The blame belongs on Bush, and the prestige of this country went RIGHT down the toilet the day he was re-elected. All we can do is mop up after the silly bastard and his retarded crew of rampaging ideologues as best we can. I don’t see why I should get all excited over THAT prospect.
Speaking for myself, I would be horrified if Bush were knocked off. I mean, you might as well start the clock for canonization, elementary school christenings, money portraiture, and all the rest. In my view, assassination would be the worst thing to happen to Bush, because it would mean he wouldn’t be around to reap the bitter harvest of his almost universally idiotic and, yes, anti-American policies.
In fact, in a weird way, it might be the most zealous Bush supporters who would be happiest about this, because it’d mean he’s become a righteous martyr struck down by the forces of evil and now called by God to help supervise the smiting from On High, and they could now cheerfully attack anyone and everyone they want with total impunity for decades until the generational pendulum finally makes its slow and inevitable correction. If the country still exists, that is.
So from a standpoint of purely practical politics, the best thing Bush can be doing to set up an exit strategy in case it looks like his initiatives are backfiring in a big way is planning his own public murder.
Huh. Cynical much?
Anyway. Didn’t mean to hijack. Just struck me as an odd thing to say, is all, and a response was warranted.
The President is the most protected official in the American government and look at how many assassination attempts have succeeded or come close to killing them. As for Congress, they have no real protection against assassins.
One of the worst things anyone can do in battle is fail to understand their opponent. The Iraqi insurgents are not insane, they are not the incarnation of evil. They are ruthless people who are willing to kill in order to increase their own power. At the moment they are concentrating all their resources in Iraq because that is where they have the most effect. And they realize it’s in their long term interest to keep the war at a relatively low level. So sending people to America to assassinate Bush would be a bad tactic under the current circumstances. But if the circumstances change, the options will be re-evaluated.
You forgot the worst one of all: President Dick Cheney.
shudder
About as bad as president Al Gore.
Oddly in some parts I am considered a ‘dove.’ Here, I seem to be taking the ‘hawk’ position. Oh well, a foolish consistency and all that.
I am awestruck that you do not see the connection between (say) 9-11 and the general rise of Islamic Fascism. While (of course) the same people did not run Afghanistan and kill three thousand people in New York, certainly the same ideas inspired both.
Now those ideas are on the march in Iraq. True, our foolish attack made it so, but now we must deal with the poor hand we have dealt ourselves.
We now find ourselves in a war without boundaries. Our enemies have struck at our homelands, and most probably will again no matter what we do in the Middle East. It is a new sort of war were negotiations and even surrender will not work. If we cut a deal with this group, that group will still attack us.
So what to do? As I said, surrender will not work. So I suppose to fight is our only option. If we choose to fight, we will do very bad things, often to very good people. Has there ever been a war that is any different?
Is the fighting in Iraq now any more (or less) brutal that the fight in Vietnam or Korea or Italy in WWII? Do you really think that our grandfathers fought wars in a more humane way than we do now?
‘War is cruelty and you cannot refine it.’ (Sherman)
The use of ‘death squads’ (a meaningless term) will be required to fight this war. So will many more even nastier techniques. It is not for the faint of heart.
Can we win? So far it looks like we might lose. Is there any alternative now to fighting or dying? I do not see it.
What would our victory look like? Can we get there in one lifetime? I doubt it. Allow me a long quote, then I have to get up and get some coffee:
Our policy is not directed against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.
George C Marshall
Secretary of State
5 June 1946
Harvard Graduation
Name a few. Go ahead. If you really believe that, you shouldn’t have any problem. They’re all just pseudonyms on some message board, what’s the problem? Name a few.
Do you think goading him into doing it will make the situation better, or another good source for you or someone else to pit him with? Leave it alone.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again.
Imagine this scenario: a powerful nation invades and occupies a smaller one. An insurgency of nationalists and patriots fight the invasion.
The powerful nation has a very good grip on media manipulation and propaganda. Indeed is the communications powerhouse of the world.
The message put out by that powerful nation is:
1/ The insurgency is composed of nationalists and patriots who want us, as an invading, occupying nation, to leave.
2/ The insurgency is comprised of an isolated number of fanatic killers who are outside of any mainstream thinking in this small nation. They are isolated (terrorists, islamists, communists, fascists, seperatists, royalists, foreign fanatics, insert current buzzword meaning “bogeymen” here). We need for the sake of this small nation to defeat them.
Answers on a postcard, please. The first person to answer 1/ gets the Naive and Clueless Person of the Decade award.
Option 2/ has been used by every nation in the position of the US throughout history, and there are a number of people participating in this thread who have fallen for it hook line and sinker and don’t deserve to be a member of any message board dedicated to fighting ignorance.
Actually, yes, if it keeps that silly accusation from being made by him or anyone anymore. But he won’t; all the others who’ve made that same vague, hateful assertion have lacked the moral courage to do it, or perhaps realize when compiling their lists that they’re wrong, and I don’t expect this time to be any different.
I certainly would prefer a blanket rule against claiming that another board member would be happy to see *anyone * killed, but that particular form of ignorance can be fought case by case as well.
Hey, accusing people taking schadenfreude at the death of the President of the United States is a serious matter; it’s certainly enough to make the FBI raise their eyebrows. If xtisme is going to throw around such wild accusations, he damn well better be able to back them up.
Nobody has found any credible links between Iraq and the 9-11 attacks. Nor has there been any credible evidence of the WMD’s that were supposed to be there. So what the invasion of Iraq has done is take what was a secular power (albeit one of the worst in the world) and turned it into a recruiting ground for Islamic extremists.
Meanwhile Iraq is being bungled. The United States military won an impressive victory on the battlefield. But the United States government seems determined to do everything possible to throw it away. Planning to base a government on the principles of Murder Inc is just the latest misstep.
So we have a situation where the current presidential administration has placed us in danger. And the question is how we’re going to get out of that danger. I agree that simply pulling out and coming home is not the best answer. But the policy of “stupidity got us into this mess so stupidity’s going to have to get us out” doesn’t look promising. Now is the time we need to admit mistakes have been made and start straightening things out.
Meh
Its basically the phoenix program redux , whether or not it actually works is up in the air , due to the amount of media coverage that Iraq is currently recieving. One reason the program was successful in Viet Nam and El Salvador , is that no one really gave a shit if the locals were doing some intramural assasinations.
For it too be successful , is not only to engage the bad guys in Iraq , but target syrians as well, make them pay a price for every GI that gets killed or wounded. They (syrians) may not be guilty ,but they sure as heck are not innocent.
Declan
Successful, huh? Perhaps you would give us a bit more definition on that term. In what way were the programs “successful”? In El Salvador, the locals didn’t engage in a little sportsmanlike intramural assassinations, they engaged in a little intramural wholesale massacre!
Completely agree.
But we’re not falling for a lie though, its actually the case of whats happening within Iraq, only that the people who claim to be nationalists and patriots as you say, who go around executing people who are setting up ballot boxes and trying to rebuild the country on democratic principles, the people who go out everyday with the intent to kill maim and make the average Iraqi life miserable as to make there lives unliveable is truly detestable and should be resisted by the Iraqis/US Coalition at all costs.
How about reading up on the insurgency before making assumptions, you seem to be adding to ignorance, defeating your own argument :rolleyes:
True, but as Declan pointed out, no one ‘really gave a shit.’ And since, in El Salvador, it was Catholics getting massacred and no one ‘gave a shit’, how much less shit will people give when it’s Muslims getting massacred?
Eh, special forces organizations like the SAS and Delta force have been doing that for quite a while. Using special forces to kidnap and killing leaders is not unnatural in a war.
You make it sound like as if we’re out there like the SS executing undesireables, we’re out there to quell an insurgency which is hampering reconstruction and democratic efforts, this insurgency isn’t well supported by the locals, but rather feared by them, so if we kill them and bring them accountable to their actions, I don’t see how killing the leaders will somehow immediately parallel El Saldavor.
Well, sure, Ryan, its worked so well for the Isrealis. Take out a militant Palestinian leader, albeit sloppily in terms of collateral corpses, and presto! instant peace and groveling compliance.
Look, Ryan, one thing there never is a shortage of is leaders. Would that there were, but there isn’t.