Nicely said PunditLisa.
Really? The books I read to my kids at bedtime each take 10 or 15. And that’s not counting Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, which takes for-frickin’-ever to get through.
This is awesome. I wish I had said it.
Go look up the Project for a New American Century; Iraq was a target before Bush got into office. He was just the guy amoral and stupid enough to do what they wanted. And for that matter, Cheney’s Energy Task Force during California’s Enron-manufactured “energy crisis” spent much of its time studying maps of Iraq. They always intended to attack Iraq, 9-11 was just the excuse they were looking for, the “new Pearl Harbor” they wanted.
I know I’m late to the party here, but . . . holy crap, do you have an off switch?
You know, it’s wild-eyed, broad statements like this that give liberals a bad name. I’ll give you that Bush wouldn’t have turned down any excuse to attack Saddam - but that’s because he has daddy issues, not because he’s thirsting for the blood of third-worlders. To say that a “major goal of Bush. . . was to kill random brown Muslims for the sake of killing them” shows that you have a severely broken capacity for empathy of any sort.
Granted, it’s pretty much a given that Bush didn’t fully comprehend the consequences of his lust to one-up Papa Bush, especially with his daddy’s cronies around him fully convinced that Iraqis would welcome us with open arms. This lack of foresight, combined with the deliberate manipulation and fabrication of the “facts” justifying the war, was IMO inarguably criminal. But this doesn’t mean he’s some unfeeling Muslim-terminating, genocide-mongering devil.
I’m not saying we’ve got to feel sorry for the guy - any empathy felt notwithstanding, he doesn’t deserve forgiveness, and I wouldn’t bat an eye if he were brought up on war crimes charges for lying us into one war and badly mismanaging the Afghan war, however justified it may have been. But when you accuse him of being some kind of psychopath who actively seeks the suffering of others, you do your cause and viewpoints little service, and you help paint other, more reasonable, dissenting viewpoints with the same brush.
I beleive Bush, because I am sure in his mind the only other reaction would have been,
“HOLY SHIT!! WTF??? What the fuck are we going to do? Plane crashed into the World Trade Center you said? Thousands killed you said? Including CHILDREN!!! OH MY GOD!!! WHAT DO WE DO? Someone get my dad on the phone! I said I want my daddy!!”\
Although I suppose he could have acted Presidential and politely excused himself. But that would be CRAZY!
I think he is one of the worst presidents in history, but I don’t hold this against him. He was probably planning on what to do next, who to call, etc.
“Random Brown Muslims” would be, if not a great band name, at least a good album title.
No, it’s simply observing how Americans, especially right wing Americans act all the time.
Except the OP and innumerable critics who have mocked Bush for his “hang fire” on that morning have not ever referred to the color of his tie. They have referred innumerable times to the title of the book he continued reading, and from a quick Googling, most of them in error.
Do you really want your argument to die on this literary hill? If your continual near-decade mocking of Bush is threatened over a fact like I ever-so-inconveniently and pedantically introduced, then how solid could it have been in the first place?
It’s just my reading of it. He strikes me more as someone who made these poor decisions mostly out of incompetence, not out of deliberate, malicious forethought. I could be wrong, but I’m not even really sure how much it matters because the result is the same.
Interestingly enough, this is pretty much exactly why I think it wasn’t all that nuanced. Someone who has that kind of emotional response to that sort of thing, I think they’re more likely to have a high level of confirmation bias and make simple logical leaps.
Now, of course, there might have been some people in the background who helped get him there knowing how he might react to that sort of thing and manipulated him into doing it or planted the ideas in his head, but then they’re really the ones bearing that responsibility of pre-planning, not Bush.
Wow, a Bush pitting. How retro.
I actually believe this. When he looked up after being whsipered-to, with that deer-caught-in-headlights expression, I can believe that the only thought processing in his brain was whatever happened to be in his immediate field of vision.
Well, Praise Allah Its Wednesday does has an appetizer of that name…
Well, I for one have no intention of voting for this Bush fellow in the next Presidential election.
I agree that this issue has gotten a heck of a lot more discussion than it perhaps deserves from some objective standpoint. That doesn’t make it continual or near-decade-long. Many people have expressed surprise and disdain to see this issue resurface again in this thread, which just demonstrates that most of us thought it was dead (even those of us like me who still are actively bitter about it to some extent), and thus it was clearly not continual. Sure I started a thread about it in 2004, 2 or 3 years after it happened. But that was 7 years ago now and I’ve hardly thought about it since then.
It’s in no way threatened at all. I’m not certain I’ve ever actually mentioned the title of the book, but my argument about the topic (linked earlier in the thread) is in no way made more or less valid depending on if I happen to get the name of the book precisely right or not.
Are you elucidator? He has made it continual and decade-long. That’s who I’m responding to.
I think you’re misunderstanding here. I said it was unfortunate in my first post.
Huh. OK. Rage diminishing.
Like I said, your capacity for empathy is pretty well and truly broken. Admitting that one’s idealogical opponents (enemies, even) are indeed human, and are not in fact monsters, doesn’t weaken one’s position, but rather demonstrates a degree of empathy likely to at least get some of your opponents to pay attention. And on the flip side, painting everyone more right-wing than - oh, I don’t know. . . you - with the eeevil brush doesn’t win anyone over to your cause, but rather leads them to tune you out as just another wackjob with a hollow, angry worldview.
But I don’t think you’re trying to convince anyone of anything - since it’s sooo much easier to call someone EVIL than to try to actually present a reasoned argument and give thoughtful, compassionate (see what I did there?) consideration to all viewpoints.
I’ve read that at least a few of the kids involved, now grown up, appreciated him staying.
Of course, that’s only three (IIRC) out of an entire class, so who knows what the others think.
This cracked me up. The guy’s either the one of the most disturbed assholes on the planet or the most brilliant performance artist, saying to his buddies at night, "And then I said ‘<typical crazy frothing DT rant goes here>’, and some people were still either defending me or agreeing with me!! Hahahahahahahaha.
Whenever I see him in good form, this comes to mind.
Yes the mutterings of a madman.