Barack Obama: 2008 Election

[genocidal]

[JOKE]

We're fightin' for freedom and spreadin' democracy, baby.

[/JOKE]
Why is Kolar saying "we" and "us" like he's American? People may hate Americans but still nobody cares about Canada.

[Kolar]

[JOKE][/JOKE]
Why is Kolar saying "we" and "us" like he's American? People may hate Americans but still nobody cares about Canada.

Fine, it was a joke. You got me but I'm pretty sure Eph still believes in this shit from past discussions on this forum. I refer to "us" because I am speaking of the connected and involvement of western nations and I'm pretty sure nationality means shit all to these people. Just one more white kid to kill. As long as Canada is a mostly unobstructed route into the US we will likely never see a major terrorist attack.

[Ephemeral]

And you've failed. American foreign policy has failed to achieve anything but put the West in the middle east for the next 20 years. The idea that through military force we could change regions of the world within an acceptable time frame with minimal human, economic and political commitments and losses is idiotic at best. Meanwhile real and more threatening enemies to democracy, freedom and all the good stuff, can go unchallenged, pushing their extreme left and right agendas forward. We now face a coming war with Iran, Syria and their Arab allies because one stupid mother fucker, while being told to play nice by Congress and bipartisan reports/councils still wants to be confrontational.

Please provide link/reference where Bush and anyone in his admin said, "through military force we could change regions of the world within an acceptable time frame with minimal human, economic and political commitments and losses".
In fact, the duration and hardship message was just the opposite. The message was that it was going to be long, hard and ugly.

Diatribe:
It is true that people want the quick fixes. I know this from years that I worked in my wife's pet store. People would come in and want the 'quick fix' to make their fish tank clean. We would try to explain to them how to properly maintain their fish tank, which is through testing the water and doing water changes. Nothing to buy, just some knowledge and work. Nope. They want the quick fix pill and liquid to drop in tank and make everything fine.
Well a lot of things in life are not 'quick fixes'. A lot of the best things in life come through hard work, often the best work men do is done under stress and at great personal cost.

Kolar, what was your solution to Iraq? Just let it stay the way it was? Ignore the human and enviromental genocide? Play more UN games even though the UN had been proven impotent over and over again? There was no good solution, the only solutions were shit and shittier. The worse thing we could have done is not go in, and the second worse thing we could have done is go in.
Should someone have sent in a spy and just killed Saddam? Would that have also lead to the same situation we have now with different factions in Iraq jumping each other's shit?
Most of Iraq is stable and functioning well, only two of the 18 Iraqi governorates (or provinces) have the unrest we all see in the 30 sound bites in the news. When was the last time we saw a news report on any of the other provinces? When was the last time we saw a news report on the good things happening?
I am not saying that there are not big issues in Iraq. I am not saying that the Bush and the current Administration has shown any real leadership with this tough issue. They have not shown any leadership abilities. A real leader would be standing up and saying, 'Yes it sucks. We said it was going to suck. We said it was not going to be an east fix. But we will not erase the value of the lives lost. We will grow a backbone and we will see this thing through, even if it takes 10 years.'
I also think that it might be time to force the Iraqi's hand. If they can not control their own people, than the country should be split up with Kurds, Shiite, Sunni getting and controlling their own pieces of land. If they, or other countries, do not want this than contribute to fixing the current issue NOW.

[genocidal]

To be fair, the mishandling of post-Saddam Iraq is mostly due to the administration's belief that Iraqis would throw up their arms, disavow Saddam, and love our freedom. That in fact didn't happen and now we have all the "Stay the course" and "The road to freedom is long and tough" rhetoric. If we'd known that all along Iraq wouldn't be the God-awful mess it is now.

[Kolar]

Please provide link/reference where Bush and anyone in his admin said, "through military force we could change regions of the world within an acceptable time frame with minimal human, economic and political commitments and losses".
In fact, the duration and hardship message was just the opposite. The message was that it was going to be long, hard and ugly.

This is an idealogical belief of the neo-conservative movement. Many Bush Admin. officials are involved with it, google "project for new American century". This isn't conspiracy nonsense. I'll save the linking/referencing, look it up for yourself. The Bush Admin. was overconfident in how they would be greeted by the Iraqis, had no plan to deal with such resistance and sectarian violence and still today have nothing more then "put more troops there", which has failed twice before.

Kolar, what was your solution to Iraq? Just let it stay the way it was? Ignore the human and enviromental genocide? Play more UN games even though the UN had been proven impotent over and over again? There was no good solution, the only solutions were shit and shittier. The worse thing we could have done is not go in, and the second worse thing we could have done is go in.

All Irrelevant. No one is saying today it was a mistake to remove him. The rational behind it, the methods and plans in place were not there, by circumventing the UN and rushing the invasion Bush invalidated his cause. Just about everything you can think of that could go bad, happened and they had nothing to fall back on.

Most of Iraq is stable and functioning well, only two of the 18 Iraqi governorates (or provinces) have the unrest we all see in the 30 sound bites in the news. When was the last time we saw a news report on any of the other provinces? When was the last time we saw a news report on the good things happening?

Maybe because they are not happening? I don't watch network news so I wouldn't know. What I do know is that yesterday 30 American soldiers were killed, the day before that another 30.

Regardless of the stability in some provinces we still have 35-40,000 civilians dead in 2006 alone. We have a corrupt and powerless government ready to collapse, a Government which has done nothing to put down the Shia militias, which has done nothing about incursions into their territory from Iran and Syria and has failed to bring unity and stability.

I would like our leaders to be more up front also but I don't believe the Bush Admin. lead the American public or the world to believe this was going to be a long, drawn out war.

[Zerzera]

Okay, I had a whole essay written out but I decided not to post it. Instead I will just be smart and say;

You have to agree that Bush got 'the western world' into a war with a false agenda, and as long as he doesn't come clean every nation should just drop support.
Why can't he just say "Sorry, but I cared so much about the poor Iraqi's. I had to lie to help them". Everyone will forgive him.

[PaulOakenfold]

Of course the American government fears an educated American voter.... tell us something we didn't know.

I don't know how serious this post is... but what do people think of, when they say 'the government'?

[PaulOakenfold]

It screams FYAD, but it's necessary.