Quote:

Took you all those words to credit Dubya for finally cleaning up the mess he created in the first place?



Does anyone else get the sense that ivor is maybe a Monkey alt?

And yeah, it takes that many words to defend W Bush. I finally decided Bush was trash after Katrina and after Hamas won that election and W's only response was to humiliate them in an effort that was obviously going to start a war over there.

But, this Obama guy is making W look not so bad. At the time W took office, this country had had 3 damn good presidents. Reagan, easily the greatest president of the 20th century, challenges just started peeling away as he stepped in the room. The Iran hostage crisis just disappeared as he took office. Then you had H W Bush, notable achievement being completely playing the USSR like a fiddle in getting rid of the Berlin Wall. And Clinton, whose presidency didn't have many challenges, but I believe he was a brilliant politician. So, we've had these brilliant presidents to set our expectations by, and in comes the inexperienced W and every challenge anyone would have imagined is thrown at him. Bad recession as he walks in the door, Nine-eleven, Katrina, off the top of my head. There were others. At the time, it looked like it took Bush 5/6 years to fianlly figure how the hell to be a good president, but by then it was too late.

So now we elect a ridiculously inexperienced president. 5 times less experienced than Bush. And, he's of course clueless. Thinks the answer to the messes we're in is to create commissions. (Maybe they can figure out some answers, because I sure as hell don't know what they are!!) They accused Bush of manipulating the press too much with photo ops and shit. But, Bush never did something as crass as announce putting tens of thousands soldier lives in danger and at the same time to announce that in a year and a half the Taliban could assume those guys were leaving and they could go back to the way they were running things.

Obama doesn't look like Clinton, boldly and obviously hacking up words, asking what the definition of is is. Obama's too slick for something like this. Instead, he anticipates the situation where he could be called on what he's said. And, he makes his statements slippery in anticipation. So he doesn't have to look like Clinton when he gets caught. The problem is Obama has so much confidence and audacity that he can fool people like this (Did you see all that unsubstantiated hope and change bullshit during his campaign?) that he's done it to so many times, it's too easy to see the pattern and Obama's laundry list of broken promises have become legendary.

So now that Afghanistan's not going so well, he's using the escape hatch he set up for himself, "I never said we were removing all troops in July '11!!".

But, he had to say "no open ended committment in Afghanistan" to appeal to his base. Despite his campaigning on Afghanistan being a necessary war, he still wanted to hoodwink his base into thinking he was trying to end it at the same time he was escalating it.

The problem is, the guys in Afghanistan have no feel for the subtly of American politics. You're some poverty stricken village guy in Afghanistan. You've got information that would really help the Americans. But, they've said they're leaving in July 2011. Do you help them? Or, do you keep your mouth shut in an attempt to keep your ass safe after the Americans high tail it out of there?

You think Karzai is going to feel like he has the room to make as many reforms as he might want to and assume American backing?

Bush with his inexperience, and Clinton with his slimey persona, those guys never did something so crass.

Obama had no clue of the damage he would do by playing politics with the efforts of the American military. And now Afghanistan is back in this shit house.

Obama being clueless is a huge theme with this presidency.