We were never 'stay the course'? Or, the death of accountability

The BBQ Pit
101

Yeah, because the discussions on the SDMB could potentially alter the political landscape of the U.S. electorate. Be careful, friends! Tread lightly! We wouldn’t want to hurt the feelings of the conservative middle. :smiley:

Sorry to pick on you, Kayla. I see that sentiment a lot around here and it makes me chuckle.

In any case, you guys need to recall Bush’s statement from, I think, somewhere in early 2005. He had one “accountability moment,” as he put it. Just one, you see, for his entire presidency – November 2004. He won with flying colors, so why should he even pretend anymore? The specter of a Democratic house? OOOOH! He’s shaking in his spurred booties.

102

What the fuck are you talking about? What “every”? We’re talking about one particular instance of dishonesty, and I’m pointing and laughing at the retarded liars who are sipping from this particular cup of Koolaid.

What the *fuck *are you talking about?

103

…no, the overall ground strategy has not changed since the beginning of the war. It has only been in the last month that changes to the strategy have even been suggested by members of the Bush Administration.

Here is the National Strategy for Victory (Warning PDF), and here is the last thread where we discussed it. Victory in the short term is defined by the paper as:

To achieve this goal, the paper states:

…those broad tracks, as defined by the Paper, are:

As pointed out in the linked thread: the metrics that the Strategy uses to measure success were heavily slanted to provide a positive result. “The amount of bombs defused” is being used as a metric on the success of the Strategy as opposed to “the amount of bombs exploded.” The Strategy Paper goes on to explain its choice of metrics:

The “enemy” is defined and into three simplistic catagories: Rejectionists, Sadammists, and Terrorists. Criminals are not taken seriously by the plan, despite the fact that 30 to 40 people are kidnapped in Iraq every day. The report says that criminals “that such elements can be handled by Iraqi forcesalone and/or assimilated into the political process in the short term.”

My favourite part of the Strategy Paper is who takes the blame if everything goes tits up:

…so to sum up: the Strategy has never changed. Different milestones kept getting reached: elections held, Iraqi troop numbers achieved, etc, yet the situation in Iraq has steadily declined. If you read the Administrations October Iraq Status Update you could almost be fooled into thinking things in Iraq weren’t too bad. From the report:
http://www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/rpt/1227/73928.htm

Compare and contrast that report with some of the statistics collected by the monthly Brookings Report.
http://www.brookings.edu/fp/saban/iraq/indexarchive.htm
55% of all terrorist fatalities in 2005 happened in one country, Iraq. Baghdad only averages 6 hours of electricity a day. Unemployment is estimated at between 25 and 40%. The average Iraqi waits an hour to be able to get petrol for his car. Over 150 thousand people are “internally displaced.” Daily attacks by insurgents have more than tripled since 2004. And if anyone wants to note the graph on the bottom of page 22 (October), as each political milestone was reached, the average weekly attacks increased.

Wow: that post was longer than expected: simply put, the Strategy for Victory has been followed for the last three years: and the Iraq we have now is the result.

104

So, by definition, we’re winning?

Cool!

GOP in '06! Woo!

-Joe

105

Thanks for that, Banquet Bear. Much appreciated.

106

After thinking more about Bush’s response to Stephanopoulus, I realize that your (and Apos’s) explanation doesn’t really jibe with the actual conversation. Let’s play back the exchange:

Note that Stephanopoulus seems to be using “stay the course” (which I’m going to start refering to as StC) to mean the opposite of “cut and run”; in other words, he never suggested that StC means to doggedly use the same tactics over and over again. I’d understand Bush’s response if that had been what Stephanopoulus was implying, but it wasn’t. Bush, through his denial, was the one who implied that StC means something other than just completing the mission and doing our job.

And that’s why I disagree with everyone who is saying he was trying to redefine the term to mean something other than doing the same dang thing over and over again. He didn’t redefine anything; he actually validated that interpretation by denying that we have been StC. Which tells me that not only does he suck at being a president, but he also sucks at being a politician. A competent politician would redefine the term to make himself look like he was right all along. An incompetent one lets the opposing side define his own sound bite strategy and then publically disavows that sound bite strategy on that basis of that definition.

This was an example of Bush being stupid moreso than anything else. Stupid in a way that is pretty shocking, IMO.

107

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Oy.

108

Nope. I’m talking about why other people might react a certain way, not me. Yes, lots of people get worked up about the soundbites that politicians use. They can often make or break a campaign. I don’t think anyone would dispute that.

109

Did anybody watch his speech today? Did he say his new, flexible approach will be to send more troops?

Did he say we never lost a battle?
Did he say the turrists are gonna come get us?

Can somebody please translate from Gobbledygook into English?

110

You rang, ETF? :wink:

There is no one on this board who has hated Bush longer or more consistently than I have, or who believes more sincerely that the current administration has repeatedly lied to and manipulated the American public. I’m about as solid a liberal and Democrat as you’ll find on this board - at fifty, I’ve voted for exactly one Republican (Millicent Fenwick for Senator) and one Independent (John Anderson for President) in my entire voting life. I’m not a frequent poster, so that probably won’t be immediately evident to you, but there are a few folks, such as ETF herself, who can confirm that, I believe.

But I agree with wring, Apos, and (amazingly, to me) John Mace. Whether or not Stephanopoulus meant strategically or tactically, W arguably chose to respond as if the question referred to tactics. And all those earlier sound bites pretty much were talking strategically - i.e. stay in Iraq and don’t set a time-table for leaving until the insurgency and crime can be handled by the Iraqis themselves. He chose incredibly lousy phrasing, and it makes for a delighted laugh, but it’s a non-issue. The real issue here is the one that was raised on the previous page - by focusing on this, we do detract attention from the truly serious issue that setting a time-table was once pronounced incredibly dangerous and wrong-headed and now is being calmly announced as the wise policy with no explanation or discussion.

And I am disgusted by my fellow Democrats and liberals who are pouncing on wring and Apos as Bush apologists for pointing out that the choice of words was perfectly arguably not a lie or even the revolting kind of weasel we saw with ‘imminent threat.’ You guys sound suspiciously like “if you’re not for us, you’re against us.” Ya know, we really don’t need to start that shit ourselves. If we become the enemy, we all lose.

We have to stop grasping at the low-hanging fruit. Kerry won in New Hampshire, and practically every Dem in the country thought - war hero, some charisma, a long record as a senator but still reasonably youngish - this guy can win! And so he went on to take almost every primary. But he didn’t win the election. How much of that, if any, we owe to Diebold, I don’t know. But I do know that even then things were going seriously sour for the Pubs, and it shouldn’t have been a close enough contest for voting machine fraud to have changed the outcome without raising really serious suspicions.

There’s a major issue here - Bushco has been saying for several years that we can’t set a timetable, now he’s setting a time-table without so much as a nod to his previous arguments. And yet here we are guffawing over a shitty choice of words, and denouncing the people who claim that’s all it was as apologists for what they have repeatedly stated in this very thread is a man and policy they in no way support.

Look, the Pubs in general and Rove in particular are very good at this shit. Kerry becomes the candidate apparent, the word flip-flopper is used by some Pub source, and two weeks later even the Democrats are describing Kerry that way, even though there was really nothing except (once again) a poor choice of words (I voted for it before I voted against it) to support that view of the man.

We’re not good at this. We just don’t do the lying or the sound bite or the character assassination well. But by this time, most people who are capable of thinking and willing to consider anything beyond their own tax bill are pretty aware that the current administration has royally fucked just about everything it’s touched. But when you suggest that just maybe it’s time for a change, they say - OK, what’s the Democrat plan? And I can’t tell them; can you? We have to focus on what we can offer - the public already knows what the Pubs offer and how soundly they can follow up on that.

And we have to get past being pissed off at the people who didn’t see the problems as soon as we did, because you know what? If we only accept the people who didn’t vote for Bush in the first place, we’re gonna lose again. So instead of screaming Johnny-come-lately, bring out the fatted calf for the prodigals who seem to want to return to reality; swallow your fury and keep it for times when you’re dealing only with the people who always did seem to get it. It’s hard, but it’s what we’ve got to do. Well, that, or slit our own throats.

111

Okay, I just looked, and I could find no Pit thread about Bush setting up a time table for Iraq withdrawal. What is with all the fucking fingerwagging Oy! and wring? If you fucking think it’s so very important that that issue be discussed and this one not, why have you failed to start a pit thread on the topic?

Similarly, why have you both failed to post one single time in the GD thread in which John Mace brought up Bush’s time table issue. See, it’s actually been raised for discussion there, but you have failed to discuss it. If you want to stop grabbing at low hanging fruit, perhaps the most productive thing to do would be to knock off the tsk tsking bullshit and actually discuss the fucking issue.

Christ, Oy!, your post was so long I had to check to make sure it didn’t start with Aaron, Aaron and end with Zwiebel, Zekiel. If you gave even half that effort to actually discussing the crucial thing that must be discussed, you might advance your concerns a bit further. But if you’d rather spend your time mired in your disgust for your fellow Democrats, I think that’s pretty telling.

Once again, if there’s a topic that needs to be discussed, fucking discuss it. One post. Somewhere. Jesus H.

112

Here’s how you get perhaps a first down out of a check down pass to the fullback:

http://www.democrats.org/staythecoursead

Maybe one of the ways that Democrats manage to shoot themselves in the foot or steal defeat from the jaws of victory is that we seemingly get right to the goal line and then a contingent of concern-trolls start coming out of the woodwork to try to show just how non-partisan they are.

I’m not for mindless party discipline, but some cohesion would be nice. Let’s stop feeling compelled to be the first one to condemn Harry Reid or the first one to announce how incorrect it is to criticize Bush for trying to alter the language by which he sells this war.

113

I’m not entirely sure, to tell you the truth. I certainly don’t intend to imply that anyone has taken one of our allies to task for departing from our chorus of jeers and criticisms in every instance. If you took it that way, or even close to that way, please accept my apologies for communicating so clumsily.

What I was attempting to say is that some Democrats behave as though to be considered on the same side, their allies must believe everything in the same way as they. ISTM that this behavior extends to branding as a Bush apologist any GWB-hatin’ sumbitch who prioritizes the list of Shrub’s crimes, lies, flaws, misdeeds, etc. differently than the speaker. This behavior uses up time, energy, and resources that could be better applied to the task of taking power away from the Republicans.

The above statement contains hyperbole, as it did in its first iteration in post #100. The use of the word every is an example of the hyperbole, and I would hope that an intelligent Doper such as you would be able to recognize it and treat it as such.

I hope that I have adequately explained what the fuck I was talking about. I’d like to ask you to clarify one of your antecedents. When you speak of “sipping from this particular cup of Koolaid,” I’m a bit unclear on what constitutes the Koolaid. Is it an assertion that Bush is telling the truth? Or is it an assertion that while this is a gaffe, it’s too trivial to expend a lot of “Gotcha!” energy on?

I don’t agree with either assertion, myself, but I think it’s a bit much to be accusing people of being retarded liars for agreeing with the second.

114

President Bush on Benchmarks: Transcript
Prime Minister al-Malike on Benchmarks

All this bobbing and weaving within ‘staying the course’ is just president Bush trying to delay clarity until after the elections. There’s no content to it at all.

115

I was just coming in here to comment on this after hearing the Prime Minister’s remarks on the evening news. I think this will be good for the President, especially amongst the Glass Parking Lot contingent.

“How dare the Prime Minister of Iraq dictate to us what we dictate to him!”

116

He fakes left!
He fakes right!
He drives down the middle!
He shoots!
He cringes as a member of his own team hits the ball, causing it to roll out of bounds!

Had this been an actual change of course, Maliki would have been on board. As it is, it looks like no one even bothered to tell the PM what the play was beforehand. Improv is all well and good in shows like “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” but it doesn’t cut the butter in charting our path out of the Iraq quagmire.

117

Except you, perhaps:

If you recognize that dishonest soundbites are in fact an important issue because lots of people do care about them, then don’t try to shrug them off with a “who the fuck cares?”

118

ISTM it’s just a recognition that his constant repetition of the term, especially in contrast to “cut and run” “Defeatocrats”, is reducing his chances of retaining a lapdog Congress. He’ll be back to resolve and steadfastness and “our only exit strategy is victory in the war on Terra”, the stuff that looks like mere pigheadedness to an increasing majority of us, on November 8.

119

I haven’t been on the Dope or even on-line for a couple of weeks, and this thread happened to be the first one that caught my eye. How silly of me not to know clairvoyantly that there was no thread addressing the time-table issue, especially given that I don’t usually go into GD at all! (GD intimidates me.)

You may have noticed that I don’t post often, and most times I do have been in flurries to a specific thread, often very trivial. That means I’ll go for weeks or months without posting at all. I have started two or three threads in my life, and they’ve been either trivial or factual questions. I don’t start political debate threads and I rarely participate in them, because I suck at it.

But occasionally I see a political or psychological thread that catches me emotionally enough to overcome my usual reluctance to post. As in this case. You see, much as I utterly despise the spoiled frat boy in the White House, when I saw the clip, the first thing I thought other than the immediately obvious denial of the phrase W has used hundreds of times, was that he really wasn’t talking about the same thing as he had been when he used it in those earlier speeches - it was exactly the kind of thing people talk about when they scream about being quoted out of context. Then I read on, and saw several other people suggest pretty much exactly what I had been thinking, and practically stoned by the villagers for doing so. I read through the thread, and then saw about the changing policy on a time-table (about which I knew nothing, btw, also not having seen the news in several weeks). This struck me a seriously important issue that was being ignored in favor of a stupid (although funny) one. I don’t have the knowledge, the bravery or the energy to argue an issue of that magnitude, but a lot the posters in this thread do (and are very good at it), and I hated to see them making this foolishness the central theme rather than the important issue. I saw this as a problem that has bitten us Dems in the ass before - we really are shitty at it, while the Pubs seem to do it very well. Maybe because one of the things that defines us as a party these days is that we are able to see and willing to discuss nuance, sometimes at the expense of the effective sound bite.

So just what the fuck was my response telling of? The fact that I think the Dems are not doing as well as I think we should be in a comparatively favorable environment, and that I had some ideas as to why that I wanted to communicate? The fact that I am a lousy debater and afraid of GD? Let me have it, Hentor! What long-hidden, deep-seated evil in myself have I now exposed to the world?

And yes, when I post at all, I tend to be long-winded. So excuse the fuck out of me for having expressed myself on the issue and taken up so much of your valuable time.

120

I think what it highlights is a desire/preference/tendency what have you/for a contingent of liberals to engage in self-defeating attacks on their own side for the sake of appearing as thoughtful and non-partisan as we can. I would prefer that we be nuanced and thoughtful about important matters, but we’ve nuanced and thought ourselves right into a position of being able to do absolutely nothing good for our country.

For example, we tried being nuanced and thoughtful about the terror bill, right? What happened? We watched the Republicans pass a terror bill. On the other hand, a week later the Foley scandal acheived multiple orders of magnitude greater damage to the Republicans than the terror bill ever would. In your opinion, which issue should be of greater concern? I know my opinion on the matter, but I also know that a nuanced and thoughtful statement about the terror bill is a fart in a windstorm compared to one joke on the Tonight Show about Republicans and house pages. I’d much rather be in a position from which we could put an end to both the terror bill and the shoddy and self-serving management of the House.

I’m not sure how, but I think you’re missing my point. My point is that, if you don’t like the “stay the course” issue, just move on by. It does nobody a lick of good for you to be chastizing Democrats for their criticism of the President. If it is not worthwhile, the issue will go away on it’s own. In the meantime, your passion and 1,000 words would do us all much more good if you spent them addressing the thing you think is of significant concern.

Instead of criticizing Bush for what you (and I) regard as a substantial concern, you chose to spend a lot of effort criticizing liberals for a trivial matter.