bush thinks he has developed a relationship with Putin that makes it possible to make headway by exploiting a friendship, perhaps that’s the right way to go?
If he went in there all hard-core and laid the law down, something tells me the lefties would have a problem with that too.
George Bush simply will never do anything you’re willing to approve of. If he turned around tomorrow and announced that the U.S. was cutting off relations with Saudi Arabia, or otherwise threatened them, the left would go ape about the ‘cowboy president’. If he doesn’t, he gets heat for not cracking down on them. Same with his rhetoric in Europe. If he uses soft diplomacy with Putin, he’s guilty of being cozy with a potential dictator. If he took a harder line, he’d be guilty of not being nuanced enough or of engaging in cowboy diplomacy.
But you know what? When you are so predictable that your reaction to anything the President does can be assumed before even hearing what you have to say, your opinion ceases to have any weight whatsoever.
Not a strawman at all. Bush alleges that Yalta was a mistake and that the US and UK should not have legitimized the annexation of eastern Europe by the USSR. Having taken that leap, he should explain to us what he would have done in FDR’s shoes. If you second-guess an historical event, you need to explain what you would have done differently.
Bush is incapable of restraining his mouth- whether it be the “crusade” against terrorism or the “axis of evil” or this latest shot at the WW II allies. This is not diplomacy, this is posturing.
When I apologize to my wife for… hell, lets say I burnt dinner… I don’t go into a litany as to what I would’ve/should’ve done to prevent the dinner from being burnt. Again, as I intimated (and apparently should’ve just stated given the truism about the Internet and subtlety), when Clinton “regretted” slavery back in 1998 he didn’t go into a list of things that he would’ve done had he been part of the Constitutional Convention.
It is either a policy statement or it is the old political two step. Clearly it isn’t policy. President Bush cannot jump through some wormhole in the space-time continuum to drive Patton’s armored divisions into Berlin, he can’t drop the BIG ONE to end the Berlin Blockade, he can’t send the airborne divisions into Hungary in support of the 1956 Revolution, he can’t intervene in the suppression of the Prague Spring, he can’t even undo the Potsdam Accords. Even without the marvels of theoretical astrophysics he shows no sign of doing anything about the multitude of presently friendly, cooperative, complacent or inoffensive authoritarian and non-democratic states. He may jaw-bone the President or Prime Minister of Russia (or what ever Putin’s official title is) about the benefits of Western democracy until he is blue in the face but it isn’t policy and it certainly isn’t policy coupled with action. Reagan’s rhetoric about the Berlin Wall was at least backed with both, albeit policy and action pursued by every US President from Truman on through Reagan. My conclusion, until I see more, is that this is just the political two step.
Which raises the question of just at whom this little exercise into historical revisionism is directed. Surely not the Estonians and Lithuanians. They are already under the somewhat tattered NATO umbrella. Certainly not the Russians who know the limits of power as well as anyone and recognize that the US is impotent to change the politics and governance of Russia or to force Putin to take back his characterization of the collapse of the USSR as a geo-political catastrophe. Maybe he is seeking to appease the men of my father’s generation, the people who thought the Yalta agreement was an unnecessary concession to Stalin and that with proper backing Chang Ki Chek could have take China back from Mao. Those guys are mostly dead and their grand children, the people who are really running things now, no more want to revisit those issues that modern Brits want to re-fight the English Civil War.
Maybe this is just an opportunity for our President to posture a little and while he is at it kick poor old FDR (an idea that might have a certain appeal for a guy who seems to be intent on dismantling the New Deal’s most significant and longest lived piece of social legislation). Maybe it is no more than kicking a dead lion. Maybe somebody in the bowels of the White House political apparatus figures the way to maintain Republican homogeny is to try to revise the spirit of the Cold War by beating up on the poor damn dead and gone Soviet Union and old Uncle Joe.
And they got to the Baltic states and the Danish PM too!11!!111eleven!!!11! :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Interesting debating trick. I wasn’t on my HS team so I don’t know what it’s called, but I’ll have to practice it.
Let’s see if I have it: Regarding Iverson’s on-court performance this year. Either it’s great sportsmanship or a pathetic attempt to trick people into thinking he’s more than a common criminal. Clearly it’s not great sportsmanship.
Hey this is easy!
But seriously, is it possible the W really believes that democracy abroad is both morally correct and expedient for the US? And he, and his advisers, feel this is a good moment to take a small risk in promoting that position?
It’s just yammering. I could be proved wrong by the administration pulling a policy switch in re the country we are currently forcefully occupying.
It’s nothing new under the sun for the Great Powers after a major conflict to meet and happily divvy up the Littler Powers. (And the losers.) One might say it’s traditional. I would be pleased to see that tradition go away, but until somebody puts their money where their mouth is, I’m skeptical.
He does believe it’s morally correct when it’s expedient. He’s not even close to unique in that respect. Other people have pointed that out, but you don’t like it so those posts don’t exist.
Well we can definitely agree that no one used those exact words.
For the fun of it, I went back and checked Squink’s post, #9 since it was the shortest. There’s no way he made that point in that post. And then you accuse me of ignoring it because I don’t like it??
For obvious reasons, didn’t take the time to re-read everything you or elucidator said at that point.
Neither Uzbekistan nor Pakistan is a country with a democratic or republican government. Should President Bush truly believe that “democracy abroad is both morally correct and expedient for the US”, would the U.S. be supporting those governments?
Since we’re thowing them around all over this thread, do you mind me asking the (equally asinine) counter-question of what do you think Clinton would’ve done in 1783, given that he expressed regret (whom, unlike Bush, didn’t even have the cajones to apologize!) for slavery?