Shouldn't Bush put the cowboy approach on the back burner?

I see that, according to some reports, the president “has been itching to get into the fray.” While I am aware that politics has a history of tough fights, I believe that what the world needs - and has needed all along - is someone who can be statesman like, conciliatory, and patient. The intelligence that was reported from the United Nations by Hans Blix was, in fact, correct. Waiting for the inspectors to finish (remember that) should have been an option that the US took. At the very least, we should have waited until we had some international support - besides Papua, New Guinea. And that macho, bragadocio, Ugly American approach has undercut our credibility around the world, as well as changing the view of the US that had taken years and years of sacrifice to develop. So, I’m saying the campaign could take on a tone of civility and decency or not, depending on THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD. He doesn’t seem pre-disposed to that at this stage. And don’t tell me They started it. When our kids say that, we counsel them to more civilized behavior than they’re tempted to engage it.

Er, maybe I missed something, but I thought we were already generally considered the Clueless Global Bully In Residence. We weren’t? Here all along we were considered statesmanlike, wise, understanding, and compassionate? Our counsel was sought worldwide, every initiative we introduced was gladly supported, governments fell all over themselves to follow our lead?

Uh huh.

[checks Alternate Universe Indicator to make sure it’s still set on “Planet Earth”]

Yup.

So, what’s yours set on?

:smiley:

I don’t know, DDG. Just because we were near ground level before all this began doesn’t preclude the possibility that we started digging right around December/January 2002…

And it should be noted that there was a massive bump in worldwide sympathy for the US immediately after 9/11. Bush squandered that just like he squandered the budget surplus he inherited from Clinton.

You can only imagine my surprise. :frowning:

I think the “fray” he was referring to is the election campaign. The standard terminology in the US for those is one of images of fighting.

I’m not so sure it was a “massive bump”…

On the morning of 9/12, some of my students constructed a large banner outside my classroom in Seoul, S. Korea. It was an American flag, and scrawled across the flag, in Korean, was a very anti-American slogan (if I recall correctly, it read something like ‘We, too, should send a fist to America!’).

Pissed me off, it did!

College students? Because I know a whole lot of college students here in America (and I’m sure you do, too) who take up stupid political causes just because it’s the “thing to do”. Is there (or was there, I suppose) a generalized Anti-American feeling in South Korea, more mainstream than college culture?

Rather an isolated incident, if you ask me. I was quite surprised at the level of “We feel for you guys”-ness that seemed to be echoing from world leader to world leader.

Of course, IMHO a big part of that was the gleeful hand-rubbing of all the states who’ve been fighting terrorists/freedom fighters for decades and being slapped on the wrist continually by US administrations for doing so. Now, of course, we’re the World’s Number One Terrorist-Fighting State ™ and we have to support everyone else’s terrorist-fighting.

The turnaround in both the White House and media lines on the Russian/Chechnya conflict was breathtaking.

pre- 9/11

“Stop killing Chechens!”

post- 9/11

“What they did in that theater was terrible! We’re sending in the FBI!”

-note that I am not now, nor have I ever been, a terrorist sympathiser.

(I tried to respond to this yesterday, but the hamsters ate my post and then spitefully refused me access to the SDMB for the rest of the day!)

Yeah, I know, college students probably aren’t the best example. And it was an isolated incident, as dutchboy points out; but it was the first thing that popped into my mind in regards to the massive bump of sympathy for America comment. Keep in mind that this happened the morning after the 9/11 attacks… when, for all we know, the casualties numbered in the tens of thousands. It struck me as particulary insensitive for some of my students to be basically saying, “Hey! What a nifty idea! We should attack America too!!”

As for a generalized Anti-American feeling in South Korea, I can’t really speak for what’s happening at the present time (been a year since I was there), but there certainly seemed to be during my time there. The only Koreans I met who were distinctly pro-American were those who were old enough to have lived through the Korean War. Make of that what you will.

Interestingly enough, I worked with quite a few Canadian ex-pats in S. Korea, and they were most emphatically anti-American (I would estimate on the order of 80%). I don’t pretend to know whether that reflects the general population of Canada, or whether it was a particular feature of Canadian ex-pats. Perhaps some of our neighbors to the north could comment on this? (don’t get me wrong: even those Canadians who were the most vitriolic in their dislike of the USA were nice as hell, and generally wouldn’t say anything to your face while sober!)

I’d posit that even the term “massive bump” can’t possibly mean “universal bump” when applied worldwide. I certainly didn’t mean “universal”, and I’ll admit that I had to actually go back to my first post in this thread to make sure that I hadn’t said universal.

It does seem surprising considering that there’s not a whole lot of people other than the US that would be terribly interested, really, if Mr. Kim from up north were to actually turn more than covetous eyes to his southern neighbor (as long as it was a good bet he’d stop there). Then again, that dependence on the US may just fuel the resentment.

Not all that surprising. We do a lot of “look we’re not Americans” up here. Its a seperate thread, and we’ve done it before if you can make the hamsters dance.

I’m saying - again - that despite DDG’s claim that the US has ALWAYS been a big bully - our image in the world has taken a significant hit by our unilateralism at a time that consensus building and coalitions would have been much preferred. Our stance on recent global treaties, our blather about fighting AIDS, in the light of Bush’s very first directive in office, which banned any talk or action on contraception, loose talk about the Axes of Evil, and our swaggering into Iraq have made us less popular today than ever before. Add to this the significant brain drain developing over our immigration policies and you have a picture of a country that has lost its way, that has clearly become less welcoming and less neighborly at a time when it’s needed most, and you can lay a great deal of the blame for that at the feet of this administration. And I would suggest that the bragadoccio, cowboy, “bring 'em on” attitude of the dimwit in charge is exactly what is NOT needed today. Instead, he itches for a fight over the election. This childish frat-boy attitude is exactly what we DON’T need, and I am saddened that America has to be represented by this buffoon. And the American electoral process, which addmittedly has had many ugly moments, can be elevated for all the world to watch by the actions of the president. Instead, he taunts and threatens to fight. He’s an idiot and he makes America worse than it ever was.

Oh, cut the “squandered sympathy” bullshit already. People who don’t already believe that aren’t going to accept it no matter how many times you repeat it. What we “squandered” was obviously so superficial that it was not enough to get the UN to enforce its own resolutions concerning Iraq. And the economy was in a downturn before Bush took office, so any surplus would have disappeared anyway.

And you can cut the “unilateral” bullshit too. That’s completely false and everybody knows it including you. We built a consensus. We have a coalition - Spain, Poland, Australia, Great Britain and others. Or is “unilateral” just a code word for “without France, Germany, or the UN”?

This is the Pit and all, but do you have a cite for that? I’ve heard just the opposite. We’re getting many good people from all over because we’re not tied down by bureaucracy as much and we reward excellence (so far). There have been a few empty threats by people like Alec Baldwin and I think a couple of other “artists” and from loonies at extreme left message boards. If they ever go, no real loss. I say “Goodbye and don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.”

Worse than slavery? Worse than civil war? :rolleyes:

[QUOTE=rowrrbazzle]
Oh, cut the “squandered sympathy” bullshit already. People who don’t already believe that aren’t going to accept it no matter how many times you repeat it. What we “squandered” was obviously so superficial that it was not enough to get the UN to enforce its own resolutions concerning Iraq. And the economy was in a downturn before Bush took office, so any surplus would have disappeared anyway.

[QUOTE]

Remind me again what Iraq had to do with 9-11? Oh, that’s right…NOTHING. As far as the surplus disappearing anyways, I’d have to put a strong wager on the fact that the billions of dollars Bush spent on a fruitless, unnecessary war didn’t help a bit. YMMV.

It also says something when you have to go back at least a hundred+ years or so to find a worse Administration than Bush’s.

[QUOTE=rowrrbazzle]
Or is “unilateral” just a code word for “without France, Germany, or the UN”?QUOTE]

[my bolding]

well yes, it pretty much is unilateral if you don’t listen to the body that a large part of the world deems to be an international voice!

:rolleyes: to you too!

Nonsense. Yeah sure, there were lots of cynics and some people opposed the Afghan campaign, but the majority empathised and shared the misery engendered by 9-11, in an unprecedented manner.

For God’s sake, when Le Monde says “Nous sommes tous Américains”, you know you’ve got the world on your side.

The squandering of sympathy was down to the bull in a china shop approach to the entirely irrelevant invasion of Iraq.

Well, let’s see…

I suppose that what Shrub has done is worse than the mass-incarceration of Japanese-Americans by FDR…

Worse than the famous Gulf of Tonkin incident from LBJ…

Worse than Nixon extending American participation in Viet Nam until AFTER the election (not to mention the whole Watergate thing)…

No, it says I chose the most obvious exception to a blatantly incorrect absolute statement.

“Unilateral” means “one-sided”. It’s another absolute that’s frequently tossed around on this topic. Saying “pretty much” to modify an absolute shows one or more failures, such as not understanding what the word means. Compare this to saying a woman is “pretty much pregnant”.