Jules Crittenden argues that PE Obama owes a debt of gratitude to George Bush — and that Obama would be wise to recognize what good Bush has done and incorporate it into his own administration’s policies.
From “A Time for Thanksgiving,” the Weekly Standard:
In foreign policy, possibly embarrassed by the eagerness with which the world’s most vile regimes have welcomed his election, Obama is backing off his many promises to sit down with dictators. His antiwar base is already outraged that he may not make closing the hated “Crusader gulag” at Guantánamo Bay his first act of national liberation from the Bush era. He is even reportedly considering allowing the CIA some leeway in interrogation techniques.
In the critical field of war and foreign policy, there are quite a few things for which President-elect Obama can thank George Bush.
First and foremost, Saddam Hussein-a state sponsor of terrorism, a producer of weapons of mass destruction, a warmonger, and a genocidal maniac-is gone. The threat he posed was a nagging concern to Bill Clinton, but Clinton, lacking the political will or perhaps a good excuse, was content to consider Saddam trapped in a box. George W. Bush didn’t have that luxury. After the September 11 attacks the stakes were raised and Bush understood the world could not tolerate the presence of someone like Saddam, who defied all international challenges and was actively subverting the restraints upon him.
For the last five years, Saddam has been viewed, in retrospect, as having been harmless, but that is only because he was deposed and captured by forces acting on George Bush’s orders, then tried and hanged by the Iraqi people. The Baathist regime is no more.
Thank you, George W. Bush.
That difficult task, which required the terrible resolve to send men to their deaths and also required several painful readjustments of strategy and tactics, was done in time so that Obama should be able to fulfill his campaign promise of getting out of Iraq and ramping up in Afghanistan.
It will be possible for Obama to draw down the U.S. troop presence in Iraq without a precipitous, premature withdrawal that could plunge the region into genocidal chaos and leave Iran the de facto regional power. Iraq is peaceful enough now that a policy fudge by Obama there-unlike on the Guantánamo issue-is something his liberal backers are unlikely to hold against him.
With minor policy adjustments that no one will notice, much less begrudge, he can stay past his 16-month deadline and continue to build Iraq as a beacon of democracy and a U.S. ally in the Middle East. Iraq’s cabinet has approved a deal asking U.S. forces to stay until 2012, and Iraq’s free parliament has been debating the matter in a highly spirited fashion-including fisticuffs-not unlike the early congressional proceedings of another nascent democracy.
Thank you, George W. Bush.
[…]
George W. Bush did not solve all the problems of the world’s most troubled and dangerous region. But, for all his shortcomings, he has moved them forward and established the United States as the dominant agent for change in the Middle East. Consider the mess Obama would be inheriting in the region if the Bush administration had just sat on its thumbs-Ahmadinejad’s Iran with an even further advanced nuclear arms program, an aging Saddam installing one of his psychopathic sons in power or Iraq being torn apart in a genocidal nightmare. Imagine all the regimes of the region, unchastened and unimpressed by the U.S. exercise of power, looking for any weakness or advantage to exploit and quite possibly finding it in al Qaeda and its affiliates.
Bush has set conditions that could allow Obama, if he abandons the desire to be liked as the underlying principle of his foreign policy and sticks to the path the Bush administration has laid out, to preside over the greatest blossoming of liberal democracy and stability the Middle East has ever seen, and in all likelihood, to get the credit for it.
For all of this, Barack Obama owes George W. Bush a tremendous debt of gratitude.
Much of this will, of course, be met with howls of recrimination from the progressives who installed the new Messiah-in-Chief — but Obama himself must recognize that to all this there is a strong undercurrent of truth that he simply must accept as a condition of readying himself to lead.
We’ve heard an awful lot about Obama’s great intellect; now we’ll get to see how he uses it: either in accepting the obvious, based on a disinterested surveying of the facts and regional conditions on the ground brought about by the Bush strategy for combating international Islamist terrorism; or in rationalizing away those gains and attempting to alter the strategy in the hopes of leaving his own seal on the fate of the middle east and surrounding environs.
The former would show the kind of post-partisan spirit to which his campaign has promised to lay claim (even if is born of a pragmatic assessment, one in which Obama recognizes that he will risk his presidency should he change course and the US is again attacked). The latter would should the hubris that the self-styled “thinkers” Obama hopes to surround himself with are apt to engage in, if history is any guide.
The past is prologue. The future is now.
This is where the hope part comes in, since thus far PE Obama has demonstrated time and again just how shallow he can be. Can he change? Well, sure, I guess, can’t anyone? Oh, wait, maybe not so much.
No way. There’s no way in the world he could kick his progressive left supporters in the teeth again this week – not after tossing out the notion that he’s going to back down on detaining illegal combatants and interrogation procedures, inviting Hillary clinton to the SecState, floating the probablity of keeping Gates as SecDef, and publicly backing Joe Lieberman.
If he praises President Bush at all for his work in the Middle East, it will be the icing on the Cake of Insanity. The Obamasphere will blow up like The Godfather. Olbermann and Matthews’ heads will explode like that guy in Scanners and The Obamessiah will be lucky to have a 55 percent approval rating on the day he’s sworn in.
I have long wondered why it was Pres. Bush did not undertake to increase the size of US ground forces after 9/11. What arguments, pro or con, did he accept and what reject? Did his final position rest on Sec. Rumsfeld’s contentions that the US could conduct ground operations with fewer troops (and thus expect to have fewer casualties) due to the force multiplying effects of modern communications and control systems (with the necessary corollary assumption that they did not foresee the need for counter-insurgency and hence, larger numbers of troops, in the offing)? Or were there other political arguments (both national and international) that weighed on and turned this decision? I’ll bet some of you have a better sense of this than I do.
I have this little daydream … you know when Obama started receiving those secret briefings about all that nasty stuff out there … Obama start rethinking the whole anti-torture, anti-Gitmo thing.
Obama will never give Bush the smallest amount of credit. Because, to do so would mean that all that shit they’ve been talking for 6 years was just so much hot air.
Gitmo (and Torture!) is the new homeless people. It won’t get any ink once the Dems are in power.
This cake of insanity looks just fine to me
sdferr: One detail about the success of the surge was the attrition that preceded it.
Sorta like the best hope for the Republicans is an Obama administration. Alqueda Iraq had power, could kill almost at will, and did. For a number of years. The locals saw who they were aligning with, didn’t like it, chose instead to bet on the Americans who had shown dogged endurance in a nasty mess. The rest is history.
This couldn’t have been done in 2004-5. The fruit wasn’t ripe for the picking.
IMO.
If different decisions earlier on in the war had been made, the results wouldn’t have necessarily been better, or even the same. Iraq insurgency is defeated now because they gave up. Living people chose to stop fighting and join. The insurgency was structured to outlast the american will. The US won because they outlasted the insurgency’s will to continue. Odd that.
This is an uncomfortable thought for those who think that a perfect war could be fought and won. War is hell, the sole purpose is to kill as many as possible and scare any desire to fight out of the rest. All the while your opponent is doing the same to you. That can’t be done out of some think tank in Washington.
And a real good reason to seriously attempt to solve problems when they are small as opposed to be forced into a war with the inherent uncertainty.
Derek
Carin: Obama will be a ‘rubble don’t make trouble’ president. Remember who he modeled himself on. JFK, who went on a spree of assassinations until he was nailed himself.
What happened when anyone said anything contrary during his campaign? It was a ‘distraction’. Now he can remove the ‘distractions’ to his greatness with the most powerful military in the world.
Mark my words.
Derek
I guess he can also thank the Iraqi politicians which finally nailed the united states down to a timeline.
If only we could make war more fair, we could be more likable as a nation. Damn you George Bush! Why couldn’t you wage a t-ball version of GWOT? Then everyone could get a medal!
Derek has it right. I will add two things:
1) The “awakenings” were precisely what was intended/planned/hoped for, and something like the “surge” was intended from the beginning when the time was right. The “surge” could not have worked without the changing attitudes of the Iraqis. Bush and company had no real idea what the time frame would be (although they clearly expected it to happen faster than it did); the only thing they could do was wait for the opportunity. Providing the Iraqis with security during the intervening period was precisely backwards to what was needed. It would have created dependence and become de facto imperialism, as the Iraqis, accustomed to imperialism and strongman Government, simply accepted the new situation, shrugged, and let the new boss handle it.
2) “Failure” to increase troop strength, institute a draft, etc. etc. ad nauseum, was not a mistake, it was a specifically intended and plotted strategy. Domestically, it would have handed the antiwar moonbats more ammunition; remember the cynical calls for a draft from the Left, transparently aching for another excuse to march in the streets chanting “Hell No, We Won’t Go”? Internationally it was didactic, part of the message. The United States took on what was then trumpeted as the best and most powerful military in the Middle East and al-Qaeda simultaneously — and did it (alphie to the contrary) out of beer money and what was on hand at the time. The intended message was “Lookit, guys. What do you suppose happens when we really get irritated?” Worked, too, at least somewhat, although the Mooreonic Convergence took a lot of the sting out.
Regards,
Ric
Though I think you right to shoot down talk of a draft Ric, to my mind that question, the draft question, is something of a non sequitur. I mean only, we would not have needed a draft to increase the Army and Marines totaled up by three or four divisions over a short number of years. It seems to me that the immediate (so to speak) dangers inherent in depending on the numbers we had on hand weren’t so much in Iraq (or Afghanistan for that matter), but in being able to keep up with potential major conflict elsewhere, which thanks god, didn’t happen of course, but thoughts of which nevertheless may have kept some DOD planners awake at night. That there has been a squeeze on manpower seems to me without question, given the lengthened tours of duty only now being curtailed.
I guess he can also thank the Iraqi politicians which finally nailed the united states down to a timeline.
Whereas you wanted to just surrender. Iraq is not Vietnam, and we didn’t go there to “get [steal] the oil”. Strike three, and counting.
True enough, sdferr, but any action requires resources which must be taken from elsewhere. Bush and company simply weighed their didactic purpose against other costs, and decided that that was the correct route to take. Whether they were right or not is another question, of course (I tend to think they were).
The monetary cost of increasing the Regular Army wouldn’t have been too different from that actually incurred by calling up the Reserves, with the consequent costs of equipping and training them. Upsizing the Regulars would have left a larger “permanent” force behind after the current need had ended, a drag on future resources; doing it the way it was done left a much stronger, better equipped, and better trained Reserve force that doesn’t require continued drain on the Treasury after it’s over, over there.
The Reserves were starting to creak a bit after the Clinton “peace dividend” was taken out of military funding. (So were the Regulars, but the Reserves get to suck hind tit, and arguably should.) There was no way to get funding allocated to upgrade the Reserves, and if such monies had been available they would probably have gone to green-camouflage stuff — forces for the last war, to stuff a cork in the Fulda Gap. The Reserves now have mostly-upgraded equipment and training that is more suitable for the kinds of warfare we’re likely to encounter in future, which is emphatically not major troop movements on the plains of Europe. Economy in all things, eh?
Regards,
Ric
there is a strong undercurrent of truth that he simply must accept
Should Obama let bin Laden remain free, too?
Bush’s original sin that all his future failures came from.
I don’t know that Baracky will really have all that much to do with his presidency. All this seems kind of overstated. First there’s the matter of a new puppy.
What timeline?
Crucially, it was the Iraqis that determined the timetable. We didn’t go in to set up a colony or anything, we just couldn’t leave them hanging until they were ready.
US Magazine photoshoots and staying thin and saying yes nancy yes harry yes hillary yes sir yes sir Mr. Soros right away sir.
What’s Obama going to do about Bin Laden, parsnip, wave a magic wand? Oh, and using the phrase original sin in this context doesn’t speak too well to your grasp of the concept either, by the way, but your choice etc.
I don’t know that Baracky will really have all that much to do with his presidency. All this seems kind of overstated. First there’s the matter of a new puppy.
Well, we know he’s pro-corned beef sandwich.
The zombie of red herrings. Osama is the Flying Dutchman of Tora Bora.
Sail on, Osama, sail on. The Left needs you.
You know how to cage a dead man? Nifty trick.
Tell me, even on the outside chance he’s actually alive, why spend the resources to track down someone who, of the last 6 years, has been a non-entity? Someone who was never, in and of himself, a real, never menid clear and present, danger anyway. Bin Laden is/was nothing more than a jumped up bagman and that only on the strength of the wealth he possessed.
Want to spend time and effort on grabbing Ayman al-Zawahiri? That I can understand–he’s an old school, real terrorist and we know he’s kicking around out there–but even he has had no influence over the last several years.
Just don’t see how you can justify on cost/benefit.
Bases, good.
Trashman, forget it. You’re dealing here with a “Progressive”, which is to say, a person with such a deprived and minimalist concept space that all things military come under two, and only two, headings: “peace” and “imperialism”, the latter exactly as defined a century and a half ago. If they have guns in their hands, it’s imperialism. No other possibilities occur or can occur, because meya lacks the conceptual framework in which they might occur.
parsnip, massive American forces bounding in and out of the hills and dales of Afghanistan and Pakistan searching for one fugitive would just get us laughed at around the world, as the Unicorn Rider is about to find out; it would be the Aspirin Factory multiplied by a factor of a hundred or so, and would end up by creating a martyr to inspire jihadists for generations to come. George W. Bush and I want Osama bin Laden to live forever, free as a bird — failed, discredited, and ignored when he’s not being sneered at as a false prophet. But, then, we’re not nice people.
Regards,
Ric
And pie. So he’s not all bad.
Obama’s favors killing corned beef and sweet potatoes! I’m appalled!
Parsnip wants to fight a war with nuclear armed Pakistan! Fucking warmonger. I love the use of the phrase, “let bin laden remain free”. That takes a whole lot of ignorance right there to even think it.
And meya, what in the hell are you talking about? If you progs would bother to listen, the goal the whole time was to “stand down when Iraq could stand up”. Maybe you guys just hate the military that much that you don’t understand military jargon. I’m not sure. And I’m saying this as someone who did not want to escalate in Iraq. I was never a proponent of the escalation, but we did. And it seems that we are meeting our goals. I still worry about 10 years down the road, but I’m not gonna bitch about something that has NOT happened.
Obama
’sfavors killing corned beef and sweet potatoes! I’m appalled!Yikes, time to practice Christmas songs! We’re still celebrating Christmas, aren’t we? Looks like it’ll have to be an OUTLAW CHRISTMAS!
#11 Ric:
You stated what I have long thought. Let me add this: If the Bush Administration were truly imperialistic, truly wanted to build a vast military empire, then having a few more high-casualty terrorist attacks in the US would have done it. True war powers would have been enacted ending the Mooreonic convergence, a military build-up of a scale unseen since WWII would have happened, (GM, Ford, Chrysler wouldn’t need a bailout as they would have the contracts to build war material sufficient to keep them going), and the world would have seen a conventional hell unleashed.
Yet that did not happen. So much for ’empire’.
O! is breathing a sigh of relief over the freshly signed SOF agreement. His worst nightmare would be if the Iraqi parlaiment rejects it…
Then he would have to renegotiate it, and his administration would be responsible for the timeline; they would have to catch all the flak from the code pinko mau-mau-ers as well as face the music should the situation become F.U.B.A.R. Right now he enjoys the best of both worlds; ostensibly clean hands, with respect to the details of the SOF agreement, as well as the effects of any fallout from it’s execution. Much like with the financial markets, he’ll be able to use the old dodge, :It’s Boooooooosh’s! fault”…
But, what’s waiting for him is the follow through on the rhetoric of the campaign; namely the ramping up of the action in Afghanistan as well as the pursuit of Al Quaeda into Pawk-ee-stahn if necessary. This will be a much more dangerous rode to toe…
Broadly speaking I see two possibilities. The first is a surge style action, doing the beat down on AQ and sealing off the borders long enough to get the Afghanis to do the dirty work; much like in Iraq. That way, he’ll be able to declare victory and pull out…
The second is a bit more ominous. Under his order, as part of the larger build-up, incursions into Pawk-ee-stahn will increase exponentially; much to the embarassment of the Pawk-ee-stahni government. It will reach a point of critical mass, where more radical folks take over that same government. During an all out push, on the Taliban ex-pats and AQ, into Waziristan the tipping point is reached and Pawk-ee-stahn declares war on the Afghans and their US allies-a kind of Jihad as it were. Since they enjoy mountainous territory separating the nations, and would face little fallout danger, they go nuke early against the US forces; relying on the hand wringing UN to exert pressure on the US not to retaliate in kind-since the nuke-strike was not against US terrirory…
After which we pull out, on O!s command, and the UN comes in to enforce the peace…
Shortly afterward the emboldened Iranians manage to sneak a nuke into Jerusalem, in a sophisticated Toyota delivery system, end detonate it…
O! swiftly throws the Israelis under the bus, joining the UN in pleading for them to not retaliate in kind; just like O! had agreed to do prior…
My crystal ball doesn’t reveal any more at this time…
I may become more optimistic once his appointments are made, but for now all I can lament is; God help us all now that this putz is in command…
In Re: The recent agreement between Iraq and the United States.
All such agreements may be modified and amended and replaced as circumstances warrant. For instance – a suspension of terms regarding the deployment of the US military in certain areas. We aren’t gone yet.
Trashman, forget it.
What! When we seem to have just found the Missing Link?
Bob:
We are already intervening into Pakistan via Hellfire missile. And surprisingly, the Pakistani government and military aren’t squawking too loud. Killing Ms. Bhutto was a big mistake, it gave the Pakistani big families sufficient reason to support killing Taliban and bringing pain to the FATA.
When Obama takes office, the US forces will no longer perform airstrikes against civilians. He’ll send strongly worded, well prepared letters insisting that enemy combatants mark the buildings they occupy.
No, Mossberg, it’ll be Court orders drawn up with legal exactitude, probably issued by the Ninth Circus.
Regards,
Ric
If you progs would bother to listen, the goal the whole time was to “stand down when Iraq could stand upâ€Â.
Proggs imagine military strategy in wartime is just handing guns to people and saying “go there”
Kinda like believing you can go into a highschool, randomly pick out some strong looking dudes, hand them jerseys, stick them on the playing field with any NFL team and they’ll be ok.
Corned beef sandwiches, pie and waffles. That about covers all the things on which Obama and I agree.
I just wish Bush hadn’t allowed Al Qaida to run away and hide in nuclear armed Pakistan, Obstreperous Infidel.
I see the Iraq mess as a poor attempt to draw America’s attention away from that originl failure.
Thank goodness the Iraqis are pilling the plug on it before Obama takes over so he can focus on taking out bin Laden like Bush should have been doing for the past seven years
Parsnip, I don’t think you have any idea what “Bush allowed” let alone what doing something other than what was done would have meant or cost. “Original failure” is your very own tiny minded construct built to mean whatever it is you want it to mean.
well, you see sdferr, AQ terrorists are like vampires. Once we kill Bin Ladin the rest of them will disappear.
The plan used to go into Afghanistan was flawed from the start sdferr.
It was designed to do exactly what it accomplished, allow bin Laden and his followers to escape into Pakistan
Bush approved it.
Obama has to deal with it.
“I see the Iraq mess as a poor attempt to draw America’s attention away from that originl failure.”
What does this even mean? I guess that you suspect an alternate teleology, as the narratives of ‘war for oil,’ ‘war for empire,’ or whatever other progressive sputterings are easily rebutted by a single counterfactual.
“The plan used to go into Afghanistan was flawed from the start sdferr.
It was designed to do exactly what it accomplished, allow bin Laden and his followers to escape into Pakistan”
Um, really? Now who told you that?
but… but… Zarqawi ran to Iraq. Maybe he got confused about the plan?
Flawed how parsnip? You conveniently don’t say what the “plan” you have in mind ex-post-facto would have looked like, nor who would have approved of it, nor who would have died implementing it. And this:
is full on nuttery, if I may say so.
you’ll have to excuse parsnip, he is this gal’s brother and gets his “Offisial Busch Afganistan Polcy” copies from the same source.
We relied too much on the local talent and it cost us, sdferr.
Looks like VDH is right, the battle for 2012 will be between Republicans who think Bush was a failure vs. Republicans who think Bush was a success.
Huckabee vs. Palin?
“We relied too much on the local talent and it cost us, sdferr.”
Again, what the hell does this mean?
I don’t know abouot excusing Darleen. I mean there’s stupid, there’s more or less harmless stupid and there’s intentionally harmful stupid and I’m beginning to believe that parsnip falls into the latter, given the minor trouble it takes to comment on a blog and all.
You have to recall the two poles of parsnip’s world, between which all things must be located:
1) George W. Bush is an evil, but fortunately incompetent, imperialist whose slathering desire is to massacre brown people and watch the blood flow, then take their stuff;
2) Killing the right people solves everything, but it’s much nicer to arrest them, Mirandize them, and try them, with attendant circus to sell newspapers.
Starting with those assumptions, it is clear that a non-evil President would have immediately sent the 82nd and 101st Airborne in their entirety, with orders to arrest Osama bin Laden and bring him before an American Court for arraignment. If any person not directly associated with bin Laden suffered so much as a hangnail during the operation, the soldiers involved would have been half-hung, drawn, and quartered, and the Army sued and forced to pay reparations to the victims and their families.
Sound about right, parsnip?
Regards,
Ric
parsnip, a much fuller explanation of your theory is going to be required before it can be given any kind of consideration.
At this point you seem to vaciliate between deliberate outcome and unintended consequnce and it can’t be both ways.
On another note, on Bush at APEC (the video this morning was telling) …
If I thought Bush was evil I wouldn’t have voted for him, Ric.
And any plan for Afghanistan that cut off the escape route into Pakistan would have been fine with me.
Might I point out the fact that we just entered our eighth year of fighting in Afghanistan?
Yeah Ric, but that would require me to haul my spare parsnip’s cartoon world out of the trashbag stored in the garage behind the wall of office file cartons containing reams of paper discribing the IBM 360 operating system that I haven’t gone through in five years or so…I think I’ll just let parsnip have at that one.
We relied too much on the local talent and it cost us
We should have gotten the Rand McNally or Thomas Bros. guides of the caves in Tora Bora, dammit!
Do they have Triple A in Afghanistan?
Might I point out that a parse.snip is a root vegetable that buries it’s bottom in the sand?
Eighth year, eh? And Afghanistan just entered its 1500th year of living in an ancient world of landlocked xenophobic tribes and strongman rule, while still adjusting to the wonders of Islam bringing the great sciences of mathematics and astronomy to its peoples and purging the awful influence of the Buddha from the earlier years, so there’s that too.
Uh huh, parsnip. I suggest you take a look at the region around 32:00N 68:30E in Google Earth (not that you have the equipment to appreciate it). You might gain some slight appreciation of the fact that people have been trying for two and a half thousand years to find “a plan for Afghanistan that cut off the escape route into Pakistan”. A bunch of dummies like Bush, Rumsfeld, et. al., have no hope of outdoing Cyrus.
Regards,
Ric
“…eighth year of fighting…”
And the average insurgency takes 9 to 11 years to defeat–what’s your point?
PW posters should be intelligent enough to know that you don’t insult someone to advance your ideas. If you insult them, you may lose their support on other issues.
I believe that parsnip’s concerns are well-grounded (ha), and if I were a “realist”, I would think that invading Iraq was senseless. More than 7 years ago, reality was shattered. It was then that I realized that the world needed to change.
Parsnip, we probably won’t see eye-to-eye on this issue, but it is moot now.
As much as this seems to be a call for unity, keep in mind that my concept of liberty will be defended against the tyranny of majority. Oh yeah, that 52-48 thing is a bunch of BS.
How Bush happens to have been the only one alive who knew for sure he wouldn’t find WMDs in Iraq, and then brazenly proved his omniscience to the whole World by doing just that, is no doubt why Progs remain so hysterically worried: he sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows when…..
And any plan for Afghanistan that cut off the escape route into Pakistan would have been fine with me.
because a 1640 mile long border to patrol is as easy as constructing a balloon fence.
Oh yeah, that 52-48 thing is a bunch of BS.
Because Obama won 53-46 Black?
Ah, the typical PW harpy retreat. The white flag is raised and waved, the surrender signaled and the PW red beret is offered as token gift to Ric’s projected Master.
You could, Ric, engage this poster without retreating into persecuted Christian mode. I really doubt he’s a member of the greatest enemy known to PW-harpies, the mainstream media.
Carry on with your Bush-as-boy-king-idol versus his invisible enemies of your imagination.
What would a PW post be without the thor Good Lousekeeping Unseal of Disapproval?
52-48 or 53-46…whatever it is, I think it’s just a bunch of posturing. I am going to fight for my ideas when I need to.
I know smart people who voted for Obama (I don’t know many dumb people, actually), but I also know that some of these people are dishonest and cynical and moreover, are cowards.
“Carry on with your Bush-as-boy-king-idol versus his invisible enemies of your imagination.” heh…are you going to be observing the media for the next 4 years, thor?
Don’t make me come down there, young man.
Please! The Obama victory is/was a magic trick! It was the full falsification of a national election perpetrated by the Katie Courec-led national media empire.
America has been subjugated to the evil metanarratives within the NYT’s authorial trickery! Except, of course, in territories such as Tennessee and Oklahoma where their highly educated populaces have known the truth and resisted full MSM subjugation!
It was the full falsification of a national election…
Where have I heard this before…oh yeah, 2000 and 2004! Very unappealing regardless of the election.
The 20% or so of Americans who still approve of the job Bush is doing may be a small minority of Americans, but they probably make up a majority of Republicans.
What a bad brew for 2012.
The Republican nominee might have to win by embracing Bush’s economic and military policies.
Obama, however, is under no such obligation.
I approve of George W. Bush. I would vote for him again. He is a bad politician, but he is a good man with good ideas.
What would be the political affiliation of the 9% of Americans who approve of Congress?
Again with the nullities parsnip? Why do such things as Obama’s non existant obligations concern you so?
For one thing, Obama won’t have to go through a primary campaign in 2011-2012 sdferr.
The next Republican primary is shaping to be more brutal than the last Democratic one.
That doesn’t answer the question parsnip. So a new one is evinced, why the recurrent misdirection?
Count me among the 80% of Americans who think Bush has done a bad job running the country sdferr.
That includes the GWOT.
Guess that makes me a Huckabee supporter.
I can’t wait until 2012 when Sarah Palin attacks Mike Huckabee’s patriotism and calls him out for palling around with Marxists. Huckabee will cast her soul as full of serpents, demons and cult devils.
The Repubs will be comedy gold.
“Comment by meya on 11/22 @ 11:19 am #
I guess he can also thank the Iraqi politicians which finally nailed the united states down to a timeline.”
Um, sure. The Iraqis.
Uh-huh.
Palin is protected against witchcraft, thor.
So I take it that you’re suggesting with your response something along the line of “it’s my firm policeh never to answer any direct question”, is that the gist of it parsnip? If so, that’s a good thing to let people know so they won’t waste time asking questions you have no intention of answering.
“Kinda like believing you can go into a highschool, randomly pick out some strong looking dudes, hand them jerseys, stick them on the playing field with any NFL team and they’ll be ok.”
Darleen, you just described the Philadelphia Eagles draft philosophy.
“Comment by Dash Rendar on 11/22 @ 1:44 pm #
“We relied too much on the local talent and it cost us, sdferr.â€Â
Again, what the hell does this mean?”
It means we kicked the Taliban in the ass and threw them out of Afghanistan in what, weeks was it?
“Comment by Diana on 11/22 @ 2:10 pm #
Might I point out that a parse.snip is a root vegetable that buries it’s bottom in the sand?”
That ain’t his bottom, that’s his head.
[…] Jeff at Protein Wisdom with more thoughts on the latter. […]
Maybe if you’d formulate your questions in an intelligible manner they might get answered, sdferr.
“Comment by parsnip on 11/22 @ 3:29 pm #
Palin is protected against witchcraft, thor.”
No, she was prayed over by an African priest calling for protection against witchcraft. Which is part of his culture, you racist thug.
You need a booster shot with that witch doctor; just like rabies or tetanus shots.
I thinks she doesn’t have to do much to keep the base’s support. Huckabee on the other hand, has burned the Bridge on the River Kwai; just in the last weeks. Oil prices staying down too much, could be a problem
but the Iranians, the Saudis, and the Russians will fix that; along with Obama’s drilling ban. The international scene, will offer a lot of silent “I told you so” as Biden predicted. Daschle running Health care, seems to be fraught with humorous possibilities (in a gallows humor sense,
Hey, at least give parsnip some credit for proving its Freudian screen name correct!
It’s also getting to be flat out amazing how this particular dynamic works out to that same end so often with the Progs, wot?
“Count me among the 80% of Americans who think Bush has done a bad job running the country sdferr.”
Count me among the 20% of Americans who think that doing the right thing isn’t always popular and isn’t always seen as right.
Count me among those who don’t think that the present culture and political climate would allow George W. Bush to be seen as right.
Also count me among those who think that running the country isn’t just the job of a President.
Ah, yes. Obama’s “secret plan for capturing bin Laden”.
Osama has almost certainly been dead for years. The military and CIA will keep looking for him, for a couple of reasons:
1) He might, by some wild quirk of fate, be alive.
2) Even if it’s a long shot, it’s practically guaranteed that continuing the search will turn up all sorts of other useful information. The search is unlikely to represent wasted effort, even if he’s dead.
But hey, it’s possible that an empty suit who’s never accomplished anything in his life, and who has no skill or experience in military or security affairs whatsoever, will manage to catch the big L. Feel free to come back here and crow at that point. Until then, you’re simply going to get laughed at and/or trollhammered.
No, she was prayed over by an African priest calling for protection against witchcraft. Which is part of his culture, you racist thug.
The only acceptable religious preaching allowed now will be the I-hate-whitey-who-gave-the-oppressed-minorities-crack-and-AIDS.
So my questions are unintelligble? Perhaps some of the other commenters here can attest to your view, or, if not holding your view, demonstrate that those questions weren’t so unintelligible after all. And, ok, that would be fine to suggest that they were unintelligible, I suppose, had you begun with some indication that you did not understand what I was asking (though I don’t think there is anything particulary unintelligible about the question “Why do such things as Obama’s non existant obligations concern you so?”, all the moreso in light of your later profession to be a Huckabee supporter), rather than respond not at all or indirectly as you manifestly have done.
The Lillehammer Mining Disaster of 2012
Is that why you haven’t answered mine?
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/anpr.html
I sure hope everyone has availed themselves of their right to comment on the EPA’s proposal to regulate fossil fuel CO2 emissions as a “pollutant”. I wrote about 4 pages, but I think just emphazing the fact that the ipcc and its AGW “science” is nothing but a grand hoax might be helpful. Deadline is Nov. 28, which the EPA doesn’t tell you at that page.
– No need to thank me, parsnip.
Huckabee’s just 53 years old, sdferr.
Making him the only one of the current Republican leaders to have a chance of winning the presidency in 2016, assuming Palin’s aging grandma image in eight years will fail to cause starbursts in all but her kinkiest of supporter’s pants.
“Palin’s aging grandma image in eight years will fail to cause starbursts in all but her kinkiest of supporter’s pants.”
That’s actually funny.
FWLIW, Osama might be dead or alive, and I don’t see either as being a big deal. Might just be more useful, in an exploiting of the enemy sort of way, to continue the fiction of him being alive.
And, if he is by chance is alive, he’s pretty much boxed up right now anyhow.
Anyway, the man is only one man, just a symbol. I never saw the Afghan war as being abouot one fkn man, that’s just weetoddid.
Thatcher was always dismissed as “that grocer’s daughter”
And Reagan was always dismissed as some cowboy/bad actor/clueless rube.
“Comment by Spiny Norman on 11/22 @ 5:46 pm #
And Reagan was always dismissed as some cowboy/bad actor/clueless rube.”
Don’t forget “amiable dunce”.
The “dunce” that destroyed the Soviet Empire.
Guys, why are you arguing with yet another one of alphie’s sock puppets? “Parsnip” is using alphie’s same old talking points.
Seriously, folks, if it seems like you’re arguing the same points over and over, it’s because you are — and with the same mouth-breathing piece of shit, too.
I don’t know whether you could have told from the available evidence, since there genuinely isn’t much of it there to tell from, Rob, but I had given up a while back at parsnip’s last comment and would have no more to do with it. Whether parsnip is or isn’t alphie, I couldn’t say, as I’ve not had much, if any, direct exchange with alphie under that name, so forbear, if you will, the timewaste above.
I have long maintained that Iraq, in addition to being in our strategic national interest, was a profoundly moral war. Sadam was a monster, and his values (such as they were) were antiethical to ours. By deposing him the world was made safer, and the cause of liberalism (in the classical sense) was advanced. I can’t help but think that the more that liberalism is embraced worldwide, the more peacable the world is likely to be.
Now that’s funny. What did you think of Loose Change, just to gain some further calibration data? Once you’ve answered that, what is your position on balloon fences as national missile defense assetts?
Oh, I trollhammered parsnip the instant it showed up, Rob.
Thank George Bush? Most definitely.
Here’s hoping I get to say the prayer this Thanksgiving.
Give one of my liberal in-laws a heart attack.
Nice, and typical.
“Nice, and typical.”
Gee, cynn must be masterbating…
Nice and typical.
You are so not funny.
Lad, play nice.
I hate Vikings.
Hey, you give the boy a Hammer, and every problem’s a Jotun.
parsnip blathered:
“Allowed”? Why do idiots like you think our enemies cannot act on their own?
Did FDR “allow” the Germans to launch a counteroffensive in the Ardennes?
parsnip reveals itself:
Moby/concern troll. Nevermind. It’s not serious.
parsnip wrote:
SSG Ratso asked:
Is that why you haven’t answered mine?
I think he’s trying to pretend it doesn’t exist and people will forget.
Odin: Actually, I think Loki broke loose and stole Thor’s login. Again.
George Bush to Jim Webb: “Hey Jim, I know you really hate me, but I would really like to know, how’s your son doing? I’ll keep him in my prayers.”
Jim Webb: “Fuck you Mr. President.”
Barack Obama to Jim Webb “Hey Jim, I know you really love me, but what I’d really like to know is how am I doing? Do you love me even more now? I hope so.”
Jim Webb to Obama (with Obama’s balls in his mouth): “Blbb lrbl mllbmm zzmmlbbl.”
….he said boldly.
The stupid people, who aren’t so political but voted for the cheap chicago political hack are gonna look up in about 6 months and wonder how that nigger got in there. Because they’re stupid, and they’re going to lash out. And unemployed, and wondering why we’re tilting at all these fucking windmills.
By the way, I remember reading an inteview of Rumsfeld’s after he had left. He intimated, without coming out and saying it, that he would have preferred having a larger presence of manpower in the ME. I think he’s a helluva man and was doing the bidding of the administration, which by the way, I’ve got no problem with their execution of the war at any time. There’s a simple reason for this, no battle plan survives the intitial start up to any war. You just don’t know till it happens…except I suppose if you’re a messiah or sumpin.
Well, donald, I don’t think you’re correct. I think you are, like a few others here, a dumb fuckin’ asshole overcome with Obama Derangement Syndrome.
What am I missing here faggot? And yes, I’m an asshole. I gave my opinion on the near future of a bunch of morons, and then commented on Rumsfeld. What’d I miss? Call it what you want, but I’m not missing one fucking chance to point out that hack’s coming disasters every fucking chance I get. He’s earned it.
Well, donald, I don’t think you’re correct.
thor has read Obama’s autobiographies, donald, he knows the man. He has let the word into his heart, unlike you non-believers, he knows the true oneness of O!
He is also going to be leading the moron revolt in a couple of years, I would wager.
It is always interesting to hear the alphies of the world argue military matters without looking at an atlas, and then failing to do that they fail to consider supply routes, current local politics, available forces, and so on.
Oh, ok, thanks B MOE. I gotta get some frickin nuance.
Ah, the typical PW harpy retreat. The white flag is raised and waved, the surrender signaled and the PW red beret is offered as token gift to Ric’s projected Master.
You could, Ric, engage this poster without retreating into persecuted Christian mode. I really doubt he’s a member of the greatest enemy known to PW-harpies, the mainstream media.
Carry on with your Bush-as-boy-king-idol versus his invisible enemies of your imagination.
Is it just me, or does this have little to no relation to the quote it seemingly responds to? I’m curious, because when one makes the “non-responsive” charge against someone, it would seem to be a good idea to be, well, responsive yourself.
Just askin’.
It’s similar to the way they’ll derisively lecture folks on how war isn’t like the movies, then cite movies as how they know about war.
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I really like the content of your site and the varied comments.