Wrong. I’m not just looking at the polls of today. If we get in a ground war, Obama and the Democrats will be in far, far more trouble in the long run than not getting into a ground war. Polling was wrong about the war in 2003, and it’s wrong now, if the polling suggests we should get involved in a ground war. My brother, alone in my Democratic family in 2003 opposing the Iraq war, was absolutely right – me and my dad (and most Americans) were wrong. If most Americans think we should put troops back in, they’re wrong, and the Democrats will suffer politically for it if we do it.
No they don’t. Getting into a ground war would be a political disaster for the Democrats, in the long run, just like the Iraq war was for the Republicans. A nightmare political scenario, and one that could possibly even lead to a third anti-war party.
I hope he doesn’t put in ground forces, and I don’t think he will. I also don’t think they’re necessary to protect our interests.
I see no reason to believe that ground troops would have any effect on the timing or whether or not some terrorist group tries to attack us. If we swat ISIS another group will take their place. And I’m not willing to throw away thousands of American lives on the off chance that it might protect us from some attack on the homeland that might kill dozens – chiefly because throwing troops at it won’t do anything. Plane-to-missile 9/11 style hijackings will never happen again – both because of better cockpit doors and because the passengers will never allow it.
Yes, terrorists might sneak guys over here and kill some Americans. There’s no way to prevent this, and sending troops to Syria and Iraq certainly won’t. Our best defense is good intelligence and solid law enforcement.
This “fight over there so we don’t have to over here” is always bullshit unless you’re talking about an asteroid. We’re not going to kill everyone over there, so there will be terrorists as long as there are a significant number of people that hate America. And fighting over there with ground troops, in the long run, just creates more of these folks then it kills.
Fighting ISIS with massed ground troops would make America less safe, lead to more death and destruction of American (and other) lives, politically ruin whichever party makes the decision, and make the situation in Iraq and Syria no better. It would be a disaster all around, just like the last Iraq war.
Worse than either Bush or Obama is a person who uses *worst *as a superlative, not a comparative. Bosh and Obama add up to only two persons, making *worse *the proper choice of word.
The week after the October 1987 stock market crash, the curmudgeonly conservative P. J. O’Rourke wrote a column in the Washington Post riffing on how for the Baby Boomers, “Life’s big Visa card bill ha(d) finally come due”. One of his remarks about the boomers was that you could tell how messed up they were “by the quality of presidents we used to have, like Truman and Eisenhower, compared to the ones we got when the boomers started voting, like Carter and Reagan”.
Here’s hoping we’re all around in another quarter century so you can explain to us why Obama (wa)s a lot better than whoever is in office then.
Perhaps not related to this discussion, but Bush become a serious contender for the presidency solely due to his family’s wealth and connections. No way he becomes President if his dad wasn’t president and grandfather wasn’t a prominent politician.
Anyway, it’s way too soon to accurately compare Bush and Obama a) because Obama is still president for another 2 years and b) it’s going to be at least a decade before we see the full effects of his domestic and foreign policies and even for Bush.
Oh, that’s funny. Sorry, there’s no way to put competence and Obama in the same sentence unless you’ve decided that he doesn’t actually have to insure that his administration runs properly.
