Showing posts with label policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label policy. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Monday, December 10, 2007
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Friday, October 12, 2007
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Political Commentary Through Images
President Bush is choking on the blood of young Americans. He's fighting a war that can't be won. Even if he poured another 200,000 U.S. troops into Iraq and managed to quell the violence, it still wouldn't stop the hate between Sunni's and Shiites. He's got to let them duke it out and find their own solutions to their problems. Suppose someone else had interfered in the middle of the U.S. civil war and tried to impose external controls and solutions? The north and south would probably still be at war today.
Bush's horrible policies have upset the entire balance of power in the world. Our allies are less close to us now than they have been since WW II. Fewer of the third world countries can rely on us for support. And China and the Orient own most of out national debt - they could wipe out our economy in a matter of minutes.
Mr. President's policies have been formulated in ignorance and based on a very narrow view of the world. It will haunt the American people for decades to come. One only hopes that our next administration can begin to put a dent in repairing the damage that Bush and Co. have done.Tuesday, January 30, 2007
News - Bush Foreign Policy 1
Some quotes from Time Magazine, 1/15/2007, in an editorial by Peter Beinart, ...(more clips from the article may follow in each of the following several days)
It's an unwritten rule: each president gets one foreign policy doctrine. James Monroe’s was defense of the Americas. Harry S Truman’s was containment and George W. Bush's—spelled out after the defeat of the Taliban in 2002—was pre-emptive war to defeat terrorism and spread democracy. To a lot of people, it sounded good at the time. The country was united, the military was triumphant, and the mood was resolute. Americans were ready, literally, to take on the world.
Now it sounds crazy. The military is cracking from wartime strain. Isolationism is on the rise. Americans don't want to sustain one pre-emptive war, let alone start others.
And so the bush administration has begun cribbing from a very different doctrine: Richard Nixon’s. The Nixon doctrine is the foreign policy equivalent of outsourcing. Nixon unveiled it in 1969 to a nation wearied by Vietnam; no longer would Americans man the front lines against global communism. In Vietnam, we would turn the fighting over to Saigon. in the Persian gulf, we would build up Iran to check soviet expansion. America would no longer be a global cop; it would be a global benefactor, quartermaster and coach—helping allies contain communism on their own.
Now president bush is trying something similar. For much of 2006, administration officials fretted about Somalia, where some of the ruling Islamists had terrorist ties. Next door in Djibouti, America stations around 1,000 troops. but instead of sending them in, we turned to Ethiopia, Somalia’s neighbor and longtime rival. When the Ethiopian military rolled into Mogadishu and sent the Islamists fleeing last week, the Bush administration kept a low profile, applauding the invasion and thanking its lucky stars that it was Ethiopia that launched it, not us.
It's an unwritten rule: each president gets one foreign policy doctrine. James Monroe’s was defense of the Americas. Harry S Truman’s was containment and George W. Bush's—spelled out after the defeat of the Taliban in 2002—was pre-emptive war to defeat terrorism and spread democracy. To a lot of people, it sounded good at the time. The country was united, the military was triumphant, and the mood was resolute. Americans were ready, literally, to take on the world.
Now it sounds crazy. The military is cracking from wartime strain. Isolationism is on the rise. Americans don't want to sustain one pre-emptive war, let alone start others.
And so the bush administration has begun cribbing from a very different doctrine: Richard Nixon’s. The Nixon doctrine is the foreign policy equivalent of outsourcing. Nixon unveiled it in 1969 to a nation wearied by Vietnam; no longer would Americans man the front lines against global communism. In Vietnam, we would turn the fighting over to Saigon. in the Persian gulf, we would build up Iran to check soviet expansion. America would no longer be a global cop; it would be a global benefactor, quartermaster and coach—helping allies contain communism on their own.
Now president bush is trying something similar. For much of 2006, administration officials fretted about Somalia, where some of the ruling Islamists had terrorist ties. Next door in Djibouti, America stations around 1,000 troops. but instead of sending them in, we turned to Ethiopia, Somalia’s neighbor and longtime rival. When the Ethiopian military rolled into Mogadishu and sent the Islamists fleeing last week, the Bush administration kept a low profile, applauding the invasion and thanking its lucky stars that it was Ethiopia that launched it, not us.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)








