While I’m sure Bush will get away with unloading as many weapons for the effort as he can, I have a serious problem with the idea of committing US troops to a war in Syria. Listen to the reports coming from military analysts concerning Iraq. It’s years we’re talking about here before they hope the Iraqis can start to take over certain areas. We’re finding out what the Soviets found out in Afghanistan. What makes anybody think we’re going to get it right the third time?
This is none of our business.
Chris where is the good old (and impotent) UN when you need them?
Maybe the US should have treated the UN better and helped to make it a stronger orginization. Karma is a bitch sometimes.
The whole idea behind the UN and a force like NATO is to maintain stability throughout the world by holding all member nations to a higher standard. An organization such as this being a good thing is established, a closed matter for anyone who’s not simply throwing some history text into the blender with tequilla and hitting ‘puree’.
Is that the case though? I think that if you look at American history, right-wingers have argued against such alliances for one reason or another, and keep our membership in their front shirt pocket along with abortion and a few other (election) ‘go-to issues’ when a diversion is needed. The ideology is a decendant from a point of view that US involvement in WW1 and WW2 was wrong. Check the headlines from back then and you’ll see that the country was divided on the matter of US involvement in both of these wars. It’s the right-wing voicing this descent.
What astonishes me now is that the rationale behind all this is still hostile to the rest of the world, but suddenly starts condoning US military action in Vietnam, Central America and now in Iraq…for the reason of ‘liberation’.
Don’t ever forget about John Bolton’s statement concerning the UN building in NYC. Right-wingers aren’t in support of the organization’s existence well before there was ever an Oil for Food scandal to adopt as argument #1.
The recent development that affects this is Clinton’s involvement in peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Kosovo. The right was against anything Clinton did as a matter of principal, so during all this they attacked anything they could. No exit strategy, none of our business, NATO and the UN are inept and wrong to even exist…
That’s the roadmap which brings us to a moment now where a NATO force is more than likely appropriate to operate within Syria. Their leader conspired to murder the head honcho in Lebanon.
CLEARLY – to do anything about Syria, it will take a multinational force backed by the UN. So now that right-wingers, who historically are isolationists (before they got co-opted by the military industrial complex), want the US to bomb anything in the world that moves…
It’s an amazing set of contradictions. You trash the orginazation for political reasons…now you need them.
This is the first time that the right wing has had enough power to implement their ideas, none of which work. The right wing has used thier pet issues to distract voters but it is a different thing when they have to put their ideas into action. Maybe some of the right wing crap sounds good in theory but the results are usually bad.
Look at Iraq or Katrina thier ideas don’t work.
That’s the big myth about all this smack folks I know have been talking for all these years about politics. The right-wing ideas that don’t work in reality are simply forgotten…replaced by a batch of new ones.
The unnecessary assault on the UN, followed by the Bolton appointment…it’s what people wanted to see happen. WHY?
In charge of a country without as robust an economy as we have, there would be even greater prices to be paid for these types of mistakes. The fact that the house of cards doesn’t come tumbling down is the only thing that keeps them thinking that their world view is always right. Actually…even if that happened, they’d blame the liberals.
Just like how Sean Hannity eluded to the possibility of liberal environmentalists having been responsible for the flood in New Orleans. I caught that on the daily show…
The only reason SS reform did not work is because of the liberal obstructuinists. The only reason we are losing the war in Iraq is because of the liberal media. The only reason abstinence education does not work is the pop culture.
Maybe the reason this stuff does not work is that it was a bad idea to start with. Just a thought.
Enjoy the games, sorry the red sox are not in the series, I am kind of hoping for the white sox, hom of Leroy Brown.
You hit it right on the head karl. These lame excuses aren’t working right now. They will in the future I’m sure, but with everything collapsing at once, more people are paying attention and when that happens…and there’s no election in the near future, that’s a bad thing for the GOP.
One of my best friends is a hard corp conservative and he has already moved on, look for immigration reform to become the next unrealistic goal of conservatives. According to my friend within the next few years all illegals will be deported, I don’t know where they get this stuff but they all seem to believe it. When it fails it will be the fault of the Democrats I am sure.
They rounded up a lot of them working on military bases…I’ll find that article and post it. Your friend might not be that far off. Right now I think it’s being pushed on a state level. I wouldn’t be surprised if there aren’t a few statewide sweeps before the year’s out.
What conservatives never account for is how you’re going to pay for it. They get quiet then…one time I called conservative radio and made this point…the host (howie carr) said, “well, i for one would pay a few extra bucks out of my check to deal with this problem”…I informed him that it would take a new government organization, he said the police/fbi could do it…I pointed out that criminals would get away with more if that were the case, he concedes it would require new jobs…then i ask how we pay for it with Iraq and the tax cuts, and he cuts me off.
I think you just discovered how republicans have become the party of big deficits. They have some big(not always good but big) ideas, they just never bother to figure out how to pay for it. Wasn’t the Iraq war supposed to be self supporting. Realty bites.
From tpmcafe.com
Right-wingers aren’t going to be happy about the choice of Council of Economic Advisers chairman Ben Bernanke to take over for Alan Greenspan at the Fed. One reason is that Bernanke insisted over the summer that Social Security privatization be coupled with changes to make the program solvent, undercutting the free-lunch crowd’s efforts to try to maximize damage to the system without any tax increases or benefit cuts. They also won’t be happy that finalist and tax cut fetishist Glenn Hubbard was passed over. But most of all, they will be much chagrined to learn that, wait for it… as chairman of the economics department at Princeton, Bernanke recruited Paul Krugman from MIT.
Sometimes I think Bush just does this stuff to entertain me