Great!

Students of History may recall that President Lincoln was often referred to as "The Gorila" or "The Original Gorila" by his contemporaries.  Mr. Lincoln was also called uncouth, stupid, etc.  Most of his contempories are now forgotten.  He also lead our nation through a war to preserve our nation.  Could it be that History is repeating it's self?

You DARE compare this arrogant smug child of priviledge who never earned a damn thing in his life to Abraham Lincoln who started in a log cabin and wound up in the Shite House?
Not even the biggest windbags in the Clear Channel arsenal have had the gall and temerity to propose THAT laughable comparison!

A more appropriate comparison would be George W Bush to Nero Claudius Caesar, who fiddled while Rome burned in AD 64. Both rose to the pinnacle seat of power through nefarious means, both were children of priviledge and both were looked on with contempt by the rest of the world very soon after coming to power. And like Nero who's ascendance to the throne is marked by many historians as the turning point of the Roman Rmpire, so to will the reign of George W Bush eventually be looked upon as the turning point of America's path from greatness.

lol

I wouldn't exactly compare Bush to Lincoln.

During the campaign between Bush and Gore, I kept thinking it was what they used to call a Hobson's Choice and thinking that either way it goes it isn't going to be the finest point in American Political History.

So whether or not he'll be a Lincoln or a Nero ..... 20 years will tell.

But it sure does bring out the fringe element and the haters and it's fun to watch.

Zed .. one more think to stick in your craw .....

One thing about Clear Channel ... and I have personal knowledge of this ... they care about one thing and one thing only:  MONEY!

Their singular goal is to raise ratings to the point and for the sole purpose of charging confiscatory advertising rates in order to generate profits so they can pay their executives well and generate revenue for their stock holders.

If the American Communist Party wants to advertise on Clear Channel, their money is as welcome as anyone's.

If the smattering of local liberal talk show hosts that they have tried over the years (and continue to try periodically) would generate an audience that would substantiate revenue, the liberals could knock Rush Limbaugh off the air and the executives, staff and stock holders of Clear Channel Communications, Inc. would stand there gleefully rubbing their hands as Limbuagh went down in flames and they added another $8 per 10 seconds to the rate sheet.

Actually, Bush is more comparable to Monroe, and FDR, than Lincoln.  There's apparently a new book coming out by John Lewis Gaddis, a Yale history professor, that argues that Bush is implementing only the third grand American foreign policy strategy.  He is quoted as noting that "Bush also boldly rejected the constraints of an outmoded international system that was really nothing more that a snapshot of the configuration of power that existed in 1945."

So much for the rantings of the BushHating, internationalist crowd.

The memoirs of just about every President since Truman have complained that for all their supposed "power" they were frustrated more often than not while trying to influence Foreign Policy.  

The reasons, they stated, were usually the same: First, the increasingly direct involvment at the congressional level makes it harder for the President to be THE voice of the country, and more importantly and a MUCH bigger complaint by the past Presidents, is that the State Department is populated by the Civil Service and the specialists for each country in the world have survived the last 4 administrations and will survive the next 4 and really don't care that much what the temporary resident of the White House thinks.... so they tend to act on directives that THEY consider important, pass up information that THEY think is relevant ... etc.

Now this isn't ME saying that .. this is the people who said that changing American Foreign Policy was the hardest part of their jobs.

Meanwhile, I have a friend in Britain that complains "the problem with you Yanks is, every 4 years your foreign policy wags like the tail of a stray dog trying to get someone to toss him a bone.  Why are you so afraid of standing up and saying "This is what's in OUR best interest" and then just do what needs doing?"

Funny how the view changes depending on where you're seated.

There is nothing wrong with a bold implementation of policy, and I personally think it came too late in WW2.  If the likes of FDR, given the turmoil in Europe of the previous century and WW1, had garnered the will and courage of the world to destroy Hitler after his invasion of Poland WW2 would never have happened on the scale it did and 500,000 Americans and countless millions wouldn't have had to die.  
  I wouldn't get mad if someone said FDR and other European leaders at the time had a policiy of naive appeasement.  Its a perfectly valid statement given the history of WW1.  
  Where FDR and the world deserve credit is realizing that once you defeat your enemy it can be in your self interest, and in the interest of world peace to rebuild those societies so they don't descend into chaos like Germany after WW1 and  Afghanistan after the Russian pullout.  Had the world help rebuild Germany after WW1, instead of leaving it in ruins, maybe Hitler would never have come to power.  That lesson was all too lost in Afghanistan where there was an empty vaccum which allowed the Taliban to flourish.  
  Sen. Biden was the only one who had the balls to admit after 9-11 that he actually felt he shared some blame because had he voted to appropriate the 15billion to rebuild Afghanistan after the Russians pulled out maybe that country wouldn't have turned into a hell hole where the Taliban flourished and eventually we paid close to a trillion dollars to recover from 9-11.  
  Here is a bold thought.  Lets get rid of oil as the global economic base, so the corrupt regimes in the Middle East can't hold the world hostage to a controlled resource.  Lets invest billions in harnessing free and unlimited sources of energy so eventually most nations can harness energy for their societies for free and hence help move countless poor people and nations out of their misery.  So we have a foreign policy based on principle, not one based on portecting oil interests and hence having to overthrow democratically elected govt's and putting in corrupt "evil doers" to keep oil flowing.  
  I dare say getting rid of oil as a global energy source will do more for world peace and global economic growth than overthrowing any dictator, any outreach campaign, and any war.  You change the global energy dynamic and change the entire global geopolitical dynamic.

There is nothing wrong with a bold implementation of policy, and I personally think it came too late in WW2.  If the likes of FDR, given the turmoil in Europe of the previous century and WW1, had garnered the will and courage of the world to destroy Hitler after his invasion of Poland WW2 would never have happened on the scale it did and 500,000 Americans and countless millions wouldn't have had to die.  
  I wouldn't get mad if someone said FDR and other European leaders at the time had a policiy of naive appeasement.  Its a perfectly valid statement given the history of WW1.  
  Where FDR and the world deserve credit is realizing that once you defeat your enemy it can be in your self interest, and in the interest of world peace to rebuild those societies so they don't descend into chaos like Germany after WW1 and  Afghanistan after the Russian pullout.  Had the world help rebuild Germany after WW1, instead of leaving it in ruins, maybe Hitler would never have come to power.  That lesson was all too lost in Afghanistan where there was an empty vaccum which allowed the Taliban to flourish.  
  Sen. Biden was the only one who had the balls to admit after 9-11 that he actually felt he shared some blame because had he voted to appropriate the 15billion to rebuild Afghanistan after the Russians pulled out maybe that country wouldn't have turned into a hell hole where the Taliban flourished and eventually we paid close to a trillion dollars to recover from 9-11.  
  Here is a bold thought.  Lets get rid of oil as the global economic base, so the corrupt regimes in the Middle East can't hold the world hostage to a controlled resource.  Lets invest billions in harnessing free and unlimited sources of energy so eventually most nations can harness energy for their societies for free and hence help move countless poor people and nations out of their misery.  So we have a foreign policy based on principle, not one based on portecting oil interests and hence having to overthrow democratically elected govt's and putting in corrupt "evil doers" to keep oil flowing.  
  I dare say getting rid of oil as a global energy source will do more for world peace and global economic growth than overthrowing any dictator, any outreach campaign, and any war.  You change the global energy dynamic and change the entire global geopolitical dynamic.

condemn Bush as a "moron" and rely upon his occasional errors of diction to support that position often suffer themselves from the same imperfection.

As a general rule, criticism of a poster based on a proofreading of his posts on a pubic message board, where typos abound, is quite unfair. However, when the same "typo" occurs multiple times in a post, it is rarely a "typo."

Note to Zed: there is no D in the word privilege.

(Note to all: there are NO typos in this post.)

The salient quote is actually....

"undertook a decisive and courageous reassessment of American grand strategy following the shock of the 9/11 attacks. At his doctrine's center, Bush placed the democratization of the Middle East and the urgent need to prevent terrorists and rogue states from getting nuclear weapons. Bush also boldly rejected the constraints of an outmoded international system that was really nothing more that a snapshot of the configuration of power that existed in 1945."

Except this apparently was not researched well by Gaddis because O'Neill and others have now said the plan as outlined by PNAC, (World Domination by the USA following hegemony in the Middle East) was considered and planned BEFORE 9/11. Additionally, the Bush Regime is NOT consistent in it's application and implementation of this so called grand strategy because he ignores or even supports other despotic nations developing WMDs, like Iran, DPRK, and Pakistan.


TET  

flames //devnull
Your link also is to an OPINION piece in the Moonie rag Washington Times and cannot be held as factual or reporting, but merely opinion.

Maybe liberal talk show hosts could get .....ahem....higher ratings if, like Lush Limpwad, they were drug addicts and were stoned most of the time.

It all depends on whose ox is being gored.

TET

I think you meant a public message board - you probably relied on a spellchecker.

Bush is not a moron or idiot. Those are not choices but rather mental conditions that were previously based on IQ levesl. (No longer consider PC anymore BTW).

Bush is ignorant. Bush's ignorance comes from his CHOICE to not learn. Thuss , he continues to not know the right words to use and makes many mapaproprisms. You know the type from elementary school. The kid who is a C- minus kid and whose parents blame the teachers. The kid has the capacity to learn but chooses not to and his parents let him get away with it.

TET

That was precisely the point of my NO typos parenthetical! It's known as irony (or maybe just a bad pun). But I assure you, there was no spell-checker involved.

Eventually, the political wars will die down and this message board will return to its regularly scheduled programming.


-- Modified on 2/12/2004 4:28:07 PM