http://slate.msn.com/id/2080262/ The article argues that there's a close analogy here. Clinton wanted Greek support for the Kosovo war, and Greece had many, many of the same issues as Turkey has wrt Iraq. Clinton was able to get Greece on board, while Bush, as of right now, can't even get the use of Incirlik. What did Clinton do better? The writer also makes analogies to the French and their historic and business ties with Serbia, and then contrasts France's help back then, and antagonism now. Also, the writer talks about how Bush's diplomacy wrt Iraq is of a piece with his diplomacy wrt Afghanistan, which I'd never thought of. Anyway, our Afghanistan diplomacy put nations like Germany in a position where they were always going to be hard to win over wrt Iraq. The writer acknowledges that coalitions have downsides, they can be a pain in the ass, but in the end, most of the time, the advantages more than make up for that. The Bushies focus like a laser on the difficulties of alliances, and ignore the advantages, until they can't get the use of US airbases in Turkey despite offering $26B. Whoops!
Clinton is not coming back. Time to move on or are you working to get his library built? I would love to see the "To All the Girls I've Loved Before" section. Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias need the work, so maybe they could get in on the action. Maybe you missed the part when Clinton bypassed the UN to take action? They look the same to me.
Why do people respond to a thread about an article, if they haven't read the article? If you're not smart enough to contribute, just skip it. I won't think any worse of you.
Who is talking about the article? I was simply saying a fact...A fact that you always seem to forget to add. You spin crap all day to make Clinton look good and bonus point if you make Bush look bad at the same time. Your article is like an "expert witness" in a court trial. Yea, and how many could I find that say the opposite? Your honor, I would like to enter into the record anything dave has to say about any issue. Bush lies and Clinton is God. This will save the court time, ulcers and many a grey hair. We, the defense, acknowledge what dave has to say and will not protest it. That said, you have little room to bash Bush for not being able to walk and chew gum when you obviously have tunnel vision and are a one trick pony. Bush = Bad and Clinton = Good is one trick, not two. Must be hard work to be such a party lapdog who only lives to tug the party line. What's that sound? Oh, it's just superdave! Fact is, both Clinton and Bush bypassed the UN Security Council, but at least Bush made a go of it. I wonder if either Bush (Turkey) or Clinton (Greece) had the nerve to ask these nations when they would leave Cyprus alone? Oh, they didn't? They must have let that slide just to get what they wanted at the time. But I'll tell ya, nothing gets me more pissed than some dork "fixing" my post! I mean, if you are going to fix it, then break it, you had better at least be making a point on the issue I raised. Instead, you rather play a game and ignore my issue. You may be "superdave" but you are no (Bob) Einstein.
I don't have to spin this one. Clinton got Greece on board without having to cough up $26 BBBillion dollars. How did he do it? By respecting other nations. Bush would be wise to learn from Clinton's example.
They aren't the same. Only one country (Russia) on the Security Council prevented UN action on Kosovo. The overwhelming opinion was in favour of the action, including active support from the French and Germans. A majority of countries on the Security Council are preventing UN action on Iraq. The opinion is pretty evenly divided, and only a handful of countries are helping militarily.
This is true, but isn't it too late now? The damage has been done and even a quick war can't undo it. How can Bush save his foreign policy going forward?
Shocking the world by proving that the "road map" announcement on Friday wasn't just a cynical PR exercise.
I think it is also different. It's not like we have a Nato-esque alliance in the middle east. I think Bush honestly tried to go the UN route but he was stopped by France with help from Russia. It is not like he showed a lack of commitment to the process. He just felt the process has run its course in the UN, and the time for action was now, not later. France believes the opposite. So no UN resolution will come to fruition. Its not like he honestly didn't try. Could he have waited an additional 12 months for the inspections to not work? Sure, and then we would be right back were we are now, with France saying the inspections are working and the US saying now they are not.
Yeah I read the article, I was saying in my mind I felt he honestly tried. I don't understand how Nato gets involved in this or how approaching Nato changes the outcome. I also don't think there is an iota of difference between the US going to NATO first or the US going to the Un first. The point that we all take with the Bush administration is his adamant, "we are going in regardless" portion of his speechs. At that point, it didn't matter what the vote ends up. Bush's major problem diplomatically was always the we are going in regardless speech.
The 'we are going in regardless' portion really shows the dominance of the Perle/Wolfowitz axis within the administration. It's surprising how much power these guys have accrued, given that they were soundly repudiated in the Bush I administration. And this is scary, because they, and their allies, believe the US should basically repudiate any international or multinational mechanism that in any way challenges any US desire, whether it be the ABM treaty, the UN, NATO, etc. This allows the US to achieve these desires, but as the article says, it creates "a constituency for France's view of the world, that American hegemony is the real problem." And in the long run, the US cannot create the world it wants if the rest of the world thinks that the US is the problem. The power of Perle is also scary when you read his quotes like "Everyone wants to go to Bhagdad, real men want to go to Tehran."
And yet, nobody wants to go to Riyadh for some strange reason. Funny, that. [edit]Anyway, only wusses want to go to Tehran. REAL men want to go to Pyongyang and Beijing.[/edit]
Caveat - I didn't read the article for reasons outlined hilariously by Garcia, who is rolling all over the rest of us for post of the week. Kosovo - Milosevic - ethnic cleansor - aggressor Gulf I - Hussein - Kuwait conquistador - Saudi threat Gulf II - Hussein - contained - theoretical threat Let's see if I can find the difference why the diplomatic task of George Bush rallying the worldwide troops might be slightly more difficult than Dad or Clinton. Also, the billions to be paid Turkey will not necessarily compensate them for actual damage done to their actual economy by actual refugees or actual Kurdish revolt or actual devaluation of their actual currency. So, who can blame them for wanting not to suffer disproportionately? It's easier and more fun, I know, to simply say Bush has to pay a bribe in order to achieve what he cannot or will not as a diplomat.
Oh C'mon... I expect better from you! You are usually far more sharper than this! Greece came on board for very specific nationalistic reasons.... Specifically, Greece has a Macedonian Nationalist movement that it would rather not see get going. Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania and Northern Greece are a cauldron of never ending and on going disputes. Greece was, wisely, looking out for its own national interest. National interest change from day to day, crisis to crisis. As for Turkey, the Turkish economy got crushed in the last Iraq conflict. 6 billion in grants, and 20 billion in loan guarantees will only scratch the surface of what is plaguing hte Turkish economy. As for our stake in this, it will cost us 6 billion. Most of that money will be to improve military facilities in Turkey.
This would probably be a good place to point out that my position against the war didn't harden until I just got tired of Bush & Co. lying to me. That s*** never works in the long run. For myself, it made me distrust his motives so much that I marched. And I'm not a marching kind of guy. Further, one of the key justifications for this war, a huge part of the case, is that the US can re-make Iraq and thereby change the whole political equation in the region. Given the clear messianic complex of Bush, and the bullying of our diplomacy, I don't see how anyone could rationally expect that the Bushies will do this in a helpful way. I understand that goal, but it's a goal of arrogance. As Dizzy Dean once said, it ain't braggin' if you can do it. Can these guys do it? Why would anyone think they can?
It would help if the Bush administration hadn't spent the last year lying to the American people and fumbling its way from diplomatic disaster to diplomatic disaster in single-minded pursuit of war at all costs. So where are the calls for us to go in and do a regime change in China? Or get rid of the SLORC regime in Myanmar? Or any number of dictatorships? This is not even to mention the USA's post-WW2 habit of creating and supporting bloodthirsty dictatorships and death squads as local proxies to prop up our global empire. Where was the outrage from the Right when Suharto was slaughtering the East Timorese? Where was the outrage from the Right when Saddam was one of our bestest buddies? So why aren't we invading NK, which has nukes NOW and has openly repudiated the non-proliferation treaty and WILL sell those nukes to terrorists? I can ask the same about Pakistan. What happens if they go the way of Iran '79 and suddenly you have religious extremists with a state nuclear arsenal? What about the Saudis actively funding terrorists? To repsond to your horrendously bad analogy, I would have opposed the South seceeding from the Union. Anyway, while I support the idea of freedom, the question remains "Where does this all stop?" If we're duty bound to "save" all people from regimes we don't like, when do we free all those BILLIONS of Chinese? Are we duty bound to save people from virtual slavery in the third world sweatshops that help prop up our artificially high standard of living? Another incorrect historical analogy, as is the WW2 analogy. These were better used regarding GW1. They are inapplicable here as is the usual hawkish blather about "appeasement". The reasons for these being crap analogies have already been explained in other threads and I refer you to them as I have no wish to reinvent the wheel at this point. If the right didn't have such a history of opposing the hard but correct choice in favor of the easy wrong by supporting dictators and death squads for temporary profit opportunities or committing treason by selling weapons to Iran to support a terrorist army in Nicaragua, maybe the the left would have more trust in the motives of any US administration. Loney already trashed this same argument (Did you just cut and paste this from the other thread?) so I'll refer you to that. First, the official purpose of the two sets of sanctions were quite different. Go read a history book and learn something. Second, how many countries has Saddam attacked in the last 12 years? How many times has he used WMDs? How many nukes does he have? The reality is that inspections and sanctions have worked, as much as the Right wishes otherwise. Historial revisionism at its most rank. You've obviously not done any homework on any of these situations or you'd know that the left has spoken out against all those things. You just lost any credibility you may have had by projecting your fantasy world onto reality. There is only a small veneer of support in most of the countries you named. A few elites in those countries half-heartedly support the war, possibly because they're been bribed or are afraid of us, while the majority of people of those countries oppose it. Even in Britain, Blair has effectively committed political suicide by marrying himself to Bush. If the Bush admnistration had demonstrated any diplomatic competence during the war build-up, I'd feel better about the chances for us eventually creating a workable peace in the Middle East or at least in Iraq. Their sorry record in this endeavor, however, can only give a reasonable person pause for thought regarding such chances now.