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Thursday, January 11, 2007

God Help Us All....

Before we get to the insanity that was the president's address to the nation last night, I want to respond to those conservatives, who I know read this blog but don't post, who have harangued me for "hating" Bush and stopping at nothing to destroy him. I do not hate President Bush... personally. Chances are, he and I, both sharing a love for the St Louis Cardinals, would get along famously at a ball game. It's not him personally that I detest. I loathe his actions.

When he starts to behave in a thoughtful, intelligent manner befitting the leader of the free world, then yes....I will have some kind things to say about him. This ridiculous idea that all liberals are "out to get Bush" is a not-so-clever ploy to re-direct us from the utter incompetence with which our country is being run. When I hear people tell me, well you just "hate Bush" so of course you aren't going to support him my response is...

No.

It's his actions. And if you can't see that what he is doing is horribly wrong, then how can I help you? Because you see, dear readers, that we have gone far past the point of "opinions" and we are now into fact. Or reality.

More and more I am beginning to believe that at least 20 percent of this country have completely lost their minds. I spend a fair amount of time to try to understand their mindset but the things that come out of the mouths....as was displayed on a recent broadcast of the Rush Limbaugh show.....are just plain wrong. "We have to give President Bush a chance," they say or "People are just out to destroy him." Give him a chance? What the fuck have the last four years been about?

Other comments heard were "We are fighting for our freedom" or "The terrorist want us to leave." I just...I am at a loss as to what to say anymore if people think this is true...I have gone from anger and frustration to a profound sense of sadness at what little thought these people have put into something so important....so vital.

Clearly, there was no thought in President Bush's speech last night. More or less, it was the same rhetoric with little movement in his position. His military commanders on the ground, most of Congress, and at least 80 percent of the American Public are against adding additional troops. Both the incoming and outgoing generals in charge of the operation say it's a bad idea.

Would someone please explain to me his thought process? I admit to being a dick a lot of the time on this blog but I really want to try to understand how a troop increase benefits us? More importantly, the supposed "mainstream" which neocons tout as being in touch with are overwhelmingly against this action. Many Republicans have said that all troop increase will do is offer more targets to the insurgency.

The only explanation that I can come up with is that President Bush and the people who are supporting him in this can't admit when they are wrong. George Bush was the wet dream of conservatives who were so angered by eight years of Bill Clinton that they didn't even bother to look into the man's history of failure. When George Bush failed in the oil business, people lost money. When he failed as the owner of baseball team, people lost money. When he failed as Governor of Texas, people in that state lost their standard of living.

His failures as president have cost people their lives. I believe that his past failures are what are driving him now. He will not back down. He will not admit he was wrong. He will keep going to try prove to all of us that he is "better than his daddy" (who oddly was not all that "good.") More people are going to die as a result of his wholly inappropriate hubris. He needs to stop what he is doing and I don't know if we can stop him.

It's that same hubris with the conservatives that are still in support of this president. They will never admit they are wrong and it will always be the fault of the liberals. Having only the conviction of your own vanity is how these people roll and, make no mistake about it, it is their myopic hatred of "liberals" like Bill Clinton and others that have put us into this position.

So, neocons, the next time you open your mouth to spout off about liberal hate and other overly simplistic delusions, why don't you take a look in the fucking mirror? And while you are it, maybe you can show President Bush the way to the rest room as well.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's funny how the same idea that was used prior to the 04 election to attack GWB (Pelosi, Reid,Biden), that was espoused by John Kerry more recently, and that was most recently endorsed by such a prominent Democrat as Silvestre Reyes is now being attacked by many of those same people as myopic and vain.

I also think it's funny that if government policy was set based on what many politicians and a large % of the population believed, this country would never have abolished slavery and would never have de-segregated? Hell, for that matter, we wouldn't have even reached this country.

I'm sickened by the terrible irony that the insurgent/terror attacks designed to "defeat us in Iraq" are the very things that keep us in Iraq. To me that speaks volumes to the fact that this isn't a battle over Iraq itself. The goal of these people is to inflict pain on Americans...Iraq simply makes for a convenient field of battle, particularly given the controversial nature of the American presence.

I, for one, am willing to give the troop increase the chance to succeed. The definition of "succeed" being the realization of sufficient stability maintained by the Iraqi government to allow US troops to leave. That's the message I took away from GWB's speech.

Besides, if we leave Iraq, we won't be benefitting from all that oil that we're currently stealing. I sure am glad GWB didn't manipulate the prices higher after the elections as some people were certain he would.

Anonymous said...

PL, I think the problem is that politicians are running this war, not the military. When politicians run a war, you get things like the ISG report. The brainpower of the ISG has come up with a new direction for our country and that includes negotiating with countries whose people chant "Death to America" and whose leaders deny the Holocaust and call for Israel to be wiped from the face of the earth. Baker and Hamilton want us to get terrorist-supporting countries involved in fighting terrorism. Lovely. The best the "wise men" (as Markadelphia put it) can come up with is to have our worst enemies try to help us stabilize Iraq. And, apparently, the primary inducement will be to pressure Israel into creating a Palestinian state (as if Iran really cares about that).

I thought old people were supposed to be more patient than young people but apparently I have more patience for victory to unfold in Iraq than 90% percent of Americans. Iraq isn’t fast food - you can’t have what you want and have it now. To completely change a country for the first time in its entire history takes time, and when I say time I don’t mean 4 years.

So Bush has made errors – no different than the hero of this blog Harry Truman. In early 1950, the Secretary of State fails to include South Korea in his statement of what comprises America's Pacific defense rim. A few months later, Joseph Stalin, who had vetoed a North Korean invasion of South Korea earlier, gives North Korea the go-ahead. The North Koreans invade. The U.S. is surprised and unprepared. Indeed, the Secretary of State had recently told Congress that no such invasion would likely occur.

The North Korean invaders rout the South Koreans and capture Seoul. U.S. forces intervene and eventually turn the tide, creating the prospect that North Korea can successfully be invaded. The president believes that China won't enter the war, but China does enter, forcing U.S. troops to retreat. The commander of our forces in Korea (a legendary general) wants to use nuclear weapons against the Chinese, but the president refuses and removes the commander. A long stalemate ensues. Domestic support for the war evaporates and a new president makes the peace. North Korea remains intact and now has nuclear weapons making it, nearly everyone agrees, a serious threat to the security of the region and of the U.S. In three years of combat, approximately 40,000 Americans are killed.

No, that is not taking the focus off of GWB. It’s putting things into context.

I love all the polls being done now regarding what needs to be done in Iraq. I didn't realize we were having a popularity contest here. Half measures in war typically produce half assed results. If the military measures we take in Iraq must first be approved by Iraqi politicians, the editorial board of the New York Times, Ted Kennedy, as well as 60% of Americans, etc than we will not succeed even if we double the number of troops.

Speaking of success, the victory by Ethiopia in Somalia was interesting to me so I decided to look into it further.

I notice that the Ethiopian government is not under the scrutiny of the international media, therefore they are much less sensitive to media criticism than the U.S. government.

I also notice that Ethiopia has much less concern than the U.S. about civilian casualties. One report I read quoted an Islamo guy talking about the huge losses they were suffering at the hands of the Ethiopian army. He said it was more like a slaughter of their "children" upwards of 1,000. Sounds very typical of the Islamic fundamentalists, throwing out their young in fanatical waves in front of an advancing army. Put the "children" against a real fucking army that isn’t bound by political correctness and they get mowed down and the mission gets accomplished.

Ethiopia won in short order because it unapologetically used force against vicious people who understand only force. They killed the people they needed to kill without worrying overmuch about collateral damage, and not at all about world opinion. And though the Ethiopian soldiers are Christians, they were hailed as liberators in this overwhelmingly Muslim country.

The total expenditures for the Ethiopian military is 350 million dollars.

There’s only 100,000 Ethiopians in armed services.

58% of Ethiopians cannot read or write.

The life expectancy in Ethiopia is 47 years.

One of our carriers has more aircraft than all theirs combined.

They also have something we have a short supply of...Will. The desire to eliminate a backwards ideology regardless of what the New York Times, the UN, or the majority of people in it's country think of it.

If I wanted to get things done, I’d swap 1 Ethiopian fighter for 5,000 "Oh my, a civilian casualty!!" types any day.

George W. Bush and his national security team should immediately turn over Iraq and Afghanistan to the Ethiopians.

CS

Mark Ward said...

The first paragraph of your diatribe demonstrates how little you know. Countries throughout history have chanted Death To America and we have still talked to them. Kruschev banged his shoe on the podium at the UN and threatened to wipe the US off the map. We talked to Russia for years and years and in the end, we won, in large part, due to dilplomacy.

Your keep your friends close and your enemies closer. You learn as much as you can about your enemy through a dialogue. You learn nothing by pouting in the corner like a five year old.

You also need to be intellectually curious about the world around you. President Bush has no intellectual curiosity. You defeat your enemy with intelligence, not with the biggest gun. That is what the ISG report is about.

When you start talking about "will" I realize that what you and many other conservatives want is a dictatorship....which is pretty much what we have had for the last five years. You achieve comfort in being told what to do and not questioning anything. You also believe lies...big lies like 20,000 more troops will stabilize Iraq...because you need to believe them.

Dictators rule through fear and that is exactly what you are unfortunely a victim of....fear. That is what the media is all about...they are not liberal, they want to scare us all and keep us afraid. You see it in every single one of their broadcasts.

I am not advocating abandoning the defense of this nation. Neither are any liberals in Congress. That's the spin you get from the neocons who want to maintain control. Isn't it funny that the Democrats in the House finally passed all of the 9-11 Commissions recomendations. The question you should ask yourself is why weren't they passed before? I already know the answer.

Anonymous said...

Let the military do their job. Period. Actually, our government would be much better off if the military ran our government and Congress didn't exist. I don't care what you want to call it-a dictatoship or whatever-but this country is the greatest country on the Earth. I have spent much of my life defending her and am sick about people trying to malign what we stand for.

Anonymous said...

Just wanted to let you know I've finally started to read your
blog and you do a great job. The site is so easy to use; (I've not
experienced blogs before) Yeah I know, I'm a little behind the times.

Anonymous said...

If you sit back and think about it, the people that benefit the most from chaos in Iraq and the Middle East are the extremists that are leading nations like Iran and Syria.

The US also benefits from more violence in the Middle East because it emboldens our military and those who support it in the corporate world to drive the war machine.

President Bush's "new" policy in Iraq will result in the following:

1. More American lives needlessly lost.
2. More secretarian violence
3. More anger at Americans
4. Nothing solved or stabilized

And that's just the way they want it. If you think about it, by not talking to Iran or Syria, we are actually doing them a favor and "supporting" them in their quest for power in the MIddle East. As soon as we become nice guys and sit down to the table with them, they will lose their support at home which is already shaky at best.

Anonymous said...

My prediction is that there is going to be another terrorist attack this year because Bush's approval ratings are so low. Just like after 9-11, we will all moo like cows and follow whatever he says to do...

Anonymous said...

Wait a minute - Markadelphia says "Your keep your friends close and your enemies closer. You learn as much as you can about your enemy through a dialogue" and he calls for Iran and Syria to come in and help calm the situation down, as the ISG report suggests.

The truthgirl comes on here and says "If you sit back and think about it, the people that benefit the most from chaos in Iraq and the Middle East are the extremists that are leading nations like Iran and Syria".

One lib tells me that Iran and Syria benefit from a chaotic Iraq and the other lib tells me that we should get Iran and Syria involved in helping stop the chaos in Iraq.

So which one of you am I supposed to believe here?

Mark Ward said...

Actually, I am trying to understand why Sec Rice today is setting up peace talks between Palestine and Israel....and don't forget that President Bush was the first American president to call for a Palestinian state.....so much for no diplomacy...

Ah, well, it's good to be wrong sometimes

Anonymous said...

Her's what I can't figure out...

http://www.daily-chronicle.com/articles/2007/01/16/news/news05.txt

I think I would categorize that as a "whoops."

Anonymous said...

Diplomacy itself didn’t "solve" the problem with the soviets...the Soviet economy collapsing under the weight of the overbearing state certainly had something to do with it.

I love how you can proclaim somebody "wrong" when the results of the policies we are debating aren't even in yet. So if the US used diplomacy in one situation that means we have to use it in every situation? I wasn't aware of that.

You say you are dealing in "fact and reality" as you say "people in Texas lost their standard of living". I have friends and co-workers that live in Texas and they are doing quite well, have been for some time as a matter of fact. Fact and reality huh?

Both of you ran very far away from the glaring inconsistency as well as the question I posed to you two in my last post.

Mark Ward said...

Dude, seriously, you need a reality check. But of course your defense for that is saying that we do.Yes, it's true, Diplomcay didn't solve the Soviet problem alone but we kept talking didn't we? All the time...we are not doing that now and the situation in Iraq is not good.

The results ARE in because troop increases that have been done in the past have failed. His new policy is not new...it's the same old shit and will continue to the same old shit until he admits that he has failed. He will never do that...just like you will never admit that you are wrong....so more American and Iraqi lives are going to be lost.

Our first step should be to re-deploy those 20 thousand troops to the Afghan Pakistani border and stop the Taliban state from reforming there...some say it already has....and providing a safe haven for Al Qeada....again. Why we are not doing this make me seriously question the President's competence and you should be questioning it as well. You can be tough and smart at the same time you know.

I have family who live in Texas...they say W fucked everything up...so once again, it's a question of how you interpret reality. You define doing well as having a lot of money. I define doing well in other terms...consider this..

During W's tenure as Governor, the tri-national North American Commission on Environmental Cooperation, set up by NAFTA, said that Texas pollutes more than any other state or Canadian province. That record includes air pollution and water pollution. Number One.

And according to records kept by the Environmental Defense Fund, Texas is also number one in:

overall toxic releases
recognized carcinogens in the air
suspected carcinogens in the air
developmental toxins in the air (affecting brain and nervous-system development in children)
cancer risk.

Texas is also ranked 40th out of 50 in overall education standards.

And while there is a tremendous amount of wealth in Texas, as is usually the case, most of it...well over 95 percent is owned by the top 3 percent o the citizenry....just like the rest of the country more or less.

So what if truthgirl and I have glaring inconsistencies? Last time I checked, Republicans are not at all in agreement on Iraq...even the ones that aren't up for re-election. If you want to examine a point made in these posts, why don't you define for me exactly what your word "will" means.

Because I think you need to consider that your idea of Ethiopians somehow having more will than us is a bad thing and not a good thing. The day we have the "will" to needlessly slaughter children...some might say we are at that day already....is the day that we are no longer America.

Anonymous said...

So now you’re telling us that diplomacy didn’t solve the problem with the soviets. That contradicts what you said earlier ("...in large part, due to diplomacy").

The "results" I'm talking about has to do with diplomacy between the US and Iran, not the realities of warfare in Iraq. Then at the end of your last post you do the thing you chastise me for doing – you deflect the issue back to the other political party. The point is that you liberals are on here trying to "educate" all us mind-numbed, kool aid drinking, uneducated imbeciles on here and you can’t even get your story straight. So you’re still saying that Iran is going to help us stop the chaos in Iraq when it’s in their best interest to have chaos in Iraq? You’re obviously having a very hard time answering that question posed of you so you’re back to the same old rhetorical devices (like Ridicule along with asking me a question) you always use (as evidenced by your latest post Shitshack).

I am on record on this blog as saying that money is NOT the only means of measuring success and you know that to be true. Just like when you said PL typed that GWB was "Evil"...something he never did and you know that to be true. If you were comfortable in your arguments there should be no need to mis-represent what I or PL have said on this blog. Your reliance upon such BS reveals not only that there might be chinks in your armor, but that you know it, otherwise there would be no need to resort to that.

Oh yeah, you’ve talked to more people in Texas than I have. That gives you a free pass to discount anything anyone else says about Texas. The top 3% having 95% of the wealth is hardly GWB’s fault since, by your own admission, that’s the way it is all across the country. And no, that did not just begin in the year 2001 when GWB was elected president. I’m sure they release the most toxins, probably because them the most industry and the fact that they are a large state also contributes as well. My guess is that it was the same under Ann Richards.

It all comes down to ones perception and just because your family told you "GWB fucked everything up" does NOT make it a "fact", that is their interpretation. PL already tried telling you the difference between fact and interpretation.

Why send 20,000 troops to stop Al Queda when all they have to do is put children in front of themselves or have a meeting in a cemetery? Regarding my definition of Will - You think those soldiers we saw in Flags of our Fathers would have gave a flying fuck if the Japanese were shooting at them from a Japanese Holy site? No way. I’m with the Sarge here – let our troops do their thing. Fuck that cemetery or Mosque they shoot at our soldiers from. Level it and put a Walmart where it used to stand.

You can blame conservatives all you want for terrorism. My opinion is that if you want to breed terrorists and give them the opportunity to mature their plans, there is no environment better than a free, open, "diversity"-whipped Western nation. Poverty, oppression, and madrassas aren’t the only things that make terrorists. Comfortable lower-middle-class surroundings, authorities terrified of being called "racist," and adherence to law written hundreds of years ago when the world was a different place altogether will breed terrorists just as well.

Mark Ward said...

Explain to me the difference between Iran, who wants to wipe us and Israel, and you (and other conservatives) who want to level a mosque and put a Wal Mart in its place. THAT is why there is terrorism in the world. That exact attitude.

The reason why "they hate us" has to do with a multitude of factors that, for whatever reason, you don't want to take the time to see. Our current policy makes a bad situation worse. It's like someone throwing shit on you and then selling you relief from the flies.

What is narrow minded is that you (and GW) think that somehow through sheer hubris, that you know more about foreign policy than the ISG group, who has....oh, I don't know, a thousand years experience in world affairs. But then again, that's typical of the way you folks roll...

"President Bush's proposal for Iraq has all the makings of the worse foreign policy disaster since Vietnam."

"We don't live in a monarachy."

Sen Charles Hagel (R) Nebraska, 4 time decorated Vietnam Veteran.

Anonymous said...

So now you're quoting Republicans from Hicksville, USA? I thought those people and the people who vote for them were responsible for the demise of this country?

The difference between me and Iran is that I only support leveling the mosque if someone shoots at our soldiers from it. It's fairly obvious that I'm not calling for us to just go around the middle east blowing up mosques for no reason so don't go there.

It doesn't have to be a walmart - they could put a krispy kreme there.

I hope Lleyton Hewitt wins the Australian open!!!!