Where will Bush start a war first?

Great Debates
41

It’s no joke. It’s an opportunity to air one’s opinion, and debate the merits of each other’s opinion, regarding what land will be the first to fall prey to W’s pressing need to assert his commander-in-chief-hood. Anyone who thinks that smirking frat boy has a Ghandi-esque love of nonviolence is most certainly mistaken.

My guess is that it will almost certainly be Iraq, for all the obvious reasons … though here, I take the OP’s use of the word “war” to mean “the high-tech bombing of the shit out of someone”.

I really doubt W will ever put troops on the ground anywhere, unless he is forced to, and [partisan rancor] God help us all if that dumbass is the ultimate decision-maker when the shit hits the fan. [/partisan rancor]

Incidentally, the latest New Yorker speaks at length on this very topic.

42

------HapaXL:“trying to return this thread to intelligent discussion (Israel, Korea, China?! what have i been missing?),”-------

Consciousness comes to mind.

Do you really think that nothing is going on in China? How about Korea?

Do you travel, or just watch the evening news?
-----hapaXL quote:

Originally posted by mx-6*
I’m not claiming to know anything about the Israel situation

so why are you talking about it?"-------

Your right, I should convince myself that I know everything then post something like this:

"is this like a sick and twisted office pool? what do you win if you pick the correct country?

i’m going to circle this little box: Columbia"------

Hmm?

Since I see that we are talking about small, insignificant “interventions” and not an actual war I guess I’ll go with the Gulf.

It is usually the gulf.

If you want to talk about where a real war is likely then I’d say Gulf/Pacific. I think that if we get into anything in the pacific Sadaam would jump to quickly make some noise.

Haven’t you noticed that the only time he acts up is when we aren’t strong in HIS region? Just know that if we get into a war in the near future that we will also have to deal with Iraq too. Until Saddam is dead we will have this problemo.

43

Huh??

“Incidentally, the latest New Yorker speaks at length on this very topic”

You read the New Yorker? and actually value it as a source of information? :D:D

Interesting to say the least.

I guess that I should value Barbara Streisand as a source of informed political information as well.
Of course the New Yorker has something negative to say about Bush. Next you’ll be quoting Ted Kennedy or Jesse Jackson.

44

You know, for someone who bulled his way into a thread by trying to show his own superior knowledge, you have done a pretty good job of demonstrating ignorance.

The “war” vs “intervention” comparison is a joke, literally. It is not a comment regarding the seriousness of any military activity, but a cultural reference to (foolish) statements that have actually been made regarding the military actions of Democrat and Republican presidents. The statement is clearly foolish and the reference to it was a facetious (that means to make humorous) allusion that pointed up in an ironic fashion some of the attitudes that some people bring to this sort of discussion.

“That’s a joke, son.” is also a cultural allusion (go watch some W-B cartoons) and was intended to indicate in the most heavy-handed way that you were missing the point–which you continue to do. I am well aware that you are not my son; at 11, he has already grasped the concepts of irony and cultural allusions.

As to China, Israel, and North Korea: your (all too serious) post introduced them in the context of past military activity. If you were attempting to broaden the topic, your effort was not well crafted. (You will note that multiple posters “corrected” your assertion. Had you meant that Clinton’s policies have not made the world more secure in regards to those countries–a point that can be made and argued, your bridge to that statement was woefully inadequate, misleading several of us as to your actual thoughts.)

Now, if your opinion is that the topic is too serious to allow jokes to be made of it, that is one thing. If your reading comprehension simply does not provide you the tools to recognize when humor is being introduced, I suggest that you study this thread in more detail before you post again.

45

I predict Bush’s first attack will be on Hawaii.

46

Tomndeb:"You know, for someone who bulled his way into a thread by trying to show his own superior knowledge, you have done a pretty good job of demonstrating ignorance.

The “war” vs “intervention” comparison is a joke, literally. It is not a comment regarding the seriousness of any military activity, but a cultural reference to (foolish) statements that have actually been made regarding the military actions of Democrat and Republican presidents. The statement is clearly foolish and the reference to it was a facetious (that means to make humorous) allusion that pointed up in an ironic fashion some of the attitudes that some people bring to this sort of discussion.—
Did you ever stop to think that I thought that you were making that argument and not joking? That is obviously what my post would indicate.

When you say:
"Your title was regarding “wars,” not “interventions.”

Remember, Democrats get us into wars, Republicans just lose them."

I actually thought that you were one of those that you spoke of that believed this crap. If it was followed by a :wink: or something I would have understood but I just saw words and being new here I don’t know your personal beliefs on the subject. So how would I know that you were being facetious?

Anyway, Don’t give yourself a stroke over it, Dad. We may prefer that you hang around with us for a while. :wink:

47

Hmmm for all the shit certain “vitriolic” Republicans get on this board, some of you Democrats sure seem rather classless in defeat. I thought you’d wait a little longer to show your true colors. Don’t know what I was thinking.

This is going to be so fun! Here’s hoping you get to suck on those lemons for eight long, slow years.

48

California is really ripe for war anyway. Here we are, sitting in the dark, at least part of the time with an invasion going on along the Southern Border. Bush doesn’t even have to START a war. Just recognize that one’s going on anyway.

49

Sorry, I haven’t been back in a while. Well there are a bunch of us over at HWC looking for a new forum to post in:D. Looks like we found it. We’ve been looking for some time now, but most forums suck. They are either too dead, or too stupid, but I really like this one. Its great!!! A little left for my tastes, but great nonetheless. Mx is somewhat of a republican, so I knew he would enjoy debating you lefties;). Don’t worry, though don’t expect a wave a right winger to come in and change the mood, there aren’t too many of em from what I’ve seen. I’m way to the right compared to most of the people here, but by the traditional standars I’m a moderate:D.

btw, I’m a none of the above guy myself, my guy didn’t run. Maybe there is hope for 2004. I’d really like to see Jesse the Brain Ventura give it a go;). Now he is exactly my kind of guy. Unfortunately, he is very rough around the edges, and will offen too many people to ever get elected. Ya never know though, maybe there is someone like him out there that really does have a brain, and a little sensitivity to others.

btw, sorry I got off topic, I still vote for the middle east (the first war that is).

50

I don’t see Bush starting a war anywhere any time soon. Some have suspected Colombia, what with their high cocaine production, but I don’t see it. I don’t see any faction in Colombia actually inviting the United States to intervene. If we just sent troops without anyone asking us to, we’d be worse off than we were in Vietnam. In Vietnam, we at least had the support of a minority faction. But with the support of no factions? Even Dubya isn’t that stupid. In fact, I think you can write off South America as a whole.

We might go to war with Iraq again; that’s always a possibility. I think it’s unlikely, but I don’t think Iraq has calmed down enough for us not to consider it. The notions that Bush would send troops to avenge his father are tragically stupid. I could see that if you were talking about Kaiser Wilhelm II, but not Junior.

SuaSponte made a good point about Yemen, but I agree that a war there would be unlikely. Pakistan could be one, if the government there should come unglued. The current military dictatorship seems stable enough, though, and if it keeps itself from falling into the hands of fundamentalist extremists, it’ll be safe. Of course, Algeria fell to fundamentalists in the early 1990s and even declared war on the United States, but I don’t think anything ever happened with that.

I don’t see Bush intervening in the Balkans. He has no interest in the area, and feels that the United States doesn’t, either. He’s already talked about cutting aid to Russia, too, so there’s a good chance that whoever the Democrats nominate in 2004 will have to deal with a mess there come 2005.

Old favorite trouble spots like Indonesia, Haiti, Lebanon, Iran, Korea… most likely we won’t send troops to any of those places. In fact, Iran has made considerable progress in recent years; I would say our relations with Iran will be warming, no matter who’s in the White House.

If we intervene in Africa, my guess would be Congo, if anywhere. Otherwise, we’ll leave that continent to its own devices, since there’s not much the United States can do for Africa. We won’t go anywhere where we don’t have an interest, and frankly, most African nations aren’t much use as trading partners.

If I had my way, we’d send military advisors to Florida to help them manage their free elections. They need all the help they can get.

51

RD said:

HWC?

52

I made no point about Yemen, good or otherwise. Instead, I made an utterly brilliant point about Indonesia. :smiley:

Oh, he’s debating?

Please note that RTA did not:

  1. Reveal any details of the New Yorker article.
  2. State whether the article was pro- or anti-Bush.

Further:
3. It is a fact, not wild left-wing ravings, that every president since at least Hoover[sub]1[/sub] has gotten the U.S. involved in a major intervention/war (with the possible exception of Ford - depends on your definition of “major”), it is reasonable to assume that Bush will do the same.
4. It is therefore a reasonable, if speculative, topic for an article in the New Yorker, rather than a bit of anti-Bush ranting.

First of all, you wrote:

The only way I can read this bit of yours is that you are asserting that Clinton intervened militarily in Kosovo, Rwanda, and Israel. You may or may not have been asserting that Clinton intervened militarily in China and North Korea.
Again, it’s a fact, not a left-wing conspiracy theory, that of the places you mentioned, Clinton only intervened militarily in Kosovo. On this, I’m sure that both the New Yorker and the Drudge Report agree. In point of fact, a criticism leveled against Clinton is that he should have intervened in Rwanda, but failed to do so.

If you are trying to make the point that Clinton’s military interventions were not productive, it would be helpful to refer to places where he actually did intervene.

Second, a piece of (sure to be disregarded) advice: disagree with tomndebb’s opinions all you want, but be extremely sure of yourself before getting into a factual debate with him. His command and range of knowledge is ludicrously thorough.

Sua

[sub]1. The list of Presidents who got involved in major interventions may go well beyond Hoover. I’m a little fuzzy on the dates of our interventions in the Carribean in the interwar era.[/sub]

53

SuaSponte—I checked, and it was actually Sofa King who came up with Yemen as a possible Bush administration military target. I maintain that it’s unlikely, but if the United States is going anywhere it the Middle East, Yemen is a better guess than, say, Tunis or the United Arab Emirates.

Also, a bit of information about pre-Hoover military actions. During the 1920s, there weren’t many. Isolationist fever gripped America, and a quick consultation with my vast reference library came up with this:

1927-1933: U.S. intervention in Nicaragua. This would mean that the troops were landed during the Coolidge administration. That adds one more president to the list of those who conducted major interventions.

1915-1924: U.S. occupation of the Dominican Republic; 1915-1934: U.S. occupation of Haiti. These actions obviously began under Wilson, and both continued through the Harding administration with the Dominican occupation ending under Coolidge and the Haitian occupation ending under Roosevelt. Since Harding never sent the troops himself you could argue that he doesn’t count in this list of Caribbean big-stickers. If that’s your way of counting, then you can draw an unbroken list including the previous four presidents—Wilson, Taft, T. Roosevelt and McKinley. This would mean that every president since 1896 has had a military intervention under his belt (with the possible exception of Ford). I might even say there were more in that unbroken chain, but I’m not about to go digging up information about President Cleveland right now.

Suffice it to say, the United States is more likely to have troops overseas conducting some sort of intervention than not. Though Bush is more the isolationist than his predecessors—even those predecessors in his own party—it’s unlikely that he’ll not feel obliged to send troops overseas. Really, though, I don’t think that whoever is president has anything to do with the fact that I don’t see the United States doing a lot of overseas intervening over the next four years. But you never know for sure…

54

Sadaam. That bugger has been kicking the UN around and ignoring the conditions of our cease fire for years now. When he threw out the weapons inspectors, we should have sent armed troops in to enforce their authority.

Maybe France. The French refuse to follow the sanctions against Iraq and have been trading with them and thumbing their noses at the UN and US since the end of Dessert Storm.

Cuba? No, I don’t think so. There seems to be some form of major ‘secret’ commerce going on there, with lots of rich Americans bypassing laws to go there and several other nations happily sending vacationers to soak up the Cuban sun. I figure the US will not react to the increasingly aged Castro, but once his son takes over, who is reputed to be even more bloody minded than his Dad, we’ll probably have to go in.

Mexico seems likely, what with the major corruption by drug lords of the police, military and government.

I pay attention to the Middle East. Their booming wealth, which is poorly distributed, religious squabbles, their clinging to ancient tribal laws, traditions and dress, almost fanatical following of Islamic law and prickly attitudes is bound to get them over confident. The promise of better and cheaper oil regulation by the US would certainly guarantee the use of other nations as jumping off sites for an attacking combination US and UN forces.

55

here’s a reference for us to use, even though it hasn’t been updated in a while:
http://zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/interventions.htm

Actually, his brother Raul is next in line.
http://www.ciponline.org/Cuba/News%20Archives/July%202000/rt071400raul.htm
He’s kind of an unknown quantity, but is widely rumored to be more moderate than Fidel.

Either way, we definitely won’t be going in. Money talks, and Cuba is a natural trading partner. Politics don’t drive wars. Ethics definitely don’t. Economics (“emerging markets”) is all that really counts.

56

Chance
Thankee for filling in the gaps in my knowledge about U.S. interventions.

Sua

57

Predictably, it has taken GW less than a month in office to bomb Iraq. He does it while hiding at a conference in Mexico, so he doesn’t have to face the press in DC. This will take attention away from the Sub accident, too.

Although, this isn’t a war, just a bombing, which Clinton also did. However, I’m sure Bush/Powell will get the US in a war ASAP.

58

He’s a doofus, but he’s not that stupid, especially since Clinton was accused of using Iraq to “wag the dog”.

59

Dubya did order bombing that began today in Iraq. Whether or not it was to intentionally distract attention from the sub does not detract from the point curious george had that it WILL distract attention.

60

Sua:"The only way I can read this bit of yours is that you are asserting that Clinton intervened militarily in Kosovo, Rwanda, and Israel. You may or may not have been asserting that Clinton intervened militarily in China and North Korea.
Again, it’s a fact, not a left-wing conspiracy theory, that of the places you mentioned, Clinton only intervened militarily in Kosovo. On this, I’m sure that both the New Yorker and the Drudge Report agree. In point of fact, a criticism leveled against Clinton is that he should have intervened in Rwanda, but failed to do so.

If you are trying to make the point that Clinton’s military interventions were not productive, it would be helpful to refer to places where he actually did intervene.

Second, a piece of (sure to be disregarded) advice: disagree with tomndebb’s opinions all you want, but be extremely sure of yourself before getting into a factual debate with him. His command and range of knowledge is ludicrously thorough.

Sua"
Is that a fact?

Or what you believe from the press?

I guess that I hallucinated the 3 months that I spent in Rhwanda/Kenya in 1994.

And our military/monetary support of Israel is, in fact, another hallucination of mine.

And BTW, I could care less what Tomndebb’s opinions are. If they are not fact, I will dispute them.

You don’t know everything and maybe it was meant to be that way.