Or like Hillary using the same tropes the Republicans have historically used on Dems on Bernie: Are you crazy how do you intend to pay for all of that? Calling him Santa Clause, etc.
Japan’s problem before and during the war was that it was never entirely clear who was in charge. At least, that’s how Paul Johnson portrays the situation in Modern Times. E.g., generals and admirals and ministers would meet in a room with the emperor “presiding” from a high dais at one end, but talking to him directly was out of the question. Any questions to the emperor had to be submitted and answered in writing. In the end, no one was really sure what had been decided upon, and each official went and carried out the decision as he understood it or simply did as he thought best.
Obama and Hillary are known liars who actions don’t fit their rhetoric at all.
Of all the political nick names one could possibly be saddled with. Santa Clause has got to be the greatest.
Not as great as Robin Hood.
Robin Hood would be a more accurate caricature, but the imagery of Bernie Sanders tossing out payments of free college education and daycare and healthcare to people out of a bag to millennials (which partly explains the pied piper like appeal he has among college students and younger people vs Hillary) would be more amusing. Why has this not been done on some comedy show? Liberals too sensitive to poke fun at themselves?
The situation was convoluted, to say the least.
The Ministry of War (which meant the army) and the Ministry of the Navy were directly under the emperor, but he only had nominal authority over them. The Minister of War and the Minister of the Navy were cabinet members, but not under the Prime Minister. If either one or both of them decided they didn’t like the cabinet, they could resign and the cabinet would fall.
They had to be active members of their respective services, so if the generals or admirals decided they didn’t like the PM, they had control over who would become the minister.
To make it even more complex, the chiefs of staff of the two branches had separate line of authority, also directly – although only nominally – to the emperor. They were not under or part of the cabinet at all.
Toward the end of the war, the government created an extralegal organization, the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, and included the Big Six: The PM, the Foreign Minister, the War (Army) Minister, the Navy Minister, the Chief of Staff of the Army and the Chief of Staff of the Navy. This also reported to the emperor.
For the war years, the most powerful person other than the emperor was the War Minister rather than the PM. Tojo held both hats, but he was not a dictator, either as he had no authority over the Navy and only constitutional authority over the other ministries.
Many of the steps which directly brought Japan into the war with China were made by local commanders.
[/hijack]
That confederate fella smeared Lincoln all over Ford’s Theater.
Excellent OP
Agreed.
Your first instinct when hearing this is to assume your opponents know that they’re lying about you, and therefore, are knowingly evil.
But if you hold up a mirror and see both sides do this, now it’s just human nature.
Ugh.
Some might be knowingly lying, but some might actually believe it.
Some(many?) people don’t want to have their ignorance fought. Some just want to have their current beliefs validated. IMO, this behavior seems to cross all ideological, national, and ethnic boundaries. Being a social animal has its downsides.
So why did we go into Iraq?
Are you asking me?
I believe it was the naivete of GWB, ultimately, in believing that Sadaam was a dictator hated so much by his own populace that they would welcome his overthrow, even by an outside force. I believe that GWB was biased to believe any intel that Sadaam was trying to reconstitute his chemical or nuclear programs, and discount any intel that indicated otherwise. I believe that GWB believed that Sadaam supported international terrorism (against Isreal, primarily).
I assume then that Bush thought that we could then prop up a moderate/secular government that, ultimately, would be less destabilizing to Mideast tensions, and possibly even more open to improved US (or NATO) relations, eventually acting as a counter-weight to Iran, or Syria, for example.
Fox folks love to say “Barack Hussein Obama”, yet they never say “Rafael Edward Cruz”. Why do you suppose that might be?
It was a question to anyone really. I see lots of debate back and forth about the OP’s premise, but if we didn’t assume that Bush and co. went in for oil, why did we go in?
I never believed the humanitarian angle, not once. There are plenty of other humanitarian crises around the world and the GOP has never climbed over each other trying to be the first to police them. It always comes with some ulterior motive, stopping communism, opening up the country for American war profiteers, expanding our own power. But never just helping people. So if it wasn’t simply to help people, what was it? We had intelligence that said they didn’t have any weapons, but it didn’t make it out into the public. There was the UN report by Hans Blix. Maybe I’m cynical, but I think the GOP likes to use the UN as a punching bag because it works, but in the backrooms they know a report from Blix was accurate. So either its paranoia or maliciousness that caused the reports to be ignored.
And yeah, there was terrorism, but was Iraq really the worst? Of the 3 countries in the “Axis of Evil”, Iraq was the only one we recently dealt with. There’s that famous picture of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam. We supplied them with weapons against Iran. We knew what weapons to accuse them of having because we gave it to them. Gulf War 1 showed that Iraq would attack a neighbor, but that was over oil, we stopped them because we didn’t want Saddam controlling the oil. So why did we go in there if it wasn’t about stealing oil? I can’t see how they’re more dangerous than Iran or NK. The Kims are literally crazy, its like if Scientology ran a country. Iran’s got the religious zealots we despise. And despite all that we went into Iraq, even after we had them under full control with sanctions left over from Gulf War 1? It doesn’t add up. If not for oil, we went in for very stupid reasons.
If the reasons were because GWB thought Iraq was the easiest country of the 3 to conquer, then maybe, but that brings us back to cynicism. We didn’t go in to help people, we didn’t go in to liberate anyone, we didn’t go in for a good reason. We went in for stupid, selfish reasons. GWB wanted Iraq as a prize for his cronies and he got them. This isn’t cynical smear tactic, this actually happened.
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
-Grey’s Law
IMO, FOX News is deliberately catering to a specific demographic.
They’re just giving a break to a guy whose parents stuck him with a silly name like “Edward.”
Many of them did. The ‘problem’ came in that they then had a variety of different ideas about what should happen next.
No. There was plenty of serious opposition in 2002-2003 to the Iraqi invasion but it had nothing to do with ascribing bad motives to Cheney-Bush. The objections were based on strict estimates of comparative reward (little) and risk (huge).
Are dirty rhetorical attacks the result of belief in reason without understanding? My perspective is universally true and predicated on logic so the only way you can disagree with me is because you’re stupid or evil.