11-20-2016, 11:24 AM
(11-20-2016, 10:24 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:(11-20-2016, 01:41 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:(11-20-2016, 01:08 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:(11-20-2016, 12:02 AM)taramarie Wrote: btw for the record I have not watched a movie in a very long time and i never watch tv. What now...
Seeing what people get up to over there...what they say and the pos they have elected president yeah I am disgusted.
It could have been worse. We could have elected Clinton.
If you think the crowds of semi-literate people at Tea Party rallies unnerved us liberals, then wait until you see what our larger, more coherent rallies do to shatter your complacency.
Obviously you've never been to a Tea Party rally.
Quote:On foreign policy alone, Hillary Clinton would be far safer. As a conservative, do you really wish to cast off the Reagan-Bush foreign policy that became the default for Barack Obama?
First, there's no such thing as a Reagan-Bush foreign policy. Reagan intervened by the minimal amount needed to obtain the most favorable outcome possible for the U.S. Notice how he won the Cold War without any nukes actually being used, contrary to all expectations.
My explanation: Maximal effectiveness with minimal destructiveness well explains Grenada. Eastern Europe? That looks more like the choice of Gorbachev. He preferred safety on his western flank, and got that. He gave what were satellite regimes real independence without any assurance of Soviet interference in any equivalents of Hungary 1956 or Czechoslovakia 1968 unless people seeking change attacked the Soviet Union.
Anti-communism with some patience? That is Reagan and the elder Bush. Bill Clinton acceded to the results.
Quote:The Bush-Obama policy, in contrast, has emphasized heavy intervention, with mediocre outcomes and excessive loss of life on all sides.
The younger Bush bungled intelligence that warned of the danger of al-Qaeda showing interest in jetliners. From there, foreign policy deteriorated into revenge-taking. OK, so the Taliban was unwise to not oust Osama bin Laden? Invading Afghanistan to get Osama bin Laden was lawful. Truth be told, the Chinese had no objection. Because he murdered Chinese citizens on 9/11 he would have been welcome to China -- as a guest first of the Chinese judicial system and in turn a firing squad. Russia? Much the same.
Iraq was of course the big disaster. I question whether Saddam Hussein or his successor sons would have survived an Arab Spring. Dubya bungled the invasion and occupation of Iraq and stuck his successor with the mess.
Quote:Clinton's policy would be worse, though. Bush and Obama at least refrained from antagonizing other nuclear powers. The Cliinton-Clinton foreign policy emphasizes quixotic "humanitarian" interventions - the idea that the way to reduce tensions in flashpoints is to kill people - with no thought to the interests of other nuclear powers, in particular Russia. In the Pristina incident, the Clinton administration almost managed to "start World War III", in the words of the British general who defused things by refusing to obey an American order to attack Russian forces. The next time around, the Brits might not have been in a position to save us from the irresponsible Clinton foreign policy.
How would you know? How could you know what Hillary Clinton would do? She would not face the same situations as her husband did in any obvious flashpoint.
Quote:It's hard to imagine Trump being worse than the Clintons on foreign policy. It's easy to imagine a chance of his being better, given his belief that the U.S. should cut back on interventionism and nation building.
Less intervention? I see him as an appeaser to Vladimir Putin. I see him as a right-wing version of George McGovern as Richard Nixon depicted McGovern. In view of what he has done to Ukraine, I can't trust Vladimir Putin. Elsewhere? This is the wrong time to call for regime change in Iran.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.