Silly joke. It was Comic Relief here in the UK yesterday, and he does a sketch each year as a character called “Smithie” who solves all of the world’s problems, along with lots of stars appearing for charity. Last year he was telling the England football team how to play; this time he was chairing a meeting between a bunch of pop stars, actors, Gordon Brown, Justin Bieber, Paul McCartney, and more abuot who was going to go to Africa to help fix poverty.
It was pretty funny, and helps raise money for charity.
It’s in far, far worse condition than it ever was under Saddam Hussein.
Even if violence has ended, which it hasn’t, are you trying to say that excuses invading under false pretenses in the first place? It doesn’t, not even a little bit.
Iraq was a country with over half the college students were women. They worked in all manner of jobs and worked in professional positions. They had freedoms and wore western garb when Saddam was in charge. Now they are cowering in their homes. We forced them into an election with hundreds of parties. The religious groups are now at each others throats in an attempt to fill the power vacuum we created. After the election they could not form a government for over an year. I am sure the Iraqis thank you for their new found Utopia.
George Bush would have overstepped his bounds - again - and invaded Libya.
I don’t understand why people are in such support of this Libya uprising. Moammar Gaddafi ran a peaceful, free and equal nation in which people could work and be happy. What everyone is supporting is strife, uncertainty and the risk of death just by walking down the street.
Uh…four bombs detonated yesterday, injuring 21 people, and two people were kidnapped.
Remember the shoe bomber? Nothing detonated, but it’s affected our national policy and discourse for years. Do you think four bombs and a double kidnapping would be considered “manageable” violence here? Hint: your answer would, in order to be convincing, have to include some sort of argument that four bombs detonating, injuring 21 people, would be less alarming than nothing happening.
Uh, those civil war conditions were a direct consequence of the invasion you are praising for ending violence.
Are you trolling or what? Gadaffi was a supporter of terrorism who has murdered his citizens. It is he who is responsible for everything.
Not any worse than in Mexico I should say (or even Detroit if you substitute “shootings” for “bombings”). And nobody’s saying that Mexico’s in a civil war right now.
And it was inevitable once Saddam died or got overthrown as he would have. Plus while the immediate consequences obviously was bad, Iraq is on a path to a better future due to the liberation.
Obama is handling international affairs exactly how he said he would. We had a President who “decided” impulsively and took the US into situations quickly and alone, assuming that everyone else would follow, running roughshod over the objections of most of our allies, and as a result got us left managing horrible circumstances. Obama had declared that he would be a more multilateral President. Need a refresher?
I do not know how this will end up, but at least this much is true: Obama’s foreign policy is not the US hotdogging it and acting on impulse. He gets a consensus from partners first and communicates with them like they actually are partners, not underlings, and that responsibility for action and inaction falls on them too. France, Britain, The Arab League … they own this now at least as much as we do. And that is a good thing.
How would Bush have handled it? Maybe like McCain says he would have, acting unilaterally immediately.
And certainly his former running mate agrees that Obama has been “dithering”.
I am very grateful that he is there to take the 4 am calls. He’s smart enough to know that he should have a cup of coffee and make some calls himself rather than run out of the house in his underwear with a pistol.
Would you support reducing the United States to the state Iraq’s in for the sake of some undefined better future, due to arrive at some unspecified time, as endorsed by the invaders? It’s because of your simplistic, right-wing nationalist flag-waving coupled with your callous disregard for the lives getting your way will cost that I have no faith in your analysis of what will happen in Libya.
Except I am an internationalist, who wishes to set the foundation for a global government by democratizing the world. Not to mention the intervention in Libya is endorsed by all the world.
Look, that may or may not be the case, but that’s not the argument you made. You’re moving the goalposts. Does 4 bombs, injuring 21 people, and a double kidnapping constitute violence or does it not?
Moving the goalposts again. This one’s even simpler: was 2006-2007 after 2003 or not?