Nevertheless, Eric Alterman, excerpting from one of his books, has a good rundown of the Bushies long-running fuckup of this policy issue. To some extent, pointing fingers is neither here nor there since we can't just go back in time, but when you have outcomes as bad as the ones these guys are generating, it really is vitally important to note that the country is wrestling with extremely thorny problems that have gotten so thorny overwhelmingly because of George W. Bush's appallingly poor leadership. Demands will be raised for Democrats to offer up brilliantly appealing solutions, but as on Iraq there are no brilliantly appealing solutions left precisely because the GOp has done such a bad job.
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I'm So Bored With the DPRK
10 Oct 2006 11:10 am
Comments (11)
RWB, that's their whole strategy: fuck things up so badly that we're always in scary crisis mode. And most of the things sane people think of as problems, they see as irrelevant or even advantageous. That is, a sane person sees chaos in Iraq. They see the status quo disrupted.
To some extent, pointing fingers is neither here nor there since we can't just go back in time, but when you have outcomes as bad as the ones these guys are generating, it really is vitally important to note that the country is wrestling with extremely thorny problems that have gotten so thorny overwhelmingly because of George W. Bush's appallingly poor leadership.
Also: they're pointing fingers (at Clinton, of course), so it's not as if we can just let that slide.
But it is frustrating when Democrats are being asked to come up with plans to fix the heinous problems CREATED by the Republicans.
For which they don't have plans either. This point is essential, and cannot be made too loudly or too often; they don't have a plan. Not for Iraq, not for al Qaeda, not for Iran, not for North Korea. They have fatuous platitudes and belligerent posturing, but they don't have a plan. And I think we need to keep hammering at the point that they don't have a plan. Like, y'know, I'm doing.
Tom -
Help me follow the logic of your post.
If the GOP doesn't have a plan to get out of this mess and the Dems don't have a plan to get out of this mess, then I should vote for the GOP because they caused the mess?
sometimes the past *is* a good predictor of the future. no plan then, no plan now, no plan tomorrow.
This point is essential, and cannot be made too loudly or too often; they don't have a plan.
I don't think this is quite right. They have a plan, and it's a plan that is guaranteed to fail.
They have a plan, and it's a plan that is guaranteed to fail
Utterly correct. And something that has been preordained since 1994.
And something that has been preordained since 1994.
fer fnck's sake, can't you people take responsibility for anything ?
Former Bush speechwriter David Frum has some potentially apocalyptic ideas about where to go from here. Ideas like "the threat of American aid to improve Israel’s capacity to hit targets with nuclear weapons" are what make his NYT Op-Ed about North Korea so dangerously nutty. It's a perfect reminder: Until the U.S. takes Eisenhower's warning about the military-industrial complex seriously, we're screwed.
Otey2, the point is that the Republicans have been given a pass on their own planlessness while pushing the meme of Democratic planlessness. And the subsidiary point is that the actual planlessness of the people who are actually supposed to be in charge is rather more pertinent than the putative planlessness of the people who aren't. I think the Democrats have to hammer on Republican planlessness until people like Rice and Rumsfeld start getting questions like 'no, really--do you even have a plan?'--and then they need to hammer on it some more.
I don't think this is quite right. They have a plan, and it's a plan that is guaranteed to fail.
I think a plan requires a whole lot more operational detail than what the Republicans are offering. The administration's 'plan' for Iraq (for example) was 'overwhelm them with our military superiority, and then everything will be fine'; their 'plan' for Iraq now is 'let the next president deal with our mess'. Neither even comes close to being a plan in any meaningful sense of the word.
Nor does anything else they've done in foreign policy. North Korea? "Remind me why I should care"--that says it all, doesn't it? Iran? Simple-minded belligerence is not a plan. (Nor is 'let's just bomb their nuclear sites--that'll solve everything!') Al Qaeda? Mass wiretapping and torture do not add up to a plan. The Middle East in general? Rewarding people who suck up to us and punishing people who don't: not a plan. Nowhere have they had anything remotely resembling a plan, and that's why everything is such a catastrophic mess.
fer fnck's sake, can't you people take responsibility for anything ?
Ooh, I know! I know! Is the answer 'no'? ;)
I'm just writing to applaud the title of this post. I would have thought Matt was too young for an "I'm so bored with X" reference, which was already dated 20 years ago when I was in college.
Comments closed October 24, 2006.
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Heads in the Sand
You make an observation about something that has been bugging me. The rap on Democrats is that they complain about Republican policy without offering alternatives. I think that's unfair on the face of it--plenty of Democrats and Democratic groups have offered plans to deal with various issues facing us. They are routinely ignored--and since the Dems have no power right now, one can understand why.
But it is frustrating when Democrats are being asked to come up with plans to fix the heinous problems CREATED by the Republicans. Unfortunately, it actually is necessary to come up with plans to fix the problems created by Republicans. But if I'm a Democratic candidate, I also want to keep on reminding people who created these problems in the first place.
Tragically, we have to wait two years before a Democratic executive (or even a less incompetent Republican executive) can even begin to try to clean up the mess Bush has created. But at least with control of the Congress, the legislative branch will no longer be rubber-stamping enablers of Bush's incompetence and foolishness.
Posted by RWB | October 10, 2006 11:52 AM