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| 5/25 |
| 2004/6/3-4 [Politics/Domestic/President/Bush, Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:30587 Activity:very high |
6/3 http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/2606171 Yet another Democrat beltway insider voting for Bush. \_ This guy is a shill not a Democrat. At the bottom of the article there is a note saying the author is a member of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Take a look at the AEI mission statement (http://www.aei.org/about/filter.all/default.asp \_ Some of my friends who are otherwise Democrats found themselves sitting there on September 12 thinking pretty much the same thing. They deplore what Bush has done to the environment, the economy, and to our credibility, but they're firmly behind him when it comes to striking a strong blow against the perceived source of terror. Some of them were sated after Bush took out the Taliban, but some of them remained staunch supporters of the invasion of Iraq. I think they were swayed because it felt good to be active, to strike a blow, to be on the offensive rather than on the defensive. Most of them have since come to the conclusion that the whole thing has been mishandled, but there's still a nagging feeling in the back of their heads that that a policy of pre-emption against baddies is all right. I'm not a Dem, a Repub, or a Green. I'm a social progressive, and there is no party that represents my viewpoint. I supported the campaign against the Taliban, I support the effort to root out and destroy Al Qaeda, and I still opposed the invasion of Iraq on the basis of WMDs, and I think the handling of the aftermath of the invasion is a black eye on America. Where am I going with this? I don't know, but I'm tired of the labels. They don't mean anything. It's the issues you care about that make up your mind when the election comes. \_ Look you dimwit, how many times does this have to be pounded home before you get it? Iraq wasn't a threat to us. Afghanistan was justified, and the world was behind us. Iraq was and is a huge mistake and a terrible mess. Just because striking a blow makes you feel better, doesn't mean it was the right blow to strike OR that it helped in any way. \_ Hello, asshole, I agree with your second, third, and fourth sentences, and I think the general principle of your fifth sentence is spot on. What I'm pointing out is that quite a few people who would normally be called Dems were prepared (before Abu Graib and thee mounting US losses) to keep W in office just to feel safe. You need to understand that this phenomenom exists, despite your (and my) understanding that the root reasoning behind it is flawed. Well, that, and you really need to stop being a knee-jerk asshole. \_ To deny Iraq, along with Iran, was the largest state sponsor of terror is patently absurd. Where did the fugitive bomber of WTC 1 live? Where did Abu Abbas live? Where did Abu Nidal live? Saddam DID have contacts with Al Qaeda. On and on... \- Do you support "taking out" Syria, Iran, Libya and Pakistan? Can you explain why they are different? Also, can you explain why the US is investing in Iraqi reconstruction and lobbying to have some of their loans forgiven, if "they had it coming"? Do you think Spain should attack Morocco? Any thoughts on North Korea? \_ sicko, the saddam regime had it coming, not the iraqi people. ditto for n koreans |
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| www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/2606171 Printer-friendly format June 2, 2004, 9:29PM A one-time Bush skeptic admits his error By JOSHUA MURAVCHIK George W Bush's approval ratings are at a low. Some liberals, reports New Republic Editor Jonathan Chait, find Bush's very existence to be "a constant oppressive force in their daily psyche." Now even conservatives such as columnists George Will, David Brooks and Robert Kagan are pouring forth despair over the president's Iraq policies. But my admiration for the man for whom I refused to vote in year 2000 grows ever higher. A president's chief duty is to keep the nation safe in the dangerous tides of international politics. In 2000, I found candidate Bush too little engaged with this challenge. But since 9/11, he has offered the kind of leadership that ranks him with the greatest presidents of my lifetime, Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan. Like them, Bush is taxed with having a weak intellect and little mastery of policy details. But what Bush has, as they had, is a clear-eyed recognition of a great threat to our country, the courage to face that threat and a willingness to risk his political standing for the policies he deems essential to our security. For three decades, Middle Eastern terrorists had assassinated our diplomats, brought down our airliners, blown up our servicemen in their bunks and berths. Yet as long as they were killing us in small batches, we responded with passivity, fearing to stir up more trouble. Even Reagan, tough as he was, decided to slink away when Hezbollah murdered 241 of our Marines in their barracks in Beirut. On 9/11, however, the terrorists managed to kill us by thousands at a swoop, and what Bush understood was that our policy of passivity, like the West's efforts to appease Hitler in the 1930s, had only invited more audacious attacks. He saw that we had no choice but to go to war against the terrorists and their backers. If we did not destroy them, the terrorists would set their sanguinary sights higher until they succeeded in killing us by the tens or hundreds of thousands. He saw too that this war would be, as President Kennedy described the Cold War, a "long, twilight struggle" waged on many fronts and by many means. This meant that we would fight and some of us would die on his watch, but that victory could not possibly be achieved within so short a time as to enable him to claim credit. Probably we should have sent more soldiers, not disbanded the Iraqi army, planned earlier elections and not adopted an artificial deadline for transferring sovereignty. In the occupation of Japan, we made mistakes too: trying to impose federalism, which was alien to the Japanese; purging so many collaborators with the old regime that it crippled economic recovery and stirred deep resentment. Perhaps even the decision to take on Iraq after Afghanistan was a strategic mistake in the larger war. It might have been better to have concentrated on overthrowing Iran's mullahs or forcing Syria out of Lebanon. In World War II, Allied leaders and commanders debated fiercely which fronts to concentrate on and in what order. But the real issue is not about tactics or even the larger strategy but whether to fight at all. The alternative is to soothe ourselves with half measures tightening borders, tracking funds, sharing intelligence, courting unfriendly governments hoping against hope that a disaster even bigger than 9/11 will not be visited upon us. Are we safer now than we were before we began to fight back against the terrorists? Perhaps not, just as we were not safer when we began to resist Hitler, prompting him to declare war on us. And we will not be safe now until we have defeated the terrorists and their backers. Would some other president have made the same brave choice as George Bush to shoulder this "long twilight struggle"? Not Bill Clinton, whose eye was always on the electoral calendar. Not the elder Bush, who didn't think much of "the vision thing." And surely not John Kerry, who tells us that he voted against the Iraq war of 1991 although he was really for it and voted for the Iraq war of 2003 although he was really against it. Kerry offers, in short, all the leadership of a whirling dervish. I wish I could vote for him twice this time to make up for having underestimated him so badly in 2000. |
| www.aei.org/about/filter.all/default.asp The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is dedicated to preserving and strengthening the foundations of freedom--limited government, private enterprise, vital cultural and political institutions, and a strong foreign policy and national defense--through scholarly research, open debate, and publications. AEI publications are distributed widely to government officials and legislators, business executives, journalists, and academics; its conferences, seminars, and lectures are regularly covered by national television. resident scholars and fellows include some of America's foremost economists, legal scholars, political scientists, and foreign policy experts. The resident faculty is augmented by a network of more than one hundred adjunct scholars at universities and policy institutes throughout the United States and abroad. testify frequently before congressional committees, provide expert consultation to all branches of government, and are cited and reprinted in the national media more often than those of any other think tank. The Institute is an independent, nonprofit organization supported primarily by grants and contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. AEI is strictly nonpartisan and takes no institutional positions on pending legislation or other policy questions. |