If “they” wanted to kill every westerner, wouldn’t they have picked better targets for 9/11? A couple college football games for example? They attack symbols of our nation, not our people in mass. The fact is, we kill more innocent people than they do.
…he did? Geez, here I was thinking he came across like a very nervous man with a whole lot of questions he didn’t wanna answer, desperately trying to claw up some support for a failed agenda. Hell, I’d have had more faith in him if he HADN’T spoken, frankly.
Of this I have no doubt. Precisely what those convictions actually are, I got plenty doubts. He made LOTS of things pretty clear, though, and among those things was that he paid no attention to polls. Translated: “I don’t give a damn what the American people think, I’m going to do what I wanna do.”
Perhaps he should have. More than once, he sounded like he was free-associating. This is not a good way to answer questions of public policy. And he was sure rackin’ his brains when the question came up of “What has your greatest mistake been?” He didn’t ANSWER it, but he sure’nuff thought about it…
Yeah. Now, if he’d just say something meaningful. Or provide a straight answer to a thorny question…
Once again, this is really a trick question, trying to get Bush to say claim he made some horrible mistake, that would make a great headline. Really, can you think of a president offering a serious answer to that question while still in office?
Sure, there could have been better ways to deflect that question. He could have said something like “I really can’t answer that right now. That’s something that I’ll be better able to answer when I have time to reflect. Perhaps when I’m writing my memiors.” Yeah, he stumbled around and said something rather stupid in response. But to think that he should have actually offered a serious answer to that question is simply naive.
I must respectfully disagree.
In an administration which has insisted on “privelige” every time anyone’s asked them for a straight answer or any kind of under-oath testimony, I sure would like some old-fashioned straight answers. Admittedly, considering the calibre of politician we’re dealing with, I expect that’s a bit much to expect.
Nevertheless, I would have respected even an unspecific answer like, *“There are things I would have done differently, in light of what I know now,”… *
…to “Um, fumfuh, uh, geez, that’s a tough one, duh, whuh, I’m, a, sure there musta been sumpthin, but, uh, I’m gonna pertend like you asked a different question, now…”
And Bush’s strategy for the destruction of al-Qaeda is pulling troops and intelligence resources from Afghanistan to Iraq? bin Laden is still at large. Can’t you admit at least that the present Administration is not being as effective as it could be? This is like Roosevelt attacking Argentina after Germany and Japan declared war on us in 1941.
The argument that we must support Bush as the wartime president is going to be the standard definition of chutzpah in the future, replacing the one of the child who kills his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan. Bush either lied or never bothered to check the claims of his handlers. They just assumed that we would be greeted as liberators, and never made contingency plans. They followed Rummy’s magic minimal force policy, where it made no sense. If you are the Board of Directors of a company whose CEO has screwed up, plunging it in a nosedive, you fire his ass, not let him keep going because of the depth of the problem.
As for apologizing, there are a few ways of doing it. One, you could say that you did the best you could, but you made a mistake, but you learned. I’m not surprised that this is too much for Bush. But you can also say that you did perfectly, then quietly change direction, and say that was the plan all the time. This is standard CEO strategy. The Administration never even does that. They make the same mistake, over and over and over again. They have such ideological blinders on that they can’t even own up to screwing up in private. To hear them talk, they did everything perfectly before Sept. 11. Can’t you admit they could have done just a little bit better?
I like this one.
BUSH: I’m going on the offense! I’m toppling regimes that support terror! I’m oppressing their people! I’m creating the conditions that beed terrorists! Why are you looking at me like that!?
Can you agree that all our tools are not being used to fight Al Qaida, or do you insist on equating Al Qaida with Iraq?
Not bloody good enough. Get rid of the clown. Try to elect someone who understands world politics sans the fundamental, bible-bashing, ‘down-home’ piety.
I agree. But you have to acknowledge that we are unlikely saviors to many in the Middle East: we were the people whom these dictators either threw out originally, i.e. prior oppressors and dictators, or who propped up dicatators against the people.
Our interest in democracy seems to people in the Middle East a passing fancy: we’re pushing not because we care, but because it happens to serve our interests at the moment.
Yes.
Yes. Unfortunately, success has to be defined downwards quite a bit. None of our major goals are relevant anymore. What we need in Iraq now is as much stability as we can get. And though we may hate to think of it, we need other nations to get in rather than getting out.
It’s not simply a matter of resources (which, no matter what, are going to mostly come too little too late), it’s a matter of diplomatic and authoritative cred. The thing is, no one trusts his administration. The people in Iraq have become radically disillusioned with his ability to deliver and his policies. In world opinion, Bush is like Clinton after the impeachment: whether the impeachment was right or wrong, his credibility and political capital are blown and smoking.
Strip away the “my president do or die” approach, and the fact is that Bush is not a good leader. He cannot clearly articulate American policies in a way that the rest of the world can understand. His grasp of the ideas he is trying to fight for is rudimentary and limited to a few stock cliches which he weilds defensively because he simply cannot speak on his feet. For instance, in this speech, the President not only stumbled badly, but to recover, he ripped down the fourth wall of press conference stage craft to essentially say “uh, I’m going to start taking the pre-arranged softball questions now.”
The thing about Kerry is that he could never afford to be anything but hawkish on terror. He cannot afford politically to get painted into the corner of a weakling or a dove, because all it will take is a single terror attack on his watch to completely destroy him if there is any sign of appeasement or weakness.
I think Kerry can add a positive note to all this primarily because he can re-brand America. Bush has built up a heck of a lot of distrust and anger across the globe. Some of that was inevitable, and some of it was even credible. But the thing is: a lot of that hate and distrust is with his administration and him personally. His defeat in November would likely not bring on much in the way of radically different policies: we will still be in Iraq, we will still be at war with terror. But Kerry will be a new face, and one that countries in both the EU and the Middle East will see as a chance to restart statecraft and alliances with.
Even if Kerry proposes to do exactly what Bush plans to do, Kerry will be able to get it done better. It’s not just that he’ll have real experts working for him rather than a cadre of squabbling ideologes and political advisors. He’ll simply be a chance for a fresh start with America, to offer our ideas and policies in a new light, with a clearer understanding of what we are fighting for.
There’s a point where mere repetition degrades meaning what you say to empty rhetoric.
Yes, he doesn’t bite his lip in thought because he’s not thinking. He’s pre-prepared what he’s going to say to an extent that does not permit thinking on his feet in response to new situations. Which is great when he’s right, but disasterously when he’s not. That’s what got us into a lot of the mistakes that even you think are mistakes: there is an arrogance towards policy matters that is just stunning. To simply toss out months of pre-war planning because the timetable would have been pushed back a few weeks, to have scorned the military you claim to be a big booster for… it just doesn’t work.
This is why the 9/11 hearings have been illustrative. They have revealed an administration that is not prepared to rethink their positions in the face of new evidence, in the face of questions, in the face of lack of evidence.
There is no great policy that has to be wrong for the administration to be wrong. It’s the process that’s all wrong for our country, especially in the face of an ever changing morass of terror threats, failing states, shifting alliances. What we don’t need are bitter people who demand loyalty and agreement. We need statesmen. We need leaders who actually read and understand the depth and breadth of conflicts so that they can strategize for more than just the next move.
Yah, that was one feeble performance! But Pat Buchanan and even Chris Matthews were all feeling sorry for him. Said he sounded “hu-man” <lol>.
Even Republicans were bailing on Bush before the press conference. It’s not looking real good for him now.
Sam, I still can’t believe his ramblings and repetitions. But if you want to believe he sounded like a Commander-in-Chief, go right ahead. Wish he was yours rather than ours. I’ll just point out that even Lucianne Goldberg’s little boy Jonah wasn’t exactly keen on how he did, so it isn’t just a lefty opinion. I’ll link later.
But as you can see, I’ve made the first small dent in critiquing the transcript. I’ll be doing more of that today, as work allows. Feel free to contest anything I say, based on his words and what we already know.
It really seems that you are trying to express yourself vicariously through the actions that the USA is taking in this so-called war on terrorism. You desperately want to be part of the “festivities”, but your own country, Canada, has disavowed our incursion into Iraq because the U.N. did not support it, and therefore has contributed little to the effort. While Canada committed something like 2000 (WOW! big number…) troops to Afghanistan and a handful to Haiti, as far as I can tell, Canada has just 31 men in an exchange program in Iraq and a few escort warships in the Persian Gulf according to
Link.
Canada, as a country, has almost no skin in Iraq. If you don’t like the position of your government on this issue or on terrorism, then why not take that up with them and your countrymen, rather than continually commenting on our politics or trying to tell us how or why we should we should fight Islam, Iraq or terrorism? When your soldiers are getting killed and disabled like ours, then you’ll earn the right to refer to “we” or “I” in your comments on our issues.
If you really want to be part of the political process here, then get off your butt and move to the states!
That is just silly. Should the Brit or Aussie contingents have to move here before they criticize and/or support America/GW/etc? Are the Americans here not allowed to criticize or support anything outside of our borders?
I disagree. If you don’t live here or there but want to make the occasional comment, then I don’t see that as a problem. However, in this particular case, when posting on these issues becomes a CRUSADE (and apparently, SDMB is somewhat of a VOCATION for Sam with 8000+ posts), then maybe you’re talking too much about things you don’t understand. How else to explain the posting of the same junk, over and over, again and again? It’s very easy to support/criticize something when you don’t “have any skin in the game”. OTOH, pay taxes, live in the society, live under and with the politics and government and then you’ll have earned the right to comment on how someone else runs their own country.
Nonsense. This forum is about debating. Once someone is a member they have the right to post in any thread and express their opinion about whatever the fuck they want to once they remain within the TOS.
Sam has as much right to agree with Bush as I have to say he’s a danger to the world. Am I to take it that you’ve never voiced an opinion about another country’s politics?
I really disagree with you on this. We need the views of everyone here. Sure, he can’t vote in our elections, that is a good thing, but he sure as hell can join in the political discussion. Though I disagree with most things Sam says (and I think everything I have seen from Brutus for that matter), they are some of the few people who engage in debate and support the conservative side. There have been comments that this is a primarily liberal board, so we need top hear the conservative side, even if it does come from Canada (how strange is that?).
The expulsion of the Jews from Judea comes to mind.
Point of order. Sam has a high post count because he’s been here a long time. Your post count is lower because you’ve only been here for a month. However, your average posts per day count is higher than Sam’s. Your attempted criticism on this point is completely invalid.
Nope. Since I live in the USA, not somewhere else, I don’t know enough about other countries politics or economies to comment from a knowledgeable perspective.
Well, now I know where the stereotype comes from. :rolleyes: