Xen said:
Do you honestly think Gore would not have reacted to 9-11 the same way Bush did? I dont think Bush did anything special and I dont care whose in office, if they want to stay in office, and have their party stay in office, we would have gone into Afghanistan. We'd still be on the hunt for Osama.
I think he would have reacted to Afghanistan more or less the same way Bush did. But I don't think he would have been forceful enough towards terrorists or people like Saddam Hussein at all.
Xen said:
We wouldnt have invaded Iraq, but then that was hardly life or death now was it?
With Saddam's record of WMD development, wars with neighbors, plus his crazy sons ready to take over after he died I'd say yes actually. And besides that, it produced a needed message that the US would absolutely obliterate any rogue nations that stood against it. Hence the reason why Libya, Iran, etc. all changed their tunes on WMD development. Although we'd been negotiating with Libya for awhile..
Xen said:
Bush has still failed to produce to the public physical evidence of why we invaded, killing hundreds of Americans and thousands of Iraqis.
Saddam had a record of killing thousands of Kurds, dissidents, Iranians, Kuwaitis, etc. I'd prefer some unfortunate deaths and the overthrow of a tyrant to god knows what Saddam's regime would have done.
Marcus Tullius Cicero had it wrong. A just war is better than an unjust peace.
Xen said:
I much rather have a continuation of the Clinton years over an idiot who finds speaking a complete, intellligent sentence to be amongst the most difficult things to do..
"Idiot" is a highly inflammatory, subjective term.
Xen said:
With Bush in office we took one step forward and about 20 steps back, he squandered and in less than a year all the good will the world poured upon our nation. His "Axis of Evil" speech, combined with his arrogance, ignorance, and quickness to hit send in the army button has ended reforms in Iran, hardened neutral nations against us, and made our traditional allies in Europe and the Pacific to question the wisdom of continuing to follow America's lead. What makes it worse is when you realize his foreign policy is his strong point.
That support was thin to begin with. All of these European nations claimed they were our allies... Except when it actually came to dealing with someone like Saddam, Khadifi, etc.
The "Axis of Evil" speech was badly needed. We needed to identify those nations which were clearly the enemies of us and the world, and to show this war for what it is: A war of the civilized world against barbaric terrorists and petty tin-pot dictators. IMO we were far too nice during the Clinton years. We signed treaty after treaty, but we never enforced them. Look at North Korea if you want proof of that. People like Al Qaeda began to get the idea that America was weak, that we were fat and lazy pampered buffoons who could be pushed around. I’d rather have the world think we’re imperialist bullies than that. Pigs like the Iranian, Syrian, and Libyan governments will only understand force. Rhetoric and negotiations will do little if anything to stop them.
Xen said:
Yeah it doesnt take much to see how the continuation of the Clinton years would have been better for the US compared to the Emperor Palpatine wanna-be we have in office now.
Clinton who didn't do anything to Saddam other than drop a few bombs despite talking about the threat of WMDs? Clinton whose administration basically did nothing but give aid to North Korea? Clinton who cut funding for the military and used it only for “humanitarian” missions? No thank you, I’d rather have a “Emperor Palpatine” or whatever the hell you call Bush than another person like Clinton.
Anyway, I'd prefer to end this little debate right here. This is the AH board, not the chat room.
has a RECORD budget *deficit* of nearly a HALF TRILLION dollars (and that's according to Bush's own figures). See below for more...
