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Webb to Shrubby: Mind your own damn business

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by dog428, Nov 30, 2006.

  1. Mighty_Wingman

    Mighty_Wingman Active Member

    That sounds about right, Ragu. Which is a shame. I voted for Bush once because I thought he was something other than a clueless political hack. I was, unfortunately, totally wrong.
     
  2. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    I got suckered in once, too. Regretted that decision ... realrealquick.

    And my real problem with it is not Bush himself -- a good leader can still be a total hack as long as he surrounds himself with the right people. But Bush surrounded himself with some pretty despicable human beings (Cheney chief among them), with other incompetent fools put in the wrong positions (hellooooo, Arabian horses!), and with people who I wholeheartedly believe do not have the best interests of the country at stake (ahem, Ashcroft and Rummy).

    The one damning fault I find with Bush personally is he doesn't seem to have any intellectual curiosity. And that's inexcusable for a political leader: you have to want to know things. And he never has -- he just wants to know that everything's OK, so he can go back to Crawford and not think about anything. No one like that should be in charge of a McFranchise, let alone leader of the free world.
     
  3. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    Ragu --

    You might be right about Iraq seeming smaller later.

    But that assumes we'll leave there in my lifetime, something I just don't see.

    We aren't out of Korea yet, and a permanent job policing Iraq will put a dire strain on our military for decades to come.

    That won't look good to the eyes of history.
     
  4. Mighty_Wingman

    Mighty_Wingman Active Member

    I really wonder about Bush's intelligence. I've said for a long time that he's dumb like a fox...his everyday idiot persona continuously causes people to underestimate him.

    I'm starting to think I was wrong on that, and buck's estimate is on target. I definitely agree that Bush, who hahs always loved to delegate, has given too much power to incompetents. I don't really think Cheney or Rummy or Ashcroft are evil, per se. They're just ambitious little men who want to use a powerful executive to pursue their own goals. I think everyone in the Bush administration -- like any other -- believes they're doing what's best. They just happen to have been wrong with devastating regularity in the last few years.
     
  5. Mighty_Wingman

    Mighty_Wingman Active Member

    The difference is, in Korea, the "Leave now!" crowd never got much political traction. Reasonable people can disagree over exactly why that hasn't been the case with Iraq, or whether we should leave before a stable, democratic Iraq gets to its feet. But I think we will leave before that happens.

    I think there's a slim chance we could see both candidates in 2008 publicly pledging exactly that: Withdrawal within 100 days of the inauguration, or something similar. That puts most of the political cost on Bush. Though, as Nixon found out, withdrawal doesn't look very pretty on TV either.
     
  6. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    I'm just saying that Iraq sucks and it looks like the worst mess ever right now.

    In 1968, Vietman sucked and it looked like the worst mess ever. And now we have a whole generation that don't know much about Vietnam or its significance or what it meant to that generation. And that's something that occurred fairly recently.

    Wars are also funny, in that it's often not about the rightousness or the sentiment when we were invading. It's always about whether we kicked ass. A large percentage of Americans were gung ho about Iraq when we went in. Now they are against the war.

    There are all of these past military interventions that are all but forgotten now, which was my original point. But even when they are remembered, no one really considers how they were perceived at the time. The Mexican War, under Polk, was wildly unpopular at first. Pretty similar to Iraq, people thought Polk manufactured the war. But it ended quickly and ridiculously easily, and Polk has gone down as one of the best presidents. People thought McKinley was being imperialistic when we got involved in the Spanish-American War. But we kicked ass and sentiment toward the war ended positively.
     
  7. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    I have no doubt that you're right that the reason the average person dislikes the war now is different than mine.

    That said, it's unwinnable, has been unwinnable for a while, and American boys are still getting blown up.

    That won't look good in the history books. Hell, it won't look good on Tuesday when the Baker-Hamilton report comes down.
     
  8. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    "We're off to bombing these people. We're over that hurdle. And I don't think anything is going to be as bad as losing, and I don't see any way of winning…I'm scared to death of putting ground forces in, but I'm more frightened about losing a bunch of planes from lack of security"

    LBJ speaking to Robert Mcnamara - 2/26/65

    At that time there were 3500 troops in Nam. By time he left office in '68 there were 500,000 troops in Nam-- a war he felt could not be won.

    Fenian in your continued intellectual dishonesty you can blame Nixon all you want, but the fact remains that Nixon ended a war began by JFK and escalated by LBJ.
     
  9. hondo

    hondo Well-Known Member

    Lord I hate what's coming. However...

    Boys, I think Jim Webb showed his ass on this one. And someone's stance on the war has nothing to do with it. I would think that an incoming freshman Senator might be a bit flattered that the President remembered he had a son in Iraq.

    Hell all he did was ask him how his son was doing! That didn't merit a smart-ass response from Webb, nor does it merit three pages of Bush Bashing.
     
  10. Mighty_Wingman

    Mighty_Wingman Active Member

    I think it goes without saying that Webb could have chosen a better time to give Bush a metaphorical "Fuck You." It doesn't exactly speak well of the new spirit of bipartisanship Reid and Pelosi have been singing about.

    But, of course, so many people, especially around here, want to tell Bush to fuck himself, they can't help but get excited when someone does.
     
  11. Flying Headbutt

    Flying Headbutt Moderator Staff Member

    Hondo, like George Will forgot too, the President gave a rather short and shitty response to an honest answer. Personally I'd rather Webb give that answer than a meaningless patronizing "he's doing fine" especially if he ISN'T doing fine over there.

    Or was the whole situation supposed to be a "I'll ask the question even though I don't really give a shit about the answer and you'll give a boring answer that contains no thought to it so we can all pretend we each give a shit about the other" moment?
     
  12. Mighty_Wingman

    Mighty_Wingman Active Member

    I think you're mistaking politeness for hypocrisy. Or confusing rudeness with "speaking truth to power."
     
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