And now the US under Bush has announced plans to reduce troop levels in Europe by one-third.
Bush is a shoe-in for the prize!
Gee, by your logic, I guess you didn’t give a shit about all of the civilian casualties under the Taliban and Saddam regimes… 
I think its fair to say it was about both… in fact, capturing OBL will be a big symbolic political coup… but getting rid of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan was much more important.
Partly correct… but not the only reason.
That can be disputed. It is moving towards democracy. As Bush has stated, nations and cultures need to practice democracy before they can actually implement democracy. Perhaps this doesn’t make sense to you… and that’s OK… you’re entitled to your opinion.
But its silly, really, to expect immediate democracy in a place like Afghanistan.
Gee, I think you got it wrong (again) and it is outrageous that you even imply such.
At least I don’t recall having said that I wanted to give the Nobel prize to the Taliban or Saddam, and that prize is the topic of this thread, isn’t it?
Again things are twisted until the fit, Afghanistan was never primarily about Osama as Iraq was never primarily about WMD … sure …
I doubt it, wouldn’t it have been for Osama in Afghanistan the US wouldn’t have bothered.
Had he hidden in Canada and the Canadians would have refused to give him up the US would have attacked them (sorry, don’t want to insult any Canadians). See further related comments below.
You mean: Entirely correct … but not the only reason given. 
As with Iraq the US is quick to add a few other reasons to make this whole thing sound humanitarian and right, in particular if their primary reason “fails”.
It (the part you quoted) can’t be disputed because it’s a fact.
[quote]It is moving towards democracy. As Bush has stated, nations and cultures need to practice democracy before they can actually implement democracy. Perhaps this doesn’t make sense to you… and that’s OK… you’re entitled to your opinion.
…
But its silly, really, to expect immediate democracy in a place like Afghanistan.[/quote]
I agree with the statement that it takes time and it makes sense, no argument here. But in case of Iraq you guys were mentioning time frames within a year or two, saying ‘we’ need to try. Well, Afghanistan was your first attempt to try, it has been 2 years but it isn’t anywhere close yet, so you shouldn’t have started a 2nd try at another place before you know it actually works.
As such I never argued that I expect immediate democracy, but as I also argued before the chances of establishing peace and democracy in the ME and similar places is a rather ambitious thing, in particular if you force it from the outside (and kill innocent civilians by that).
So shall we give Bush and Blair the Nobel prize for trying by killing? I wouldn’t.
Let’s see Gorbachev gets the prize in 1990 but not Thatcher and Reagan or even Bush Sr. That’s sort of like giving Hitler the prize rather than Churchill or Roosevelt.
And again, Yassir Arafat gets the prize for terrorism?
And finally, Carter gets the prize two years ago. Why not Chamberlain? After all peace is only good as long as it lasts. Both were weak appeasers that caused wars to be more violent and of longer duration than if the problems had been faced earlier.
Who do the people of Eastern Europe and Russia credit with their freedoms? Gorbachev? I don’t think so. ONLY Western European “intellectuals” believe that Gorbachev’s peaceful acceptance of a fait accompli is more worthy of the prize than the warriors who forced him to come to terms with that. What about the peaceful reunification of Germany? No credit for this little problem nation, this little Iraq of Europe?
And when we look at freeing Middle Eastern people and Muslims, argue the causes all you want, argue the methods but LOOK at the results. Are Iraqis dying in the hundreds of thousand, being imprisoned and tortured today? No, but when the Western “intellectuals” who are screeching today about abuses under the Patriot Act, why weren’t they there screeching about the millions of dead, maimed victims of Saddam Hussein? Hmmm?
Deserved or not, I wouldn’t accept it. It would be like, “You gave Arafat one of these? uh, no thanks. I’d rather not.”
You aren’t seriously comparing former East Germany to Iraq, are you?
And no, I am not asking that because I am a German or want to defend it …
Its not one iota more outrageous than your implying that I cared not for the civilian casualties in US military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
No Rascal:
I mean ALL of Germany not just the East. Germany is the key to stability in Europe and was also just as equally the problem for centuries as is Iraq in the Middle East. Hence stabilizing Germany meant stabilizing Europe and ALL your European friends did not support reunification only America did or have you forgotten that? Reunification was NOT a foregone conclusion. You have the Americans to thank for that. The French, British and Russians were actively opposed. The Poles and Czechs were busy with their own revolutions but could hardly be thrilled and the Italians were noncommittally against.
So today, merely 15 years later, the German government under Schroeder stabs who in the back? The French? The British? The Russians? No, the Americans.
And they did stab the Americans in the back. There was no reason to actively oppose American action in Iraq. Germany could have and should have said, nope, we disagree, it’s your show. They whored themselves out to the French and now they regret their little pecadillo but it is too late to restore their reputation. It’s like cheating on your spouse and getting caught ONLY ONCE. The only redeeming factor is that once France was out of the NATO vote by taking it to the security council of NATO, then Germany and Belgium did the right thing by supporting sending weapons to protect Turkey in the event of an Iraqi pre-emptive attack.
AND we are supposed to want France completely on board in NATO to do what? Fuck up this avenue in the event that a similar situation arises in the future?
AND given that Germany was THE troublemaker in Europe from 1848 and given that the US was the primary defeater of and defender of Germany during the two World Wars and then after for 50 years, AND ensured that this troublesome nation was reunified peacefully AND forced the Germans to relinquish claims to Silesia, Pomerania, Prussia and Sudetenland DESPITE the fact that many influential German groups especially the Sudetens and Silesians of Bavaria were actively opposed AND in the early weeks neither Kohl nor the foreign minister would commit publicly to renouncing territorial claims, DESPITE all this, there was no conflict, no arms race, no Russian troops remaining, no serious legal wrangling AND what does this get America? A Nobel prize? HAH! 15 years later, we are the enemy of right-thinking young Germans who do not realize how closely their nation came to NOT being reunified or having the Russians remain for decades afterwards ALONG with their nuclear weapons which would have been rusting away on some base in Thuringia slowly seeping into the groundwater, but NO no one thinks of that do they? especially the craven cowardly environmentalists who benefited greatly from seeing all the old lignite coal power plants shut down to the cleaning of the Elbe etc etc etc.
Ok, point taken though I didn’t mean it that personal, just didn’t like the way you made the argument (“greatest benefit to mankind”) because it came at a price which IMHO contradicts your ‘rating’ (what’s the appropiate word?).
@fred
Ok, so fine you referred to the whole of Germany and I agree about your point about being in the middle of things, the need to stabilize and that America supported it (see, finally I say something good about the US) but you didn’t have to bomb us into pieces to get there. If they would have given out the Nobel prize to the American president at the time or not is certainly a different issue then giving it to Bush and Blair under the current circumstances. As such I found your comparision inappropiate. Nevermind though.
As for the backstabbing etc.: I think this goes way too off-topic and is something we have more or less discussed in other places, so there is no need to go there (again).
My analogy is apt.
Saddam like Hitler could not be negotiated with, but had to be defeated and to do this German cities were razed to the ground and milliions died. I am not talking about the unification of Germany which the US was able to effect because it adopted a strong defense policy that finally bankrupted the Soviets. This too was not the typical road to peace that was being preached by the addled Leftists but look at the results which were so different from what they predicted. Look how successful. Look what a major contribution to world peace it turned out to be.
Now compare the extremely few deaths that resulted from the massive US attack against Iraq as compared with Germany and compare the fact that the civilian deaths were intentionally minimized sometimes at great cost to military strategy and tell me how this was wrong, inappropriate or failed to bring greater chances for peace to a region that used to have a megalomaniac who had repeatedly attacked other countries and who was devastatingly deadly to his own citizenry? If what we have now is not worthy of a peace prize, I do not know what is.
Ongoing deaths and instability in Iraq are not the fault of the US and coalition who have been attempting to rebuild the country from Day 1 and to make it better than before by rebuilding things that had not even been destroyed while local Iraqis looted infrastructure and then complained there was no water or power?!!!
What we see now is Syrian, Iranian and Saudi agents working the strings on much of these incidents. The bombings have had a very strong Iranian hand. Now do I hear righteous Germans and French screeching about Iranians and Syrians who are allowing terrorists to infiltrate the country or are attempting to manipulate them to do what? MAXIMIZE CIVILIAN CASUALTIES AND MISERY. No, I hear squeals and wailing about how the US is to blame? How in the name of God can these people even be classified as human without a functioning brainstem?
Also what happened to Germany after WWII? The US rebuilt it. That’s right rebuilt it. After WWI what happened, the British and French slapped the country with huge war reparations and who lent Germany the money? The US. Did the US like Napoleon loot German museums of art and steal from palaces? No. Did the US like the Russians rip up railway tracks and dismantle factories to take with them? NO, but who is enemy NO. 1 in the world according to most Germans? The US. Has the US ever taken advantage of its power to do these things? NO but everyone is suspicious that it will take over Iraq’s oil industry and that it is all about oil without proof while the nationals of these very nations fail to examine the complicity with which their government politicians and corporate executives have been complicit in deals every step of the way with these dictators. Strange huh?
MORE SUCCESS IN LIBYA!!! AND I would like to point out that the famed intelligence had no idea that Libya had this much or was this far advanced so we cannot find it in Iraq but we had no idea that Libya had so much so look how Libya is cooperating. Why didn’t Saddam do the same when he had the chance if he was serious about disarming? Obviously, he wasn’t and he was properly removed.
Now we must seriously consider given the levels of complicity by Syria and especially Iran in the ongoing violence in Iraq what to do about them. After all, we did not end WWII when Mussolini had been defeated but finished off all of the Fascists. ONTO SYRIA AND IRAN!!!
Spokesman Richard Boucher (search) said that Libyans will meet with U.S. and British officials on Friday in London on “how to move ahead” toward improved relations. Part of that could include the lifting of some restrictions on commerce between the nations.
“We’ve seen a couple of weeks of action on the removal and verification,” Boucher said. “It’s appropriate to have a political dialogue on what lies ahead.”
“The situation with Libya has fundamentally changed.”
The United States has been working with the Arab nation on dismantling its nuclear and missile programs, including receiving thousands of pounds of parts for storage and conversion. Last month, a U.S. cargo plane carrying 55,000 pounds of nuclear and missile parts arrived in Tennessee from Libya.
“As the Libyan government takes these essential steps and demonstrates its seriousness, good faith will be returned,” Boucher said.
Most of those parts said “Made in Pakistan” on them:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3457811.stm
The only reason U.S. and British intelligence are nearly worthless is because they’ve been so politicized:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3456973.stm
On to Syria and Iran is it? Have a nice war.
I probably got confused because you made a time warp from WW2 & Hitler to the reunification. The analogy works for WW2/Hitler vs. Iraq/Saddam but reunification ~50 years later hardly fits into the picture when comparing to Iraq; that’s what I meant.
[quote=“Fred Smith”]Oh for Christ’s sake Vay:
What are you smoking?
Clinton was so busy filling the White House bedrooms with interns that he did not have time to meet with his security director more than once in three years! When a plane crashed on the White House lawn in 1995, people joked that it was the CIA director trying to get in for a meeting!
Clinton had a chance to get Osama from Sudan but botched it. He fired off a few missiles at Afghanistan and Sudan but WHAT DID HE ACCOMPLISH?
And please speak to someone in the armed forces and see if they agree of your assessment that Clinton made the armed forces lean and mean and modern hahahahahaahahahaha.
If he was so successful as you say, where are the trophies to account for this success? There were no successes. You want to talk about someone who lucked out by being president during America’s vacation from history. It was Bill Clinton not George W.[/quote]
After 911, Newt Gingrich: blamed Clinton because of his “pathetically weak, inability to focus and stay focused.” If Clinton had “lacked focus”, it would’ve been no surprise, since Newt’s House conducted dozens of investigations against him! Gingrich also said, when Clinton ‘dropped a couple of bombs on Sudan and Afghanistan’ that Clinton “did exactly the right thing.” However, on 9/13/01, he said on Fox, “The lesson has to be that firing a few Tomahawks, dropping a few bombs is totally inadequate.”
What a dick.
Regardless, his accusation about “lack of focus” is just b.s. You ask about trophies? Well, 38 days after he took office, the first WTC bombing occurred. Clinton captured, tried, and convicted those responsible: Ramzi Yousef, Adbul Hakim Murad, and Wali Khan Amin Shah. Their capture must’ve thrown a big wrench in their plans to blow up 12 airliners simultaneously and kill the Pope!
Clinton could also be said to have thwarted attacks against UN headquarters, the Lincoln tunnel, the Israeli embassy in Washington, the LA and Boston airports, the US embassy in Albania
Interesting information. I will look into it. Hmmm still think that the Vacation from History Years were mostly because of Clinton’s how shall we call it interest in other things than making tough choices. Perhaps it is unfair to blame everything on Clinton, the mood of the times were hardly conducive to recognizing the growing danger, but can I be honest and say that after 911, I for one am damned glad George Bush is in the White House and not Clinton, Gore or Kerry.
I think Blueface asked the question a while back about who Osama and Saddam and King Jongil would vote for and I guarantee you it ain’t Bush. So now the North Koreans are stalling on negotiations until after the elections because they would rather not deal with Bush. Now if this is the North Koreans we are talking about does that make you want to vote for Bush or the one that they support? Ditto for the rest of the not so salubrious world. Oh and this story by the way was in today’s washington post so that’s from the liberal side of the fence surely?
Give us four more years and maybe Iran and Syria will be free too and then perhaps once the hard work is over, we can consider giving the government back to the sensitive caring well intentioned lefties of the Democrat party to worry about all those key things like I don’t know whether July 4 should be scrapped because we dare not truly say that the poor and disadvantaged in AmeriKKKa are FREE or INDEPENDENT or whether wearing clothes to school should be optional since my child happens to learn better free and in the nude or … fill in your choice of today’s mindless leftist blather…
Here’s some substantiation of the information I posted above – I’m including the whole article because you can’t access the NYT site without being registered:
Clinton Aides Plan to Tell Panel of Warning Bush Team on Qaeda
By PHILIP SHENON
Published: March 20, 2004
ASHINGTON, March 19
Very rich coming from the same Clinton who did not even meet with his security advisor more than once during his first term in office. Remember when the passenger plane crashed on the White House lawn. Everyone in DC joked that it was his security adviser trying to get a meeting with Clinton. So spare me the details of the Clinton administration staffers who suddenly found out that oh yes they did and truly were concerned about terrorism. The tax cut as a side issue was at least legitimate and acceptable policy. What about the whole 1.5 years Clinton spent defending himself regarding what sex IS? I have said though hindsight is 20/20 and it is not fair to blame Clinton entirely but he was asleep at the helm. Thank God for Bush.
From a PBS interview with Clinton Security Advisor Anthony Lake
[quote]David Gergen tells us that when the plane crashed into the White House, the joke going around the White House was that it was Woolsey trying to get in to see the president.
I think that was a reference to a particular case, not to a general problem. Woolsey, I thought was a good DCI, and I was always interested in his getting whatever access he needed.
The general notion that this administration in its early days wasn’t focused heavily on foreign policy, is that an inaccurate impression?
God knows for me it was inaccurate. We were working 18-hour days, including Sundays, with a large number of very difficult issues that were very hot that January and February. There was Bosnia, Haiti with refugees streaming out, Somalia where we had inherited a mission that we had to figure out what to do with it, and we didn’t do a good job on it, et cetera, et cetera. So it was very busy, and the president spent a good bit of time on it.
Was it his first priority? No. Was it the first priority of the whole White House? No. He was elected largely to deal with some very pressing domestic issues, and that’s proper.
[/quote]
BUT… how many times did Clinton meet with his security advisor during his first term? ONCE.
AND this is after all the same administration whose officials are stating that Bush was not concerned enough in the days leading up to 911. I think that Bush met with Rice perhaps more than once perhaps twice during the 9 months prior to 911 don’t you?
THAT is my point.
They met more than once.