Mr44 posted:1)I don't think Bush has been any better or any worse than any other President, with the same ups and downs.
Alpha-Red posted:Mr44 posted:1)I don't think Bush has been any better or any worse than any other President, with the same ups and downs.Maybe this is just me, but I feel that if there's anything Bush has done horribly, it's that he constantly seems to overplay his hand. For example, a lot of his rhetoric about regime change is pretty unwarranted. It's essentially a euphemism, and a pretty bad one at that, for removing whoever we don't like. Of course there are ways for dealing with countries like Iraq, but going straight to military force is hardly one of them. We could have taken the time to isolate Saddam's regime diplomatically on the basis that it poses a security risk, or even persuade them to back us in a military solution should it come to that. Such an approach could have achieved our aims and we could have still maintained our credibility with the rest of the world.
Mr44 posted:99% of the collective perception is overblown.
Jabbadabbado posted:The invasion of Iraq was an aberration. A horrible mistake. It's economically unsustainable, a drain on American resources. It undermined American foreign policy credibility, destabilized the Middle East and incentivized the rest of the world to form a cohesive effort to balance America's position of geopolitical supremacy in the globe.
Mr44 posted: The invasion of Iraq was not an aberration If you know anything about U.S. history, the invasion of Iraq should not have come as a shock. The invasion of Iraq represents a typically U.S. approach to geopolitical challenges that has been consistent for at least 50 years. I challenge anyone to name a president since World War 2 who has not attempted "regime change" in some part of the world. Carter? The invasion of Iraq is not economically unsustainable. Even after we blew past a half trillion dollars in defense spending, even if the Iraq war itself costs $1 trillion before its over, it is not unsustainable. There is not a strong case for the Iraq war as a source of economic weakness. U.S. defense spending remains low as a percentage of GDP, relative to the historical trends of U.S. defense spending. The invasion of Iraq has in almost no measurable way undermined the geopolitical influence of the U.S. or its position as the world's predominant geopolitical force. The U.S. remains as predominant today as it did before the Iraq invasion. There is no evidence of a loss of geopolitical influence. The only hit the U.S. has taken is in foreign public opinion, but this has not really translated into anti-American foreign policy from foreign governments. Germany and France have even elected more pro-American governments. China and Russia have not united in an anti-U.S. block to oppose U.S. geopolitical supremacy. Historically, they are too mutually antagonistic for that to every become likely. In conclusion, the U.S. is big enough, bad enough, and indispensable enough to the world geopolitical order that it can easily absorb Iraq, even if the invasion itself has not been successful, even if we conclude that it was a mistake. But the invasion cannot be considered a renegade action or out of character for the U.S. given its more than a half century of overt willingness to intervene almost everywhere against low to mid level totalitarian regimes where U.S. interests were at stake.
