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Zonie63 -> RE: You see ? NO politicians are not all the same. (8/22/2014 10:25:36 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: RottenJohnny
quote:
ORIGINAL: MrRodgers
I take you really mean Gore wouldn't have started the two longest and most expensive (and profitable) wars in American history, wouldn't have pursued a man that was not involved in 9/11 as Bush failed to do, wouldn't have let wall street swindle about a $trillion out of unwary investors and various funds and we wouldn't be in the dire fiscal and economic situation in which we find ourselves.
I think Gore would have tried to go after AQ and OBL in increments instead of actually setting our assets to the task and something else as bad as 9/11 might well have happened again before he got serious. That's just my opinion based on my estimate of the man and his politics. As far as time and expense is concerned, I really don't care how long it takes or how much it costs to stop groups like AQ or to hunt people like OBL down. Are you the kind of person who would quit in the middle of a fight for your life because it was taking too long to win or costing too much?
And as I've said before, whether or not Saddam Hussein had connections to AQ or had WMD at the time we invaded is completely irrelevant to me. IIRC, we helped put him in power then gave him access to chemical weapons which he used to murder Iranians and Kurds. IMO, we bear some of the responsibility for what he did and that made it our responsibility to remove him. Considering what Wall Street did, whatever you see as Bush's role in the issue, why don't you first try blaming those on Wall Street for what happened?
I think that you're correct in that much of the problem rests in our government, but I would agree that Wall Street also has a responsibility here. A deeper problem, however, is in the masses' profound ignorance of history and its causes and effects. A related problem is that our foreign policy has become tainted, unwieldy, and incoherent.
I don't know how Gore would have handled it. Better airline security and awareness of the event, being on guard against it has been an effective deterrent to a repeat of 9/11. 9/11 was unique in that it never happened before, nobody saw it coming. I don't know if it was a matter of America being weak or cowardly (if that's how OBL and AQ viewed us), but I think that they view us as somewhat confused and easily manipulated. Something not unlike a lumbering giant being tormented by bees after stepping on their nest. I don't think that Gore or anyone else would necessarily be "chicken" or run from a fight, but what kind of "fight" are we dealing with here? If we have to fight, then at least we should fight smart and be able to understand and coherently identify the "enemy."
That's part of the problem, since there's this perception that all we have to do is take out this leader or that leader or disable some organization, but someone else always takes the role of leader and forms a new organization. Another part of the problem is that we're not entirely our own man in this situation, since we have to consult with our allies and also consider possible responses of other large nations (such as China and Russia) to whatever we might do. This is why it gets sticky.
Our options are limited because of the realities we're facing. After 9/11, I think most governments of the world understood and sympathized with our position in wanting to get rid of OBL and AQ, but only within that specific context; we couldn't really go beyond that without complicating things even more. Even our allies become skeptical, and internal disagreements can also come about. We're more hampered by political failures than anything to do with cowardice.
I think we need to look at this from a big picture point of view. For one thing, we could try to resolve whatever lingering differences we've had with China and Russia, in exchange for a pledge of support (or at least non-interference) in using whatever means possible to restore order and stability in the Middle East. If the situation is really that bad and so much of a threat, then why can't we make a deal with other nations to help us against that threat? It's not that these terrorist groups are really all that "powerful," but their power comes in by being savvy enough to play the larger powers off against each other. We can only go so far, and our actions have to be limited - and the terrorists know this.
If we can't make peace in the Middle East, if the terrorists are too far gone and irredeemable to be dealt with on a diplomatic level, then we may have to use diplomacy in other ways - so that we don't have to worry about other potential threats while we're dealing with this one.
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