GWB
By Peter - Posted on June 23rd, 2007
Tagged: George Bush
American citizens - what worries me about this president of yours (and more, about his vice president), is that after examination of the available data, i find a large number of reasons to think he should NOT be president, but almost none in his defense.
one of my fellow catholics (JS) seems to think he's alright, which worries me - one of us has to be very, very wrong.
can you please inform me, (honestly!) why i should NOT intensely dislike all that GWB and Cheney stand for?
this is an honest request for info. Thanks!
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Peter,
Of course you are naturally free to object to the presidents leadership. I think that one advantage we have with the wonderful blog site that Jonathan has made for us is to freely debate and to provide the data and evidence that we see and combine it with the findings of others to learn more and exchange ideas.
In this spirit, I must admit that there has never been a president with whom I have agreed completely on all issues. The same is true of the actions and omissions of GWB. Nevertheless, I do believe he has done his job - which is to protect the country as commander in chief. Indeed there may be other jobs that you think he should do better at.
Why not simply post an issue and discuss one issue at a time?
js
Joey, agreed. here are some objections:
i think this is fairly strong for starters, and it does not include any debatable issues (like you think someone is lying but you can't prove it). here is what i think he did (or tried to do, well):
anything else?
Peter,
Tell us how GWB in Iraq violates the Just War Theory. BTW tell us what is JWT?
You obviously think that such a violation has occurred.
Don't forget to look up how many UN resolutions were ignored by Saddam and tell us why there should have been yet more resolutions before the coalition acted.
Thanks, sincerely!!
Joey - i am not exactly sure what you mean by just-war-theory. did i use that phrase? i must be getting old.
i think i posted a link to the CCC here http://www.conversationamongfriends.org/not-ethical#comment-125 . that's what our ma church has to say about it, and i'm happy to agree.
"..governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed...", under the following conditions:
can we say these are justified?
Bush, Cheney, et al. believed 1, 2, and 3. This is tragic evidence of their lack of wisdom, of their incompetence.
The Washington Post is running a series on Cheney...
'A Different Understanding With the President'
Pushing the Envelope on Presidential Power
A Strong Push From Backstage
WTF
et al. above includes all the leading Dems too, Kerry, Kennedy, Clinton, etc.
Careful with the blame shifting.
The Pope advised GWB that this was an abyss - now there is the seat of wisdom.
The architects of the war were Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, etc. Others share some responsibility, but at a different order of magnitude.
My guess is that for Clinton, Kerry, et al. the authorization vote was a gamble made for political expediency (i.e. to help their electoral chances), rather than because they thought it was wise. For this they also deserve some blame.
good arguments, guys!
as far as i remember, i was pro-war when it started, because i thought that 1, 2 and 3 were fulfilled - or maybe i didn't sufficiently care about whether they really were fulfilled - chopping Saddam's head off and bringing peace to the iraqi people sounded real good back then. what i personally did not recognize was that the iraqi people as such doesn't exist - you deal with individual fractions, many of which are perfectly happy to kill each other for minor gain.
looking back, i think i am as guilty as bush and co about starting that war - maybe i have a bit of an excuse because i hardly had any facts, but that's all.
putting my 20:20 hindsight specs on, it seems that nobody ever looked at the data before the red button was pushed. or did they? conversely, did the anti-war people ever analyze the data before they said "no"?
I was at lunch yesterday with a very well informed former Dow executive. He had just been at a public presentation given by a US Marine who has just returned from Iraq.
The Marine stated that the US media does nothing but dig up negative news and is not reporting on the successes in Iraq. Then he described numerous infrastructure improvements including power supplies and water in addition to a very positive reception from the Iraqi people.
He noted that the Sunnis and the Shi'ites are banding more together against Al-Qaeda in Iraq because neither like the extreme fundamentalism.
Finally, he stated that the main issue for the Iraqis is that the oil revenue that is readily available in the north and also in the south of Iraq also become available to the folks in Bagdad (in the middle). This negotiation is going on now and once solved will greatly reduce tensions. Interesting.
Now, stepping back a bit, I am really amazed by the difference between this Marine's personal experience and the tenor we have recently seen on this blog. I continue to be convinced that we are being fed a lie, a big lie, by the leftist US media. And some here are eating without tasting.
This is why I caution you and continue to caution you to get more data. Currently, your feet are firmly planted in the air.
We need the real story and a real assessment of the situation, plans and progress in Iraq. My guess is that the real data would change the tone of our discussion.
Notably, I do not propose that the Marine's presentation is fully representative of the situation. However, I know for sure that this information is not being considered at all.
js
Joey,
I'm behind on my job of posting links to articles on Iraq from the major new sources here:
http://conversationamongfriends.org/data-iraq
but if you read the articles linked (and maybe some of the ones I've neglected to link yet), a time-consuming process, you see all of the data you've mentioned (modest infrastructure improvements, Iraqis not eager to see US troops leave for fear of what comes next, militias cooperating with each other and the US and being armed by the US to fight Al-Qaeda, the enormous importance of the Iraqi government making some progress on issues like oil revenue). You also see the steady, tragic drumbeat of US and Iraqi deaths, woefully unprepared Iraqi forces, no progress being made by the Iraqi government, and violence squelched by the surge just popping up elsewhere (whack-a-mole, as it is called).
From this data we make our judgments about how things are going, prospects for improvement, etc.
I think it is absolutely absurd to claim that the media is lying to us about the facts...The things you claim we aren't being told, we actually are being told...and they don't make us feel like things are going well. Plus, these days there are so many avenues of data flow that are effectively uncontrollable, that the truth gets out. Blaming the media is an easy excuse, but I believe it to be an empty one.
Jonathan,
Here is a link to the article, "Is the Media Being Fair in Iraq?" by Michael O'Hanlon and Nina Kamp.
In summary: (negative/positive story ratio )
New York Times 2.8:1
Wall Street Journal 2.4:1
Washington Times 1.5:1
USA Today 2.3:1
NBC News (TV) 4.0:1
Notably, I DO NOT expect all to be nice and rosey in Iraq - it is a war - remember. Nevertheless, the data says something about the reporting and the negativity.
My conclusion : the more liberal the media outlet the more negative the reporting. The best example of this is NBC news which is 1.4x more negative as the very liberal New York Times.
I believe this is a fair rebuttal to your comment, "I think it is absolutely absurd to claim that the media is lying to us about the facts", since NBC is portraying the war to be 1.4x worse as the other media outlets. NBC is involved in a "Big Lie" with its 4:1 ratio.
OK, I'm not saying anything about what the truth about Iraq is in this post. What I am saying is that media reporting is biased. So the person who watches NBC gets a different perspective than the person who reads the New York Times.
Now, I'm sure you are going to mention that the Washington Times is reporting the war too optimistically. I will further rebut this by pointing out that journalists are, in general, liberals. In case you missed it the other day, journalsist contribute to the Democrat political campaigns 9x more often than to the Republicans. This ratio is WAY outside the political balance of the nation, which, as you know is more 50:50.
js
1 - there is, in general, a certain amount of bias in the media's reporting about any subject, including Iraq
2 - the media is deceiving us into thinking that the situation in Iraq is much worse than it really is
Claiming 1 is much different than claiming 2. I agree with 1 but find 2 ridiculous.
Rather than biased for liberal against conservative, I think the more important bias is for the sensational, shock-value, etc.
Of course, you can't rely on a single source to get your news. A number of sources are required. And there is certainly plenty of spin from both the media and the government, but I think we're in a pretty good situation today with so many venues and avenues for info to be shared that neither the media nor the government can deceive us for long.
You'll be pleased to hear that The Half Hour News Hour (link) is back on the air.
i truly do believe that the media basically have less interest in presenting facts than making the biggest dollar off the available news stream.
in operation desert storm/iraq 1, they made a lot of hay with hi-tech battle footage - like a real life video game on TV. desert storm never went far enough that the average news consumer would've become bored.
iraq2, on the other hand, is basically boring as far as the media are concerned; the only way to make hay from this is to create a perception of impending doom, upon which news consumer may then, somewhat sickly, feed and be entertained.
i do agree that we're likely being manipulated, and that the situation in iraq, though grisly and probably unpromising, is made to look worse than it is, or at least its public perception is blown out of whack.
i propose that none of us have the proper data to make a good judgment on how the iraq war is going, or what its chances of success are. i also propose that it may be virtually impossible to obtain the data, because all data sources available to us have a vested interest in spinning the data. if any of you feel that there's an unbiased data source, please let me know!
I don't think it's as bad as you guys do.
It takes some work (lots of reading from a variety of sources), but I think you can get a pretty good picture of what's going on. Forget TV and radio, but the major papers (e.g. LA Times, NY Times, Washington Post) together publish multiple stories almost daily, and I would claim that most of it isn't disputed and is actually sourced from the US gov (death tallies, quotes from generals, etc). If there really was a completely different reality on the ground that was drastically more favorable to the US, then the US gov would certainly be providing that info and it would be reported.
Insurgents use US negative media engine.
Hey, I know, Allah wants us to use the US biased media engine to help us win the media battle in Iraq. What better friends. Just wait until they find out they are infidels. . . save that for later. . .
Interesting. I am in total agreement with their motives
"to break the global media stranglehold of Western outlets." It also said the channel wanted to "bridge cultural divisions".
OK, forget your 20:20 hindsight for a moment, were these conditions met at the time?
I think 1- yes, 2-no, 3-yes.
I think GWB did not assess the enemy - basically never read Sun Tsu.
Now we need to read about this enemy - I have picked up the "Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam" - very interesting - we are in big trouble - esp. as Islam is viewed as a political force. js
It's not hindsight. I was strongly opposed from the beginning.
1 is debatable. Depends on what is meant by exhausted.
In my opinion, you could only answer yes to 2 and 3 if you were ignorant of the history and ethnic/religious make-up of Iraq. We and our leaders were ignorant. 2 is also a little tricky because the definition of success has been a moving target. With a limited and more realistic defintion of sucess coupled with avoiding a host of blunders, 2 could have been a close call.
Plus, this is how we judge our deciders. We use hindsight. They make decisions. We watch to see what fruit they bear. From that we evaluate the quality of their decision making. In hindsight.
To me it's a problem of the "makes facts based on decisions" (instead of makes decisions based on facts) joke that Stewart or Colbert made. Cheney and co. decided that they wanted to invade Iraq. Then they cherry-picked the weak intelligence to justify it, ignoring anything that was contradictory.