I don’t claim Reagan “defeated” the Soviet Union. What he did was go from a hardcore Cold Warrior to a peacemaker when a lot of his party didn’t want him to go there.
It was an act of war. He eventually figured out that he should use military action to rescue the hostages. That could have been done very early in the process as the LEAST he could do. Tell me, what do you think would be the response if our President went to Iran and got held hostage? Or even John Kerry?
They invaded our embassy. they kidnapped our diplomats. There is no action Carter could have taken that would have been disproportionate. We had every right to invade their country and put the Shah back in power if we wanted. I’m not saying Carter had to go that far, but there were several steps further that he could have gone but didn’t. Given numerous options, he chose the weakest response.
It’s not an alternate timeline. Clinton’s response to what wasn’t even a technical act of war was entirely appropriate. Iran actually committed an act of war and Carter didn’t even show as much fortitude as Clinton.
How about Obama-level sanctions, or total sanctions? Dropping out of the ABM treaty was always a powerful lever that we had. The Soviets feared that.
I already explained that too. Vietnam Syndrome, which affected the Democrats at the time more than the Republicans. A hawkish Democrat in the Scoop Jackson/Harry Truman mode could never have won the nomination between 1968 and the end of the Cold War. So what we got were Democrats unwilling to even acknowledge the moral superiority of the West, much less fight for it.
It was an act of war, and your justification of Carter’s lack of action could justify paying ransom and negotiating with terrorists as standard US policy. You realize why our policy is not to do that, right?
You have a point, and when people say that liberals don’t correct each other this is a nice counterexample. I still think if Bush had been busy studying world events while this was going on he might have known better than to invade. I can’t say for sure his substance abuse had anything to do with his ruinous foreign policy, but I can’t say it didn’t.
Yes there was pressure to do something about the Taliban. Lobbing a few bombs their way probably would have worked as well for far less.
You were asked what he did. You are evading the question.
And that, to you, is “weak”, just as not doing it earlier was. :rolleyes:
We are discussing this timeline. You’ve made assertions, now back them up, or admit you’re once again imagining facts that fit your desired conclusions.
So that’s “bomb 'em like a *strong *President would”. As suspected. :rolleyes:
Tell us what would have happened if Carter had reacted as viscerally and thoughtlessly as you claim a “strong” President would have. :rolleyes:
You were asked what those are. You’re evading again.
Those are “weak” things, remember? At least be fucking consistent.
And it would have accomplished what? :rolleyes:
You did not.
More of your “bomb 'em” shit. That’s what you think is “strong”. Gawdamighty. :rolleyes:
But anyway, to get to the point of why Democrats lost during that period, it’s simply that Democrats had a HUGE disadvantage on national security issues. That shouldn’t be controversial. And that disadvantage came about because of Democrats’ response to the trauma of Vietnam.
The lesson Democrats learned from Vietnam is “don’t get involved in wars”, and that our enemies weren’t necessarily bad people. We could negotiate with them and come to common understandings. We’d have to live with the Soviet Union forever, so we might as well come to some understandings.
The Republicans, by contrast, learned different lessons from Vietnam: don’t get involved in wars without preparing the public for the costs, don’t gradually escalate, make sure you have enough force to get the job done, don’t micromanage. They saw Vietnam as a botched war, not an argument to never go to war if at all possible. Nothing about the Republican worldview really changed after Vietnam.
Elvis, I never get tired of hearing liberals justify weakness as the more intelligent policy. If Carter’s policies had been more intelligent, he wouldn’t have left Reagan a world more dangerous than the one he inherited from Ford. It was almost universally recognized that under Carter our allies didn’t trust us and our enemies didn’t fear us. That’s not intelligence. It’s just weakness.
Yes, Bush broke a lot of those rules when he invaded Iraq, no question.
One rule he did not break, which Democrats still break to this day, is gradual escalation. Once you make the decision to use force, you use as much force as it takes to complete the mission. Whereas even in 2015, we have a President who is letting the tactics dictate the mission, rather than the mission dictating the tactics.
Bush broke this rule. He didn’t use as much force as it would take – not even close.
Total mobilization – reinstituting the draft, and dedicating the entire country ala WWII to remaking Iraq – might have been enough. The Surge was not even close to enough.
He used as much force as he thought it would take. There’s a difference between making errors in your assumptions and just using bad strategy because politics. Democrats’ habit of bombing only and ruling out ground troops is just an incredibly stupid way to wage war. They’ve gotten lucky the first few times but it looks like that tactic has hit the wall in the fight against ISIS. I’m still of the view that the President will eventually listen to military advice and commit ground troops. But you don’t fight wars unless you intend to win them, and right now we’re in a classic half-hearted war where failure is apparently an option.
One trait of good sportsmanship is the ability to take defeat gracefully.
There are some liberals claiming that Reagan’s 44-state and 49-state routs weren’t *legitimate *victories and that the Republican victories since Eisenhower don’t count as *legitimately *won victories (a span which includes Nixon’s 49-state and Bush Sr.'s 40-state landslides.)
This is as if Broncos fans claimed that the Seahawks’ 43-8 Super Bowl victory over the Broncos wasn’t *legitimately *won.
No one is advocating using bad strategy. Even if they were, Bush’s assumptions were so immensely bad that his result was far, far worse.
Perhaps, but it’s not nearly as stupid as the way Bush waged war.
The only way to win this war (in the long run) would be total mobilization, for a decade or more. In light of that, bombing in support of regional players sounds like a much, much better strategy than committing ground troops.
Your strategy would greatly weaken America, weaken our allies, and strengthen our enemies.
I think a lot of people knew that the “we’ll be welcomed as liberators!” was a crock well before the war started. He tried to win a war on the cheap and thought it would be a walk in the park. That’s not merely bad assumptions, that’s gross incompetence.