The word you are looking for is “hopeful”, brutus. “Delusional” would be the persistence of faith in an administration that has already shown so little credibility, honesty, acceptance of dissenting views, foresight, and accountability.
Have you somehow resisted saturation by the innumerable arguments demonstrating that France and Germany had very good reason to refuse US calls for action based on not one bit of credible evidence and a request for carte blanche from the UN??
Eh?
What has not been proven to work with them is an aggressive more or less solo approach followed by disinterest and disengagement. It sends out a message of weakness and feeble-mindedness. As for the six-nation talks, they want the US involved, since the US is a primary concern for North Korea.
Should you want to keep spewing rubbish in this manner, why not demonstrate that the ideas Kerry talks about have actually been shot down, instead of merely gesticulating and posturing in this empty manner?
Great top 10, Rjung! I felt the need to annotate, as I felt you had not given Shrub a fair shake, so:
10. Because competent leadership is soooooooooooooo overrated.
But W can take people who’d be competent in other situations and turn them into Condi, Colin, etc. Give credit where it’s due!
9. Because the voices in your head tell you to.
Hey, that’s Jesus H. Christ a-talkin’!
8. Because a presidency is too boring without a few wars to liven up the evening news.
But Iraq and Iran’s only got one letter different atween 'em: “Q” is fer Al Qaeda and “N” is fer Nooculer!
7. Because you enjoy the notion that you’re smarter than the President of the United States.
Uh, 30 seconds, please, Jim? Rebuttal?
6. Because that damn Clinton kept his sex all hushed up between himself and Monica, but Bush gives you wall-to-wall naked Iraqi prisoner bondage.
C’mon, that was more of a Rumsfeld kink.
5. Because after the nation’s been driven head-first into a brick wall, the sensible response is More Of The Same.
Next time it’s ass-first.
4. Because you’re hoping Bush will push for a Constitutional amendment to make it legal to hunt homosexuals.
Now now, bows ‘n’ arrows before marriage, rifles afterward. Fair is fair.
3. Because you find Dick Cheney’s bald spot strangely mesmerizing.
And his “package.”
2. Because nothing’s more important than continued news coverage of those hot Bush twins.
The only thing of value Shrub has ever produced: hot ass.
**…and the number one reason to vote for Bush…
Because !#@%&%@? idiots have to stick together, dammit!**
It’s called Texas.
To the OP: If you’re a fascist swine, Bush is your man.
Kerry talk the talk about bringing in ‘more foreign troops’ (realistically, French and German troops) to the effort in Iraq. When asked, French and German officials nixed the thought that they would send troops to Iraq if Kerry won.
John Kerry had some sort of odd plan where we would give Iran nuclear fuel. Even the fun-loving Iranian gov’t thought that the idea was ‘irrational’.
And we already tried talking to North Korea one-on-one, as Mssr.Kerry seems to think we should do again. It doesn’t work. (Remeber, they developed their nuclear weapons throughout the 90’s)Furthermore, it won’t work, since we have no leverage over them; China does.
This is as of roughly 1025GMT. Kerry’s positions and ideas may have changed and/or become more ‘nuanced’ by the time you read this.
You should vote for Bush if you hold freedom in contempt. Bush talking to American citizens about freedom is like the devil quoting Bible verses to Jesus in the desert.
What Kerry would do – or so he has stated – is obtain UN involvement and cooperation in order to get those foreign troops in there legitimately and with as little rancour as possible. In fact that would seem to be his primary approach to the entire matter of the Iraq war, rather than the incumbent’s technique of flitting towards the UN and storming out as soon as it became obvious the Council wasn’t swallowing his horse shit.
Spain said something similar when they withdrew their troops from Iraq based on a democratic expression of popular will following Aznar’s predictable loss in the elections. The Iraq war was hugely unpopular in Spain from the very beginning, but Aznar committed the country to the problem against the direct wishes of the overwhelming majority (nice democracy! At least in Spain the elected leader is accountable, not so in Italy next door). Spain – like most other European countries – would have far fewer problems with the concept of sending troops to Iraq under the auspices of the UN rather than those of cowboys, their rabid vice-presidential dogs, and a motley assortment of suspect bastards such as Wolfowitz.
Is this meant to be a serious analysis? Because I missed out on this bit and I am not the wiser for your commentary.
This old piece of propaganda has been bandied about almost as much as the famous “the inspections weren’t working in Iraq” crap so beloved by the uninformed. North Korea is a strongman, the kind of country you keep your eye on at all times and good luck if your stare falters. After Bush decided to abandon efforts with NK and go after Iraq – talk about political ADD – Dear Leader was emboldened, and engaged in some worrying brinksmanship, given the results he’d already obtained (or thought he had obtained – same thing, the US backed off and broke the stare one way or another). Now, I have already mentioned that the parties involved in six-nation talks want the US at the table, and in fact NK wants a dialogue specifically with the US in order to discuss certain guarantees. This isn’t an issue of talking one-on-one, but of defusing a potentially dangerous situation – a lot more dangerous than Iraq could ever be – using that little thing called multilateral talks and coordinated international pressure. It starts by participating in the damn exercise, which is a better start than ignoring the problem while the problem stomps around proclaiming and developing its nuclear weapons.
How Kerry carries out his plans, and how his plans evolve, is a question that remains to be determined; not so with Bush, since he has already given us ample material to criticize. There is no doubt that the way Bush has gone about his presidency, at least on foreign policy matters, has been an utter joke, a declaration of arrogance, disrespect, ignorance, and stupidity. That you end up attacking minutiae from Kerry’s campaign – probably filtered from goodness knows what partisan source you have found – simply indicates a certain desperation. Try facing up to the innumerable faults and problems with the present administration before forecasting how bad the alternative could be, because at this point if the alternative were a dead zebra it would still look pretty good compared to the status quo.
The same UN whose Secretary General claimed the whole shebang was ‘illegal’? The same UN with how many hostile vetoes on the Security Council? Great plan, Mssr. Kerry.
Then
You fail to address that:
Through bilateral talks, we reached an ‘agreement’ with NK. Thanks, Jimmy and Madeline!
NK promptly ignored said ‘agreement’ and developed nukes.
We don’t have leverage over North Korea. Short of a first strike, we got nada. China, on the other hand, does have leverage. South Korea or Japan both have more leverage than we do, again barring a first strike. We can talk until we are blue in the face to them, but it’s not going to mean anything, since we can’t dangle any non-military threat over their heads.
As an aside, where is your UN in all this? One would think that they would be rushing their top talkuntiltheyareblueintheface-ers to deal with a nuclear NK, but alas, the whole damned mess is thrown back in Americas lap. Funny that.
Yep those alcoholics are known for their self discipline.
What a hoot! The closest he came to combat was serving as Tricia Nixon’s escort. How about his opponent, who actually faced enemy fire? And what is the evidence that Texas was better off after his term than before?
What exactly is the argument here? And why rant about vetoes when the US is every bit as guilty of throwing sand in the UN machinery with its power of veto? The UN is a world forum, a diplomatic forum. It attempts to incorporate a large number of interests towards some kind of resolution and in accordance with fundamental tenets. That doesn’t mean there aren’t struggles when it comes to national interests, sometimes ugly ones, but they are more easily resolved thanks to an international framework (that, incidentally, was provided thanks largely to the US, and duly accepted by the US).
You should also consider that Kerry has indicated that his approach to the UN (which is essentially the remaining 95% of the world) will be rather different from Bush’s, which (as discussed elsewhere in GD) has been somewhat appalling.
Again, what is the point?
By the way, the North Korea issue became shakier following the US presidential transition, and really took a dive when Bush started on his “axis of evil” cagal (January 2002). Again, a poor display of diplomacy, a retrograde development to say the least.
Diplomacy achieves the exchange of interests and the projection of specific desires, either directly or indirectly through third parties. Military strikes are merely one component of the diplomatic process, in fact it has been said that the threat of force is far more useful than force itself. Diplomacy is a tricky process, and you generally want to remain closely involved to steer things as far your way as possible and resolve the particular problem or threat in the shortest amount of time. That’s part of the reason why a high degree of engagement is valuable.
The Kerry campaign says as much, placing emphasis on the value of diplomacy and direct involvement in removing the existing threat. There’s very little to argue against there, particularly since North Korea has the potential to be the worst crisis for the next president. And between a diplomatic crisis and a military crisis, it’s not a very hard choice.
Of course what will be done and what will happen remains to be seen. But if Dear Leader wants more direct talks, why not see what he wants? It’s not a commitment to anything other than discussion and engagement, which are two Good Things. After all, progress has stalled (and slipped) largely because the US and North Korea have been too far apart to make a breakthrough. Engagement would therefore seem a viable option.
Where is “my” UN, that’s a good one. Have you missed the IAEA involvement in this matter? These poor guys are constantly getting harried and expelled by dictatorial regimes, but they put in a lot of good work, and in the case of North Korea their assesments have proved fundamental to both intelligence and engagement. And, of course, the UN is keeping an eye on the situation, but since multilateral talks are involved, they are standing back and seeing what develops. Other than that, Iraq has been occupying the attention of both the UN (not just the Security Council but also other agencies, which nonetheless continue their work in NK) and the US. And we know what an unnecessary involvement Iraq was… these past two years of problems and expenses could certainly have been better spent by everyone involved.
That doesn’t sound radically different in principle from the way the US defused the previous North Korean nuclear crisis by agreeing to provide Pyongyang with two reactors. It was a good idea but as production of the reactors lagged badly behind schedule Dear Leader became increasingly upset, which contributed to the present situation.