Bill Richardson: Bush Doctrine is working

It wasn't addressed to me, but I'll answer it anyway. You won't hurt my feelings if you ignore it entirely.

Same war different rationale is one I would still oppose though not with the same vehemenance and zeal.

It would still make the U.S. military aggressors, which I won't agree with.

But it would mean that Bush was either honest or didn't go to war as a mistake. The same can't be said at the present time. Going to war when it isn't a last option, is wrong, but going to war when it isn't a last option and based on negligence, or dishonesty is even worse.

It would lessen the degree to which I oppose the war, but wouldn't earn my support.

 

Speaking for myself I wouldn't have. While democracy is a good thing I don't think it can be imposed. What we're seeing in Lebanon is grass roots.

Also the cost in terms of lives, resources and credibility I don't think is worth it. Not when there were potential other avenues to promote democracy for.

Ironically for the Syrians its their success at intervening in Lebanon that's made it stable enough for the Lebanese to demand to kick them out. The best that we can hope for in Iraq and Afghanistan is that they get to that point.

 

I think you're giving more than its proper credence. The elections in Saudi Arabia are anything but popular and there is no such thing as serious electoral competiton for Mubarak in Egypt. Do you think he would've have allowed elections if there were?

Where the Bush doctrine deserves credit is Syria withdrawing which IMO they are clearly doing with the thought of what happened to Saddam in their minds.

In terms of calling whats going in Lebanon a triumph of people power and Western values I think we're all jumping to conclusions way to fast given what happened in Beirut today.

 

Sure they had some part in it. (a major one at that) The major powers in the Middle East (Saudi, Egypt) were among those who stated that Syria must withdraw it's troops from Lebanon.

 

If you are implying that my two statements are contradictory, they are not. I am saying that the Bush Doctrine deserves credit in certain instances (Saudi, Egypt) and no credit in others (Lebanon).

 

Why is nobody taking credit for the Lebanese parliament's reported selection of the same pro-Syrian candidate as PM following a popular backlash/outpouring of support for Syria in Lebanon?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/i...&en=98745eecbed3bf9e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

We should export some democracy to them. Parliament? What the hell is that? Doesn't sound very democratic to me. In fact it sounds European or even French to me. We should dissolve their Parliament before the upcoming elections and institute popularly elected representative legislative body of some sort.

 

With the same result? No. Not worth the costs, both financial, political & otherwise.

 

Would hot lebanese chicks be involved?

 

We can only hope.

 

Are you serious? Please tell me you are not. So you want to disolve every democracy in the world that has a parlimentory form of government?

Ladies and gentlemen, please be patient. Witch hunting will be on next year's agenda...just hold tight...we'll get there.

 

It was pure sarcasm on Sam's part. Actually it was satire.

 

Phew. The sad part is, some people probably agree.

 

So now the disarming of Libya is also attributed to the Bush Doctrine? What next? Maybe there is a massive drought somewhere. When that rain comes, we'll know to thank the Bush Doctrine

 

Only when we're not blaming him for the drought .

I'm happy to admit the elections in Iraq and Afghanistan went much much better than I had anticipated. And the Palestinian situation seem slightly better, and there are wee hints of democratization in Saudi. In all, based on where i feared we might be...it's turned out dramatically better.

Perhaps the sabre rattling does work. It worked for Ronnie with the fall of the Soviet Union. Way too early to call it a success here however -- but some decent signs...

Of course key and critical differences between the administrations are that Ronnie didn't alienate everybody first, nor did he stomp all over civil liberties. Two huge differences...and enough to keep me off the Bush bandwagon.

 

I would agree and in fairness many things have gone better than expected. What I would be careful is attributing a direct causal link to things like the disarming of Libya, whats going in Lebonon and especially Palestinian elections to the the invasion of Iraq or anything else done by this administration.

The situation in all of these areas is extremely complicated and while GW Bush's actions have played a role its difficult to sort out how that influence has worked. At the same time his actions have done a lot to increase hatred of the US in general which is why I caution against premature congratulations on the part of the Admin and supporters when such could quickly make things worse.

Also the cost in terms of resources and lives expended needs to be considered. I've never felt that the Admin has thoroughly considered other options and so far I'm not sure if the amount of money, deaths and hatred toward the US is worth the benefits we've seen.

 

You can't make a democracy omelette without breaking some eggs! And then you can just ignore the eggs!

Anyway, I'm glad that you have in fact, settled on taking retroactive credit to the Bush Doctrine for the 1991 Lebanese Constitution (but, strangely, not the massive outpouring of anti-american & pro hezbollah sentiment of this week), the 1996 Palestinian elections, Libya's attempts to repair its relationship iwth the US in the mid 90's due to sanctions, and the G-Unit-50 Cent detente as well as the Van Hagar reunion.

That being said, I will give you small credit for the window dressing reforms in Egypt and the House of Gangsters having a few sparsely attended municipal elections.

Also, I'm glad that you are not ashamed of Bush Doctrine 2.0 (democracy) and not reversing course like you did on Bush Doctrine 1.0 (pre-emption) - which words dropped out of your vocabulary about the time that you stopped chanting "the weapons are in Syria".

Of course, I have the feeling that if this were 1980 you'd be speaking wistfully about the outpouring of popular sentiment in Iran against their tyrannical leaders. The people have spoken! That's why liberalism in foreign policy died with Woodrow Wilson - the results don't match with the theory, which theory -"hey we'll spread democracy and then Lebanon and Iraq will become pro-israeli and secular" is a little ridiculous.