Oh is the one to blame Bush ? Is he reading everything ??? 
I m not denying Europe have great challenge to face Now.
But you really go too far but that s you. Failing to produce children… :bravo: You sound like the pope.
Then part of the confusion could stem from the “influence” of the respective media in reporting on Bush, his stated objectives and whether and how they are being met today…
Foreign-policy wise, I remain completely happy with Bush and his efforts and am fully cognizant of our limitations. Domestically and economically, I am of a different opinion, but for all this conservative vs. neoconservative hogwash. Really… so much wishful thinking on the parts of those that want so desperately to see some sort of division, some sign of weakness. Onto Damascus! Onto Teheran! (but cautiously, very very cautiously and only when we have the right opportunities for the latter.)
[quote]The Bush administration issued its National Security Strategy 3-1/2 years ago, in September 2002. Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis termed it, “the most fundamental reassessment of American grand strategy in over half a century,” since Harry Truman set our course in the Cold War.
Today, a consensus seems to be rising that the Bush administration is veering off the course it set in 2002.
Gerard Baker in the Times of London writes that the days of American military intervention are over. Reporters write that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has shoved aside neoconservatives and taken her stand with State Department professionals. It’s not a bad time, then, to look back at the National Security Strategy, to see how it has fared.
When the NSS first appeared, news stories focused on its assertion that America would act pre-emptively. This was just after George W. Bush challenged the United Nations to act on Iraq and just as he pressed Congress to vote on military action.
“We will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary,” the strategy read, “to exercise our right of self-defense by acting pre-emptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country.”
But pre-emption was not the only doctrine in the document. The words just quoted were preceded by a clause stating, “While the United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community.”
Even while claiming the right to act pre-emptively, Mr. Bush agreed to Tony Blair’s plea for a second U.N. resolution to justify military action in Iraq, though it was justified by previous resolutions and Saddam Hussein’s defiance of them.
And there was more to the strategy of securing America than just dealing with immediate threats. The NSS called for “global efforts to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations.” Bush critics say he has undercut that by continuing to reject the Kyoto Protocol. But the agreement Mr. Bush concluded with India, China, Japan and Australia to limit growth of greenhouse gases seems likely to produce significant results, while the European countries, for all their hauteur, are failing to meet their Kyoto targets. Mr. Bush has also gone beyond the NSS by agreeing to joint military operations with India and encouraging a Japanese military presence abroad – both counterweights to Chinese power. There is also his surpassing, massive commitment to fight AIDS in Africa, only hinted at in the document.
In other respects, Mr. Bush has not delivered on the promises of the NSS. The Free Trade Area of the Americas, envisioned for 2005, is nowhere in sight. And “an independent and democratic Palestine, living beside Israel in peace and security,” won’t appear soon.
But there is much evidence Mr. Bush has made good on the multilateral diplomacy that the strategy called for. He has let Britain, France and Germany carry on negotiations with Iran; urged China, the only country with real leverage, to use it against North Korea; and worked with France in supporting the “Cedar Revolution” in Lebanon. And America is getting more cooperation from new governments in Germany and Canada.
It may be argued we aren’t having much success stopping the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea. But the NSS didn’t promise success everywhere, any more than it promised military action everywhere. It proposed instead to use American power where and when possible to further “the nonnegotiable demands of human dignity.”
Mr. Bush has followed the National Security Strategy pretty faithfully, if not without mistakes – just as Harry Truman made mistakes in following his Cold War strategy. What about future administrations? Truman’s successors mostly followed the course he set in NSC-68 for four decades, as Mr. Gaddis shows in his new book, “The Cold War.”
My prediction: Mr. Bush’s successors, for all their criticisms (John McCain wants a larger military; Hillary Rodham Clinton says she wouldn’t have voted for military action in Iraq knowing what she knows now), will find it hard to move outside the framework of the National Security Strategy, as they take on fighting what we’re starting to call the Long War. [/quote]
hi fred
Hi yourself JD. What does a rainbow face mean? I have never been good with netiquette. Hurry and answer though since I am 15 minutes away from heading out and off.
fred
[quote=“fred smith”]Hi yourself JD. What does a rainbow face mean? I have never been good with netiquette. Hurry and answer though since I am 15 minutes away from heading out and off.
fred[/quote]
Just happy to see you fred.
sort of a neo deadhead hippie thing…
All right. Out the door and off the air. Was fun having a drive by though. Take care and all the best!
Hi fred.
And, damn, fred, that was the long way around saying, “Fukuyama’s wrong, and Buckley’s wrong; we’re not only winning the war, it’s already been won.”
Not taking issue with Buckley’s argument, I can see. After all, he doesn’t offer much of an argument. But to let Fukuyama’s analysis of the Marxist/ Leninist divide on the right float by without comment?
Here I thought the issue was conservatism and neoconservatism–and lord knows there are factions within those camps that loath one another–but really, all along, it was whether or the US was still on top.
Ah well. Nice to see you online again.
. . . Bush’s support has declined even among Republicans. In the January Times/CBS News poll, 83 percent of Republicans approved of the way he was handling his job; in the latest poll 72 percent approve.
The Independent’s running this story. Be nice to have paid access, if you couldn’t already find most of the information here. [edit: nevermind, it’s now available]
[quote=“The Independent”] NeoCon allies desert Bush over Iraq
These are the right-wing intellectuals who demanded George Bush invade Iraq. Now they admit they got it wrong. Are you listening, Mr President?
Published: 09 March 2006
William Buckley Jnr
INFLUENTIAL CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST AND TV PUNDIT
‘One can’t doubt the objective in Iraq has failed … Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an army of 130,000 Americans. Different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat.’
Francis Fukuyama
AUTHOR AND LONG-TERM ADVOCATE OF TOPPLING SADDAM
‘By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at.’
Richard Perle
ARCH-WARMONGER AND PIVOTAL REPUBLICAN HAWK
‘The military campaign and its political aftermath were both passionately debated within the Bush administration. It got the war right and the aftermath wrong We should have understood that we needed Iraqi partners.’
Andrew Sullivan
PROMINENT COMMENTATOR AND INFLUENTIAL BLOGGER
‘The world has learnt a tough lesson, and it has been a lot tougher for those tens of thousands of dead, innocent Iraqis … than for a few humiliated pundits. The correct response is not more spin but a sense of shame and sorrow.’
George Will
RIGHT-WING COLUMNIST ON ‘THE WASHINGTON POST’ AND TV PUNDIT
‘Almost three years after the invasion, it is still not certain whether, or in what sense, Iraq is a nation. And after two elections and a referendum on the constitution, Iraq barely has a government.’[/quote]
And my favorites:
[quote]This is no ordinary thesis, but apostasy on a grand scale. Mr Fukuyama, after all, was the most prominent intellectual who signed the 1997 “Project for the New American Century”, the founding manifesto of neo-conservatism drawn up by William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, the house journal of the neo-conservative movement.
The PNAC aimed to cement for all time America’s triumph in the Cold War, by increasing defence spending, challenging regimes that were hostile to US interests, and promoting freedom and democracy around the world. Its goal was “an international order friendly to our security, prosperity and values”.
[…]
It is on George Bush’s lips that neo-conservatism most obviously survives - in the commitment to spreading freedom and democracy that he proclaims almost daily, and most hubristically in his second inaugural in 2005 that promised to banish tyranny from the earth.
But even the extravagant oratory of that icy January day cannot obscure the irony of America’s Iraq adventure. The application of a doctrine built upon the supposed boundlessness of US power has succeeded only in exposing its limits.
[/quote]
How long did it take in the United States before blacks and women got the vote?
Hell, how long did it take in the United States before blacks were given the right to live as free men and women?
The United States is still moving toward the ideal that is identified in our nation’s founding documents.
Should we have just chucked the idea of the United States out the window when it didn’t live up to its ideals? Should we do so now? Should we give up on the United States when it doesn’t live up completely to its ideals?
I say Iraq needs time. Freedom and democracy do not come easy. Not to anyone.
Honestly, its easy to believe that some of you really want democracy to fail in Iraq.
There’s nothing I’d like more than freedom, justice and equality for all people in the Middle East.
That’s the real solution to the core problems there but anything less than universal freedom and justice or false versions of it are doomed to failure.
[quote=“spook”]There’s nothing I’d like more than freedom, justice and equality for all people in the Middle East.
That’s the real solution to the core problems there but anything less than universal freedom and justice or false versions of it are doomed to failure.[/quote]
Is the United States a failure? I mean, in terms of trying to reach the ideal of universal freedom, equality and justice?
We’re talking about an ideal… perfection… is that something we can realistically expect to attain? Or, do we just keep striving to get better and get closer to the ideal?
Or, do we, each time we falter, throw our hands in the air and give up, proclaiming our efforts a “failure”?
I understand the concept of constructive criticism, given with the goal of generating improvement… and I understand the notion of destructive criticism, used to tear down achievements and stifle any efforts at reform.
What I would like to see fail is the idea of using military force and the threat of military force as the primary tool of US foreign policy.
I would like to see fail the idea that the US can impose their system of government on other countries by force and kill many many people for thier own good.
[quote=“Richardm”]What I would like to see fail is the idea of using military force and the threat of military force as the primary tool of US foreign policy.
I would like to see fail the idea that the US can impose their system of government on other countries by force and kill many many people for thier own good.[/quote]
Then really, the only other option is to do nothing, because the UN sure isn’t going to do anything about countries falling apart.
Road
hell
paved
intentions
paradox
[quote=“jdsmith”]Then really, the only other option is to do nothing, because the UN sure isn’t going to do anything about countries falling apart.
Road
hell
paved
intentions
paradox[/quote]
That’s another neocon myth. The UN has done quite a bit to make the world a safer place.
Really? For who? When? Where? How?
[quote=“Tigerman”][quote=“spook”]There’s nothing I’d like more than freedom, justice and equality for all people in the Middle East.
That’s the real solution to the core problems there but anything less than universal freedom and justice or false versions of it are doomed to failure.[/quote]
Is the United States a failure? I mean, in terms of trying to reach the ideal of universal freedom, equality and justice?
We’re talking about an ideal… perfection… is that something we can realistically expect to attain? Or, do we just keep striving to get better and get closer to the ideal?
Or, do we, each time we falter, throw our hands in the air and give up, proclaiming our efforts a “failure”?
I understand the concept of constructive criticism, given with the goal of generating improvement… and I understand the notion of destructive criticism, used to tear down achievements and stifle any efforts at reform.[/quote]
Any country which uses torture, imprisonment without charges and trial, invasion and occupation, deception, domination, and callous slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians under cover of collateral damage as its tools for advancing the cause of freedom and justice is a failure by defintion.
So, which nation has not failed to meet the ideal?
And, if failure simply means not attaining the ideal, what are we left with?
Really? For who? When? Where? How?[/quote]
The UN has become adept at sending in foreign troops who use and abuse the local populations just as much as the groups and gangs and armies they are supposed to protecting the people from.
IMHO the Red Cross does more to help people than the UN.