Doctor X
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Your entire text seems a pretty damning account of American politics. You make some good points though.
Call it as I see it: it is rarely a case of "all good" or "all bad." But as I love to tease my English friend, at least we are not run by the Scots.
BTW, American foreign policy only enforces international law when it suits it.
As it should . . . in a way . . . because international law can be an ass. Case in point:
Israel has flouted more UN resolutions than any other country, but the US (and Britain) turns a blind eye.
Yup. But she is a democracy. She has not threatened to wipe all of her neighbors off the map in progressively hyperbolic terms. She also does not send her children to blow up civilians or randomly shoot rockets at neighbors.
However, she also treats the population like chattel, practices land-grabbing with the philosophy of "if we live there they cannot get rid of us," and have practiced quite frank terrorism such as blowing up the homes of families of terrorists. However, in a choice between a democracy that can behave badly, and regimes such as Syria who do behave badly, the democracy will win. It is never a situation of "black and white," "good versus evil."
For the record I still think Rumsfeld was a feckin' idiot.
Not much argument there. I would agree that an idiot is one who, like the crazy person, does the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome. Rumsfeld should have learned from the situation rather than expecting the situation to conform to what he wants it to be.
fryke said:DoctorX: That's a _lot_ of hogwash. How was Bush's antiterrorism a success?
How many have we had?
Oh, you admit the answer:
He didn't bring terrorist attacks from 1'000 attacks a year to zero.
He took them from 0.001% to zero. . . .
Wrong.
- and we don't know whether any of the measures taken after 9/11 actually helped.
We do. We know of plots that were discovered and halted by techniques and strategies instituted by his Administration. You are simply trying to rewrite history to fit your . . . what is that term you use? Oh yes, "hogwash." How quaint.
What we _do_ know is that warnings before 9/11 were ignored. . . .
By Clinton . . . then Bush. Your point? However, your sentence is fallacious; it assumes these "warnings" would have led to a different situation. That is "Monday Morning Quarterbacking."
I don't wanna play down 9/11.
Then do not write this:
It was a terrible thing to happen. But it was a crime of an organisation called Al Quaida, not an act of war by Afghanistan or Iraq.
Wrong on two fronts. First, Al Qaeda was sponsored and supported by the government of Afghanistan which Bush--and Clinton before him--tried to negotiate with--remember those statues? Granted, they were trying to deal with those who think the best way to deal with gender issues is to simply publicly shoot women in the back of their heads. They were given the opportunity to cough up Al Qaeda--they failed. Even Obama disagrees with you on that point.
Second, Iraq was not about 9/11 other than we no longer wait for the inevitable. He rather did what you suggested regarding Al Quaeda--he paid attention to the problem.
You implied method of looking at terrorism as something you can "sort out" or "arrest" is not only naïve, it fails. This was Clinton's approach after the first bombing of the Towers.
How well did it work?
--J.D.