Quote from Maverick74:
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The intelligent people see beyond that. They see we have a flawed foreign policy that has been consistent for 75 years. Sure the players change, the colors of the uniform change, the backdrop changes, but the policy is the same. All I know is, if we as a country got bombed, had sanctions placed on us, had our leaders get assassinated, etc on a regular basis, we wouldn't be sitting here discussing it. We would probably unload our nuclear arsenal on the world. Hopefully one day you will see through the right/left paradigm and start thinking more clearly. Once you let go of your hate towards the republicans and start looking at policy only, things will become more clear to you. Until then, you will resort to the logic of a 5 year old and just say it's Bush's fault. I use to play that game when I was 5 with my sister. I would simply blame everything on her. Of course I stopped doing that when I like turned 7 or 8. I realized it that early it was stupid excuse. Some people take longer though, and I do understand that. [/B]
Keep on harping. It is starting to sink in.
Actually, what you are saying here is something that I have believed for a long time. And I don't think it means I am intelligent. I think it's simply is a matter of reaching an obvious conclusion. I'm not blaming bush for a foreign policy that goes back at least to 1898. What I tried to get across, but failed utterly to do, was my opinion that Bush's reaction to the 911 attack was simply wrong and had horrible consequences for the U.S. that are in addition to all the other consequences of a foreign policy that goes back at least as far as the U.S. acquisition of the Philippines. So of course I entirely agree that the deep seated hatred of the United States that exists in many countries, is not due to Bush alone; he is a minor player in that regard. I'm talking about 3-4 trillion in unnecessary debt, the unnecessary and unconscionable killing of 200,000 + people, the patriot act, and the attack on the Bill of Rights, the suspension of habeus corpus, the redefining of enemy combatant. The W. is responsible for that; not Nixon, not Carter, not Reagan, not Bush I, not Clinton. And Obama is just as bad if not worse when it come to Bill of Rights Issues, the Patriot Act, and foreign policy.
You're just wasting your time if your trying to convince us that little Bush's damage wasn't any worse than what any of the other presidents caused, starting with McKinley. OK, so there were some administrations that came close, Kennedy-Johnson for example. Yes they lied and killed a million, half of them non-combatants, and like Bush, accomplished nothing but destruction. They were as bad as Bush, though there was no patriot act and no all out attack on the Bill of Rights, no government sanctioned suspension of habeas corpus, no government sanctioned torture that we knew of.
The first step for all of us is to realize that the country we live in is not the country we learned about in 9th grade civics class. The next step is to learn that we are all guilty until proved innocent, and that we live in a country that is rapidly becoming a police state.
