The only way I can understand it is that a lot of people just won’t admit they were wrong, so they’re happy to ues any old excuse to cling to the belief that it was a good idea to invade Iraq.
Seriously…is it the fact that you are unable to read or unable to comprehend? Or is it that you don’t bother actually reading peoples points or posts but just spew this garbage out? JM’s point was pretty clear…to everyone (well, I see that a few others completley missed the point as well) else.
Certainly. Its much easier to cross a border into Iraq or Afghanistan to bag your limit of American’s than to try and come here, gather up what you need and then attack American’s here.
This is part of the perception that JM was getting at…it may not be right, but its compelling. There have been no attacks on US soil since 9/11, so people are going to correlate the two things…right or wrong. You guys are trying to explain why people who do this are wrong, instead of acknowledging that people DO this kind of thing all the time…and most of the time (including IMHO THIS time) they ARE wrong. Like the moron’s who won’t fly on a plane for fear it will crash but drive drunk, or who worry about getting some obscure disease while eating that second Big Mac with large fries, apple pie and extra fat.
-XT
Yes, people are irrational quite often. Some people are irrational a lot of the time. That’s why I said earlier that the opposition party and the serious media need to keep pounding away at a few points. First, a lot of the security measures are placebos and are designed to thwart an attack like the last one. Second, terrorist attacks anywhere are relatively rare events so that a long period between them doesn’t prove that current antiterror methods are effective. Third, there is no reason whatever to trust a group to do an effective job of antiterrorism when it bungled the Katrina effort and is bungling the Iraq adventure.
How about we re-elect Jimmy Carter then? He’s still eligible for another run and no terrorist attacks on his watch. Granted, he couldn’t get the foreign troops out of Afghanistan last time - but now we’re the foreign troops in Afghanistan, so that’s a plus. And he’s already sent troops into Iran once, so he’s got experience there if we need it.
Not to mention that our international reputation would go up about fifty points. To about 60.
This sort of misses the mark. No one is holding up Carter as a paragon who did everything right in his term. And, you will notice, he was held accountable and his mistakes were counted against him. A Democratic congress probably can’t fix the Bush mess in just the two years before a new president, but I don’t think that he would any longer be in complete charge. The Accountability Kid might finally be held accountable.
Come to think of it, it’s all Clinton’s fault. He didn’t completely solve the problem of international terrorism but left some of it for the incompetent Bush.
I sort of feel sorry for the next president already. Bush, by his own statement, is leaving everything for him to fix.
Or her. 
I almost hope that Hillary does get the Democratic nomination. She will lose and leave the mess for a Republican to clean up. Always with the proviso that at least one house of the congress is Democratic. Of course that would partially let the president off the hook as he could claim obstruction by the opposition. Damn, there doesn’t seem to be a good outcome. 
This is an inconsistent position. On the one hand, Clinton shouldn’t be blamed for failing to completely fix the problem of international terrorism. But Bush should. Why the difference?
I doubt the problem of international terrorism will be fixed in the next administration. Or the next 2 administrations.
I mean, look at social security and medicare. How long have those systems needed fixing? And those are problems occurring in this country and Congress has direct legislative control over them. The problem of international terrorism is largely originating in other countries over which we can only exert influence. So I think we’re going to be having these arguments for a long, long time.
As for the OP:
I think there are a couple of main factors.
First, not everyone agrees that the situation in Iraq is so terribly screwed up. I think every reasonable person agrees there have been mistakes, and most people seem to think that Iraq is no picnic, but a) some people seem to expect that mistakes will be made in war; b) not everyone blames the difficulties in Iraq on the Bush admin’s policies; and c) many people seem to think that we’re at least making positive progress.
Second, as John Mace said, we haven’t had any major attacks on US soil since 9/11. I agree that this is hardly definitive proof that we’ve got the right policies in place. Especially since we’ve probably had some minor terrorist attacks in this country.
Third, there have been numerous busts of terrorist plans for attacks in the US. One example is the plot to blow up the tallest building in LA in 2002. This at least creates the appearance that one of the reasons we haven’t had any terrorist attacks since 9/11 is because we’ve ethem from occurring, presumably in part because of the current policies. See also Brian Ross’s interview in which he said that Bush’s policies on coercive interrogations led to information that helped foil the LA bomb plot.
Fourth, I think most people see the rebuilding in Iraq as something largely separate from the war on terror at home. Bush can screw up royally in Iraq, but that doesn’t mean the guy is going to screw up everything. Even if people agree that he should have sent more troops into Iraq, kept the Iraqi army intact, etc., that doesn’t mean the Patriot Act is a bad idea. Even though they both ostensibly fall under the rubric of “helpful in the war on terror,” one can be a complete failure and the other still be successful.
Obviously, none of these are definitive proof that Bush’s policies are effective. But I think the effectiveness of those policies is beyond definitive proof. How can we prove that the policies are effective, except by looking at whether there have been terrorist busts and/or attacks? So it does seem to be evidence in support of that position.
Why inconsistent? Clinton does take the blame for not completely fixing the problem, but I think now that it is nonsense to say it was going to be completely solved then or later, Bush gets a bigger blame now because he started an unnecessary war that opened a second front that continues to waste resources, and with “no taxes to beat the axis” he does not deserve any credit for doing the effort on credit.
If we are still pretending we are serious on this war on terror the problem to me is the incomplete and torturous way Bush is approaching this treat that is like WWII ( :rolleyes: ), if that is so, the efforts by this administration so far show many times a half assed way of tackling the problem at hand.
The “many” that are creating their own reality it seems.
It’s inconsistent because this isn’t what he was saying. He wasn’t talking about apportioning blame between the two, or suggesting that Bush was more to blame. He was saying that it’s silly to blame Clinton for not solving the problem of terrorism, but he feels sorry for the next President because Bush didn’t solve the problem or terrorism.
And your suggestion that Bush doesn’t deserve any credit on combatting terrorism because he didn’t raise taxes seems like you’re searching pretty hard for a way to disregard anything good he’s done. Can we also say that Clinton gets no credit for the things he did because he didn’t raise taxes, despite launching cruise missiles and sending troops into Somalia and Bosnia and increasing the anti-terrorism budget? Personally, I think that would be a pretty weak argument. You can criticize the moves he made, and you can criticize him for failing to raise taxes, but you can’t say his policies didn’t have any benefits just because you disagree with the way he funded them.
I guess that’s one way to argue: postulate that there are no facts that could conceivably support any other argument. But then I don’t think it would be terribly effective to accuse other people are “creating their own reality.”
While my own assessment of the situation in Iraq would be far from glowing, you’d have to ignore quite a few facts to arrive at the conclusion that we’re not making any positive progress. It seems that I’m not alone in that assessement.
mmm, he did.
No, that is what my history professor told me (among many), Bush is unique in not funding a war properly.
Even Fox news had to acknowledge that what the retired army general said “Bucks [the] Trend” So really, I would not say that “Many seem so”
Meanwhile:
US report says Iraq fuels terror
I will find it hard to believe that positive progress is being made as long as the bodies keep piling up. At somepoint the bloodbath has to stop, but I haven’t seen any sign that it’s even slowing down. When the flow of blood reduces to a trickle, I’ll buy that progress is being made.
AQA: You made some good arguments in the posts subsequent to this one, but I think you mischaracterized David’s post here. Although this thread as a whole is ostensibly about the larger WoT, I think **David **was mostly referring to situation in Iraq in that specific post. And it is going to be left for “future presidents” to clean things up there (as Bush himself has said), if that is even possible to do.
Not clear what the OP is proposing for debate, but it is worth pointing out that since 9-11 not one terrorist attack has succeeded on American soil. Whatever the DHS and FBI are doing seems to be working, as far as that goes. There’s plenty of terrorism going on, but mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere in MENA and, sometimes, in Europe.
BG: It’s obvious that you’re nothing but a Bush apologist.
Nitpick: the mailed anthrax attacks killed a few people. I’d say that they were therefore a successful terror attack on US soil post-9/11. And one in which the purpetrators were never discovered.
But after that there hasn’t been an attack on US soil.
Partisans can argue hypotheticals about what might have happened if other people were President. But I can’t conceive of any objective evidence to indicate President Bush is doing a good job fighting terrorism. More Americans have been killed by terrorists during his administration that during any other President’s administration. And that’s true even if you don’t count the people killed on September 11. And the main person responsible for the September 11 attack is still at large five years after the attack.