Is President Bush completley retarded when it comes to how diplomacy is conducted?

[Loopydude]

Jesus fucking Christ, people, focus. Were we talking about Clinton? Do we give a flying fuck about Clinton? Is he the president anymore? NO!

I don’t give a fuck what you think about the leaked memo, OK?

Bush is a retard. And a poopy pants. Stick to the main fucking points, goddamn it.

Cripes. :mad:

[yojimbo]

Loopydude you are totally correct. I was part of the sidestep and for that I apologise.

To redress matters.

Bush and his admin seem to be completely retarded when it comes to diplomacy. The arrogant crappness that they have delivered to the world has been almost unimaginable. He is IMO an embarrassment to the human race never mind the US. That the cunt was reelected is beyond my understanding to be honest.

There, is that any better

[Loopydude]

And he’s craptastic, too. We can’t forget that.

Ahhhh…

[Evil_Captor]

I’d think his junior high school attack on Andrea Merkel pretty much sums up Bush as a diplomat. Not to mention using “crusade” in a speech about the Middle East. To express it in the sort of terms Bush himself might use on the Dope: the guy is a one-man gay nigger holocaust when it comes to diplomacy.

[Squink]

The president did NOT snap her bra, EC!

[Sam_Stone]

I think the Bush administration is attempting ‘hard’ diplomacy. They leaked the memo as a signal to the Iraqis that the U.S. is losing patience and it’s time for the government of Iraq to step up to the plate and do more to move a political solution forward.

Whether it’s a smart strategy, I don’t know. I suspect it’s a serious miscalculation. Instead of scaring the Iraqi government, it humiliated them. That’s not a good thing.

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

@Leviosaurus

It doesn’t automatically follow Clinton was good at diplomacy!

Or… wait a minute… now that I think about it, I guess it does! :rolleyes:

I never said Clinton wasn’t good at diplomacy. What I said was that his foreign policy writ large was irregular and ineffective. Admittedly, he had a more disjointed world to deal with than his predecessors, but while he made good on a couple of regional conflicts, he dropped the ball on other major ones, the ramifications of which we will be dealing with for decades to come.

As for the OP, I’ll say it again; Bush II’s foreign policy is at least an order of magnitude worse than Clinton, or indeed, in Administration in memory. Where Clinton may have been indecisive, Bush is just mordantly wrong-headed. It would be harder to deliberately make wrong choices than the Big Double Ewe. The fact that he also can’t communicate or relate to the leaders of other nations is just icing on the fallen cake. Bush makes Lyndon Johnson look good, and that’s no mean task (in it’s own way).

Stranger

[Kimstu]

@Sam Stone

I think the Bush administration is attempting ‘hard’ diplomacy. They leaked the memo as a signal to the Iraqis that the U.S. is losing patience and it’s time for the government of Iraq to step up to the plate and do more to move a political solution forward.

“Step up to the plate”? “Do more”? Like what, exactly? Does the Administration seriously believe that the Iraqi government actually has an effective solution to the current civil conflict, say, sitting around in a drawer somewhere and they just haven’t bothered to implement it?

@Sam Stone

I suspect it’s a serious miscalculation. Instead of scaring the Iraqi government, it humiliated them.

I would bet that the Iraqi government is already scared plenty these days. I see no reason to think that attempting to scare them further with the prospect of withdrawing US support for al-Maliki would have any productive results whatsoever in terms of producing an effective peace strategy.

But it’s nice to see Sam not giving up on his optimism:

@Sam Stone in October 2004

WMD issues aside, the Iraq war was still the correct strategic choice. The Middle East is a breeding ground for terrorists. The only way to ‘win’ is to wade into the swamp and drain it. […] The United States needed to flex a little muscle in the region and start changing minds. […]

Then there’s democratic reform. Iraq was a good choice for this experiment. Among Middle Eastern countries, it has one of the more educated and sophisticated populations. The Kurds have had a functioning democracy for a long time. The Shia have shown every desire for democracy, as have many Sunnis. In fact, the only ones who don’t really want one are the ex-regime dead-enders, jihadists, and foreign fighters making up the insurgency.

A Democratic Iraq will give hope to the Middle East. It will act as a propaganda tool, encouraging reform in other countries. A prosperous, free Iraq will be a stabilizing influence, an example of how democracy can work in the Middle East.

[Merijeek]

@Evil Captor

To express it in the sort of terms Bush himself might use on the Dope: the guy is a one-man gay nigger holocaust when it comes to diplomacy.

…psst…you forgot to put in fat and $cientologist…

-Joe

[mhendo]

@Sam Stone

I think the Bush administration is attempting ‘hard’ diplomacy. They leaked the memo as a signal to the Iraqis that the U.S. is losing patience and it’s time for the government of Iraq to step up to the plate and do more to move a political solution forward.

As the Salon article linked by the OP correctly noted, this is

like a burglar asking how you’re going to replace the goods he just stole, or an arsonist asking how you’ll rebuild the house he just burned to the ground.

[Acsenray]

@kawaiitentaclebeast

Dr. Angela Merkel is the Chancellor of Germany, not the Prime Minister.

To be fair, the office of chancellor in the German government is pretty much the equivalent of a prime minister in a British-style parliamentary system (head of government elected by the national legislature), so there’s nothing essentially wrong in translating “bundeskanzler” as “prime minister.”