[Truthout] Naomi Wolf: A different perspective on the Tea Party

Wars started: Bush - 2, Obama - 0

 

They are an extremely right-wing arm of the Republican party, pretending as if they have no affiliation with any party, when the actual truth is that they can't wait to get out and vote Republican come November.

 

Sure, in Afghanistan -- to get the people who actually attacked us. In Iraq, no way. Obama was one of the very few politicians who took a public stance against that misguided effort from the beginning.

 

And it would probably be over with by now with a dead Bin Laden.

 

There is a difference between opposing something, and initiating it. I don't think there are really any instances of Democrats advocating carrying the war in Afghanistan to Iraq before finishing the job Afghanistan. Perhaps Lieberman did, but that isn't any real indication a Democratic administration would have initiated the war the way the Bush administration did.

 

Too long to explain here, as it has been exhaustively chronicled and documented, but suffice it to say, your grasp of recent history seems very very, very lacking.

The extent to which certain factions of the Bush Administration engineered the case for war in Iraq (even prior to September 11) and the resistance they had to overcome both externally and internally, makes it incredibly unlikely as something that just would have happened due to a natural course of events. The ironic part of course is that despite the fact that it was so orchestrated, the planning was so terrible.

But if you actually want a counterexample, how remotely close to an invasion of Iraq was the US between 1992 and 2003? During the early part of which time, Iraq actually had an active nuclear program?

Secondly - you overestimate the degree to which Congress (in this case, one controlled by the President's own party) can exercise control over military deployments. Other than the politically suicidal move of withholding funding, there's not a whole lot that they can do. Teddy Roosevelt's old adage about having enough funding to sail the Navy halfway around the world, and accordingly forcing Congres to give him the rest to sail them back, is still applicable.

 

For Liberals in this situation pointing out the hypocrisy is proving that Teabaggers are more against Obama than they are against Big Government.

We all know Reagan turned this country for the largest creditor to the largest debtor and we all know that Under Reagan, Bush, and W the debt/GDP ballooned to disgusting levels. We know that the largest entitlement legislation ever was under W and voted for by Republicans. We know what a waste the Iraq War was and still is and military spending in general for that matter.

The point is for 30 years no Conservative spoke out about the increase in Big Government or the national debt until Obama stepped through the door. Then suddenly it was stop blaming Bush all of the debt, wars, bailouts, and deficits are Obama's fault and those same deficits caused by the last 30 years of stupidity is somehow proof he is pushing us into Socialism.

Until I see a Teabagger rally with pictures of Bush/Hitler or complaining about what Reagan spent on Star Wars, or protesting Reagan's amnesty of 3 million illegals, then we all know that is isn't about the issue it's about the man in the White House.

 

I think we have a winner!

 

But the pro invasion crowd that you mentioned weren't motivated to call for the invasion before the Bush administration put it out there as a thing to do. Once the idea was brought up and bogus intel brought out, they were for it.

The point still remains that the Bush administration had to initiate the push for the invasion.

I do agree that a Democratic administration that wanted to invade Iraq could have made a case to do so, I just don't see any evidence that a Democratic administration would have wanted to invade.

 

I couldn't even get past your second paragraph before I had to respond.

Bush enjoyed incredible popular support from 9/11 until several years into the Iraq war. He was able to intimidate Democrats into supporting the war specifically due to his high approval ratings in the run-up to the war and several years after the war began.

On this point, at least, you seem to be basing your arguments on an extremely foggy and completely inaccurate memory. In fact, your recollection here is literally the opposite of what happened.

 

Congrats.

We agree on something.

The Arizona immigration law just feels wrong. I believe in enforcing our immigration laws, but this is not the answer. A uniformed person demanding to see your "papers" is something I thought I would only see in 1980s movies supposedly set in East Germany.

 

Also, to durvasa, it confounds response when you suggest that Obama would have made the same mistakes and committed the same deceptions that Bush did... just, well, because.

Not only is it entirely unimaginable that Obama would have started the Iraq war (and you will not find a single serious person in the world that would share the weird opinion that it would have been in any way likely or even plausible), no other Republican would have started that war.

It made no sense whatsoever to take an attack by a terrorist group based in Afghanistan and turn it into a preemptive strike on an entirely different, sovereign nation that had nothing to do with that attack.

It took a very special brand of radicals to concoct the case for war with Iraq.

And it took a great many deceptions, large and small, to make that case to Congress and the American people. The Democrats who supported the war did so after being repeatedly fed misinformation, regarding WMD's, nukes and a fabricated connection between Iraq and 9/11.

Furthermore, there would have been no possibility of this war at all without extreme efforts on the part of the Bush administration to justify a preemptive strike against a country that had not threatened us and posed no threat to us.

And it's not for nothing that the idea of such a preemptive strike was literally named The Bush Doctrine. That's because the Bush administration introduced to our country the very idea of attacking a country that didn't attack us. We had never done that before in the history of our nation. Think about that for a minute. Bush didn't just invent the case for this war; he invented the very idea of this sort of war.

To suggest that any other president, from either party, would have gone to the same extreme measures to first invent and then peddle the disingenuous case for the Iraq war is just, well, silly.

And to suggest that Obama would have is beyond ludicrous. He was not "anti-war," he was anti-war.

 

You see no conflict between being disliked and being liked?

durvasa: The Bush administration was so disliked and so incompetent that its possible much of the "resistance" was a result of that.

Batman: Bush enjoyed incredible popular support from 9/11 until several years into the Iraq war.

That's weird.

 

So you were saying that much of the opposition to the Iraq war, in Congress, was due to senators and congressmen personally disliking Bush? Man, this just keeps getting weirder.

Looking forward to your response to my previous post, btw.