And of course there’s also Democrats seeing Reagan’s foreign policy successes as things that had nothing to do with Reagan. He was just lucky. Funny thing about luck is that you tend to get more of it when you do the right things. An aggressive defense and foreign policy was a problem for a teetering Soviet system. It was the right policy at the right time.
Actually, it’s me.
Nixon sabotaged LBJ’s peace talks with North Vietnam and won an illegitimate victory over Humphrey.
Reagan, as previously mentioned, committed treason to defeat Carter, rendering both his and George HW Bush’s victories illegitimate.
Bush’s victory over Gore was the result of a corrupt Supreme Court.
Winning is defined as completing the mission. Our mission does not have to be to wipe ISIS out. We just need to keep them from controlling territory. That can be done very easily. Our military is very good at killing people and breaking things. We don’t need nation building. Destroy the ISIS forces that are a conventional problem for the Iraqi army. Very simple task. Let the Iraqis worry about guerilla warfare. They are better suited for dealing with that problem than we are anyway. THey know the area and they don’t rule out effective tactics simply because they offend delicate Western sensibilities.
The President has not defined a mission, because if he did, he’d have to provide adequate force to complete the mission. Aside from his UN speech, which was great, he’s been nearly incommunicado with the public on the war. Bush at least talked about the war constantly. He may not have prepared us for the costs(again, not by intent but because of incompetence), but he did keep us updated on the progress of the war, as he saw it. Obama seems to have almost disengaged from the war on ISIS. Some reports say it’s been outsourced to Joe Biden.
But you don’t disagree that Reagan won more electoral votes than Carter, which is what Velocity is defining as legitimacy.
The Patriots defeated the Colts 45-7 in the playoffs and were accused of tampering with the game balls.
When one loses by 45-7, there are far more factors at work than the air pressure in the balls.
…Or, you know, because 539 more Gore voters didn’t go vote in Florida when they could have.
I’m sure the Joint Chiefs and NATO are eager to hear what you have to tell them.
Has it never occurred to you that the increase in anti-Western hatred in the region since we destroyed Iraq could be a result, not a cause? Never?
Um, the military has been telling the President we need ground troops. I’m not replacing their expertise with my own, the President is.
My point was, Reagan’s victory over Carter was so crushing that claiming that it was due to one specific factor is like a basketball team losing by 50 points and then complaining that they lost because the opposing team had better shoes or got more calls from the refs. That sort of excuse only works for close outcomes, not landslides.
Plus again, the Reagan thing has never even come close to being proven. Congress has investigated in bipartisan fashion.
What we do know is that the Iranians were sure eager not to cross Reagan.
You know how the Electoral College amplifies margins when there’s a national tide, and either you’re misled or you’re being misleading by resorting to those numbers first. The popular vote, a truer indication, was 51-41 percent. Yes, of course there were other factors, but you’re not on solid ground by invoking them, nor are you on solid ground by claiming the electorate to be the ultimate definition of wisdom and morality. We are final, but we’re not always right.
And has come up against the CIA’s stonewalling.
May we refer to that post whenever you mention Benghazi?
A different emoticon for a change: 
More often than not, we are. And I’ll admit that even in cases where I went with the losing candidate(which is nearly always). Even the bad Presidents, their opponents were often worse. I just cannot picture much useful coming out of 16 years of Carter-Mondale.
Besides, losses are good for you. The candidate that emerges after a party has been out of power for 8 years or more often ends up being a great candidate. Would you rather have President Kerry or President Obama?
The military told JFK to attack the USSR. Good thing he didn’t listen. Military men are pretty much worthless in terms of setting policy.
Setting policy, yes. You know what they are great at? telling you what you’ll need to complete the mission you want completed. if JFK had wanted to invade the Soviet Union, but he said he wanted to fight them using only airpower, the military would have rightly told him he was out of his mind.
The military doesn’t get to pick the war. but once committed, they do get to decide how to fight that war. At least, of the Commander in Chief has any sense.
*If *you’ve already decided on the “bomb 'em and invade 'em” approach that is the only one you’ll acknowledge is “strong”.
Either. They do work together, you know.
BTW, there’s much more factual support for the Reagan October Surprise treason than for your guy’s invasion of Iraq. Reagan’s selling of arms to Iran to finance the antidemocracy regime in Nicaragua is both a more direct example of treason and not in factual dispute, although his uniform-brandishing bagman is still a Fox News hero.
You define treason awfully loosely. That’s rich given the howling when John Ashcroft used far more mild language to describe dissent.
You’ve already defined Iran as the enemy. Reagan gave them aid and, arguably, comfort too. What would you call that?
Oh, right, “strength”. :rolleyes:
For how long? Months? Years?
Blow them up and kill them and then the same thing happens in a year or two. Thousands of dead Americans, billions of lost dollars, and nothing gained. This would be very stupid and would greatly weaken America. Extremely wasteful – terrible strategy.
Thankfully, Obama hasn’t listened to any military advisors who have advocated a strategy that result in thousands of dead Americans, billions of lost dollars, and a net gain of zero in the long run. There’s no way to prevent another ISIS from popping up unless we stay for a decade or more, and staying is not worth it.
So it’s a very good thing for America and the American people that Obama is ignoring any flag officers who say that we need ground troops… we only need ground troops if our goal is to have lots of dead Americans, wasted money, and further turmoil. At the most we should be supporting regional allies if they want to take care of their own region, but without ground troops.
And it *creates *more enemies than it eliminates! Look at the region since Bush used the bomb-‘n’-invade approach that **adaher **thinks is a “very simple task”. They used to mostly just hate each other. Now they’re even successfully recruiting here.
The peacemakers are the strong ones. Not the warmongerers. Adults understand that.