The Next President of the United States: III

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
261

smh:(and please jump in TB, if you see this…)

This may be a good point to ask a question that I’ve never seen adequately explained (and PLEASE feel free to start another thread).

Why is it that Bush 41…with his vast International and overall policy experience…felt the need to keep Saddam in Power (yet weaker)…but Bush 43 did not?

(I have never even seen it discussed).

Again…feel free to start another thread; because even though it will most likely de-evolve into an anti-Obama thread; I certainly would love to see it discussed.

Thanks!

Mufasa

262

By the way, as you know, I genuinely like you too usmccds423. My animosity is directed to the argument, and not in any way to the arguer. Though certain questions, the kind with a lot at stake, blur the lines.

263

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
Saying Bush is responsible for the creation of ISIS is like saying Woodrow Wilson is responsible for the creation of the Nazi Party. [/quote]

Again, I supplied a factual description of the unarguably most important American decision in the development of ISIS. This was not interpretation; it was an objective series of simple and very well attested points. You questioned it with sarcasm and then utterly backed off. That’s really all that has happened here.[/quote]

It could be argued that Bill Clinton is responsible for ISIS…

“Hours before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, former President Bill Clinton told an audience in Australia about his missed chance to kill attack mastermind Osama bin Laden, according to audio released this week.”

It could also be argued that he is responsible for the recession, as he signed the legislation removing bank regulations.

264

[quote]Mufasa wrote:
smh:(and please jump in TB, if you see this…)

This may be a good point to ask a question that I’ve never seen adequately explained (and PLEASE feel free to start another thread).

Why is it that Bush 41…with his vast International and overall policy experience…felt the need to keep Saddam in Power (yet weaker)…but Bush 43 did not?

(I have never even seen it discussed).

Again…feel free to start another thread; because even though it will most likely de-evolve into an anti-Obama thread; I certainly would love to see it discussed.

Thanks!

Mufasa[/quote]

In all honesty, you probably know more about ODS than I do, Mufasa. I do know more than most people do about OIF, because I spent a frankly ridiculous amount of time reading an enormous amount of documentary evidence with which few people outside of professors and Washington policy types are even casually familiar. But as for the Gulf War, my understanding is the kind that any general, history-and-politics interested person might have.

My understanding, however, is that H.W. Bush did not push into Baghdad because the Resolutions, and the will of the coalition, were pretty narrowly tailored to specific purposes re: withdrawal from Kuwait, a goal of greater strategic than ideological import, and one easily attainable in open conventional desert war, with hapless Iraqi forces like sitting ducks for our easy taking. Contrast that with a long-term push into the cities, pacification, the maintenance of order – we all know what that looks like. A scenario in which Iraq came to be seen as, or came to be, a new Vietnam (which was not all that far in the past) was very much on H.W.'s mind. He repeatedly assured the American people that Iraq would not become “another Vietnam.” And he was right to avoid such – particularly given the even greater tension inherent in the religious politics of Iraq. Just as his son was wrong to not avoid it.

As for W. Bush’s reasoning, that’s a thread of its own! The misapplication of Democratic Peace Theory (plus a new, implied, and totally vacuous kind of domino theory) and its implications for a region important because of both its resources and its ideological leanings, etc.

Edited.

265

[quote]MaximusB wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
Saying Bush is responsible for the creation of ISIS is like saying Woodrow Wilson is responsible for the creation of the Nazi Party. [/quote]

Again, I supplied a factual description of the unarguably most important American decision in the development of ISIS. This was not interpretation; it was an objective series of simple and very well attested points. You questioned it with sarcasm and then utterly backed off. That’s really all that has happened here.[/quote]

It could be argued that Bill Clinton is responsible for ISIS…

“Hours before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, former President Bill Clinton told an audience in Australia about his missed chance to kill attack mastermind Osama bin Laden, according to audio released this week.”

Uh, no. In hindsight almost all of us would say it was worth the 300 innocent women and children. But wanting to kill someone and choosing to lay off – in a particular instance – out of consideration for collateral damage, while not knowing that this someone was to one day be responsible for the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, is not even in the same universe as making a positive (as in, active) decision to: build a case for war on mendacious grounds and invade a tenuously-balanced, non sequitur shithole of a country, to literally no U.S. security benefit (exactly the opposite, in fact), at great cost in American lives and dollars, and with the effect of decades of open sectarian war – dangerous, jihadi-making instability – for the world’s worst region. Furthermore, the latter is directly implicated in ISIS’ development and rise at a remove of exactly 0 steps, as I’ve explained very clearly throughout this page. The former, on the other hand, has as little to do with ISIS as 9/11 had, when the dust settled, to do with OIF.

[quote]
It could also be argued that he is responsible for the recession, as he signed the legislation removing bank regulations. [/quote]

He certainly contributed, but how this is relevant is unclear.

267

[quote]pushharder wrote:
.[/quote]

Fair enough, hijack over.

268

As an original Star Wars nerd, I approve this message.

270

I’m watching the debate right now, a few thoughts…

Rubio is getting bitch slapped.

Cruz and Paul understand the constitution better than anyone on stage.

Is Kasich just John McCain in a costume?

Chris Christie can’t stop invoking 9/11.

Can Hue Hewitt please go away?

The only thing keeping Bush in this is his donors.

271

Ted Cruz all the way.

The man went to Princeton, for God’s sake… :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

(that’s a Dei Sub Numine Viget reference fyi)

272

Earlier in this thread I observed that among the many qualities that make Trump and his large contingent of supporters buffoonish idiots is the fact that he can’t speak competently about anything remotely resembling policy – that even when his yammered twaddle is decipherable (and this is not remotely close to always), it gives us a crystal-clear picture of his inability to grasp even the very basics of politics, strategy, policy, etc. This observation was of course not refuted. But it, along with the rest, was vaguely and obliquely (and nonsensically, and substancelessly) objected to/danced around/waffled on.

It’s nice to be proved right in real time:

Note that not only did he not understand even the most fundamental (i.e., this is not some bit of technical esoterica) things about American (and Russian) nuclear weapons capability, but he was also too stupid to at least generally figure it out from the question, choosing instead to babble incoherently about literally nothing at all.

Edited.

274

[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

In short, my prediction is panning out. This buffoon is hurting the country. Not because he’s going to win the White House – barring some kind of unforeseeable catastrophe, he isn’t – but, rather, because he’s injecting heavy doses of bullshit into the electorate. And he’s making the Republican Party and its sympathizers dumber and dumber. I’ll be back to tell you all I told you so. For now I’m tired of talking about this sad clown and his sad clown fans.

Edited typos.[/quote]

I’m honestly a bit surprised that you don’t see and / or agree that everything you’ve written here is just as true for just about everyone running.

The differences of degree and subtlety are noted, but it’s still the same stinking pile of shit.[/quote]

It really isn’t just as true, though. Yes, we can all pick out some or many things we don’t like about the rest of them, none of whom are unassailable political heroes (and some of whom are terrible). I have said myself that I don’t particularly like a single candidate in either field, and on days when I’m feeling cynical I’ve certainly damned the whole thing from root to leaf.

But Trump is unique not only as a matter of degree or quantity. He is qualitatively, categorically different, and this difference is granted import by the fact of his success in the polls. No other viable candidate is a conspiracy theorist, and this is an easy binary distinction that, as effectively as any other, separates the maybe-fit from the undoubtedly-not-fit. No other viable candidate is plainly, obviously stupid – as in, would-fail-a-multiple-choice-test-on-government-101 stupid. No other viable candidate has such a bizarrely histrionic personality and personal psychology.

It isn’t that he’s human or flawed, and it isn’t that I disagree with him on policy (he, alone among those who might win their party’s nomination, doesn’t have policy; he literally doesn’t do policy). None of those things entail unfitness for office. But, for the reasons given, Trump goes far beyond that. And this is objectionable not really because of him – he’s one guy, and he’s not not likely to ever to sit behind the desk in the Oval Office – but because of what it says about the judgment of a ludicrously large number of people with whom I share the power to determine my own political future. That’s the source of my vituperation.

I mean, see my last post – and contrast Trump’s answer with the following, from Rubio:

“First, let’s explain to people at home who the triad – what the triad is. Maybe a lot of people haven’t heard that terminology before. The triad is our ability of the United States to conduct nuclear attacks using airplanes, using missiles launched from silos or from the ground, and also from our nuclear subs’ ability to attack. And it’s important – all three of them are critical. It gives us the ability at deterrence.”

There are two categorically different kinds of people. These are two different species.

In the end, we are choosing the next caretaker of the nuclear football. The stuff about the triad says a lot about whether Trump or Rubio is an acceptable applicant for the job. We can be cynical all we want – about how nothing really changes, about special interests, yadda yadda – but the fact is that, partisanship aside, the world itself ends up in the winner’s briefcase.

[quote]
All of which is to say that I wouldn’t have expected this much vehemence from you.[/quote]

I’m starting a new political movement called the “far-center.” We are centrists with just as much passion/anger as the Right and Left.

[quote]
PS: When are you coming to Japan? ;-)[/quote]

Soon, I hope! Would you mind if I got your personal email from Varq? I’d love to be able to reach out in the event that I do indeed return to Japan soon. (Also, if, by some stroke of catastrophe, this election became Trump-Sanders, I’ll be there in a heartbeat. With all of my belongings.)

275

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

In short, my prediction is panning out. This buffoon is hurting the country. Not because he’s going to win the White House – barring some kind of unforeseeable catastrophe, he isn’t – but, rather, because he’s injecting heavy doses of bullshit into the electorate. And he’s making the Republican Party and its sympathizers dumber and dumber. I’ll be back to tell you all I told you so. For now I’m tired of talking about this sad clown and his sad clown fans.

Edited typos.[/quote]

I’m honestly a bit surprised that you don’t see and / or agree that everything you’ve written here is just as true for just about everyone running.

The differences of degree and subtlety are noted, but it’s still the same stinking pile of shit.[/quote]

It really isn’t just as true, though. Yes, we can all pick out some or many things we don’t like about the rest of them, none of whom are unassailable political heroes (and some of whom are terrible). I have said myself that I don’t particularly like a single candidate in either field, and on days when I’m feeling cynical I’ve certainly damned the whole thing from root to leaf.

But Trump is unique not only as a matter of degree or quantity. He is qualitatively, categorically different, and this difference is granted import by the fact of his success in the polls. No other viable candidate is a conspiracy theorist, and this is an easy binary distinction that, as effectively as any other, separates the maybe-fit from the undoubtedly-not-fit. No other viable candidate is plainly, obviously stupid – as in, would-fail-a-multiple-choice-test-on-government-101 stupid. No other viable candidate has such a bizarrely histrionic personality and personal psychology.

It isn’t that he’s human or flawed, and it isn’t that I disagree with him on policy (he, alone among those who might win their party’s nomination, doesn’t have policy; he literally doesn’t do policy). None of those things entail unfitness for office. But, for the reasons given, Trump goes far beyond that. And this is objectionable not really because of him – he’s one guy, and he’s not not likely to ever to sit behind the desk in the Oval Office – but because of what it says about the judgment of a ludicrously large number of people with whom I share the power to determine my own political future. That’s the source of my vituperation.

I mean, see my last post – and contrast Trump’s answer with the following, from Rubio:

“First, let’s explain to people at home who the triad – what the triad is. Maybe a lot of people haven’t heard that terminology before. The triad is our ability of the United States to conduct nuclear attacks using airplanes, using missiles launched from silos or from the ground, and also from our nuclear subs’ ability to attack. And it’s important – all three of them are critical. It gives us the ability at deterrence.”

There are two categorically different kinds of people. These are two different species.

In the end, we are choosing the next caretaker of the nuclear football. The stuff about the triad says a lot about whether Trump or Rubio is an acceptable applicant for the job. We can be cynical all we want – about how nothing really changes, about special interests, yadda yadda – but the fact is that, partisanship aside, the world itself ends up in the winner’s briefcase.

[quote]
All of which is to say that I wouldn’t have expected this much vehemence from you.[/quote]

I’m starting a new political movement called the “far-center.” We are centrists with just as much passion/anger as the Right and Left.

[quote]
PS: When are you coming to Japan? ;-)[/quote]

Soon, I hope! Would you mind if I got your personal email from Varq? I’d love to be able to reach out in the event that I do indeed return to Japan soon. (Also, if, by some stroke of catastrophe, this election became Trump-Sanders, I’ll be there in a heartbeat. With all of my belongings.)[/quote]

I like how at this point Rand Paul just sorta takes a deep breathe every time Trump talks and is like, “Trump we can’t just kill terrorist’s families there’s this thing called the Geneva Convention. We can’t just shut off the internet there’s this thing called the 1st amendment.”

It really has been pretty crazy to watch how so many people have bought into Trumps complete and utter non-sense. The other candidates clearly don’t know how to handle it. I can just imagine they’re all standing in the green room just looking at each other and saying something like, “This guy isn’t serious, right…?” Jeb’s gonna have a heart attack and Paul looks like he’s exhausted from racking is brain trying to figure out how anyone can support Trump.

277

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Earlier in this thread I observed that among the many qualities that make Trump and his large contingent of supporters buffoonish idiots is the fact that he can’t speak competently about anything remotely resembling policy – that even when his yammered twaddle is decipherable (and this is not remotely close to always), it gives us a crystal-clear picture of his inability to grasp even the very basics of politics, strategy, policy, etc. This observation was of course not refuted. But it, along with the rest, was vaguely and obliquely (and nonsensically, and substancelessly) objected to/danced around/waffled on.

It’s nice to be proved right in real time:

Note that not only did he not understand even the most fundamental (i.e., this is not some bit of technical esoterica) things about American (and Russian) nuclear weapons capability, but he was also too stupid to at least generally figure it out from the question, choosing instead to babble incoherently about literally nothing at all.

Edited.[/quote]

I think this shows exactly who Donald is. No substance and lack of ability to go beyond his brash talking. Unfortunately, I doubt his supporters saw this exchange and noticed the importance of it. They know he’s “tough” or he will “get things done” even though they don’t know what he will do by being tough or what policy will get accomplished when he gets things done. I remain baffled at his poll numbers.

278

[quote]Drew1411 wrote:

I think this shows exactly who Donald is. No substance and lack of ability to go beyond his brash talking. Unfortunately, I doubt his supporters saw this exchange and noticed the importance of it. They know he’s “tough” or he will “get things done” even though they don’t know what he will do by being tough or what policy will get accomplished when he gets things done. I remain baffled at his poll numbers.[/quote]

I’ve stayed at a number of Trump properties over the years, and I think they are an apt exemplar of what Donald Trump’s run is:

They are gaudy, over-hyped, and promise great, great things. Glossiest, most promising, marketing material in the world.

When you get there, you realize, it has a nice facade, but it really a mediocre, run-of-the-mill-to-bad, property that does not remotely get close to fulfilling the promises made. All hype, no substance, no concern with repeat business.

Trump is saying the things a public tired of the mealy-mouth, pathetic, whimpy politicians (on both sides of the isle) longs to hear: kill the bad guys, stop the PC stupidity, call a spade a spade and an Islamic terrorist an Islamic terrorist.

What he will deliver is a Howard Johnson’s with a big gold sign out front.

279

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

I’m starting a new political movement called the “far-center.” We are centrists with just as much passion/anger as the Right and Left.

[/quote]

This could become a new thread of it’s own. The founding father’s establish this great country with its bicameral legislature and checks and balances for branches of government, but somehow we devolve to this. I firmly believe that the overwhelming majority of people want similar enough things to get along: security, both physical and financial and freedom. How we accomplish such is, of course, the trick. Rather than seek common ground on which to build a workable compromise, we scream and demonize those with whom we disagree. This leads to anger; people are simply angry. They feel that their voice isn’t heard, so they scream louder and demonize more. I think anger is a big part of the Trump phenomenon. People hear someone giving voice to their anger and they simply jump on board, throwing reason out the window.

280

[quote]Dr J wrote:
I firmly believe that the overwhelming majority of people want similar enough things to get along: security, both physical and financial and freedom.
[/quote]

Those contradictory desires are the reason that people don’t get along when it comes to politics. Either give up your freedom in exchange for being allowed to continue living, or give up your safety in order to be free. That’s the social “contract”: he/they with the most force will allow you to stick around if you bend to his/their desire; if you don’t bend, he/they will get rid of you. If the “he/they” mattered, the problem could be solved by getting rid of him/them; of course, the problem is actually human nature.