"Emmanuel Gustin" wrote in message
...
"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message
...

Nope, he draws an interesting and not totally unrealistic comparison.

The problem with such comparisons is that right-wingers are
always comparing Bush with Churchill, FDR, Kennedy, etc.;
comparisons that both on ground of policy and personality
are extremely far fetched.


Get off your stump, for gosh sakes. He drew the comparison because the
situation can be looked at in the same way--if Roosevelt had possessed the
capability to conduct a preemptive strike to remove the Nazi menace before
it ignited global war and done so, you would have been tossing the same
arguments aginst him that you now throw at our current leadership. There was
no compariosn stated or implied as to Bush and FDR on the personal level.

snip further straying from the topic at hand


He was not arguing feasibility--he was pointing out that yahoos
like you would indeed have been labeling FDR a "warmonger"
and condemning him for prosecuting a preemptive war had he
been able and willing to act in the manner he described.

It depends. If a 1930s president had gone off his rocker in
the way George W Bush did, sending an army into Europe
to invade Germany in absence of a rational policy and
realistic war goals, I would (if I had lived at that time)
indeed have condemned that president as a mad war-monger,
and IMHO quite correctly so.


Back up your turnip truck there, Gus. Yes, we did have a rational policy and
goals; the policy is, when necessary, to strike threats before they can
strike (or again strike) us or our interests. The goals included removal of
Saddam (done), elimination of Iraq as a regional military threat (done),
curtailing Iraq's WMD programs (done--though we did not find them to be of
the scale we thought they would be at the beginning), and let the Iraqi
people institute their own form of government (underway).


So would, and with ample
justification, have done the people of the USA.

"Have done"? You must have missed the fact that a bit over half of us
*still* support the President's Iraq policy--and more did so when we
embarked upon it. Stop assigning YOUR whacky thoughts to "the people of the
USA"--you who is not even a citizen of this nation. You know, the best thing
about reelecting Bush is perhaps the fact that it will signal the sentiment
of the American people towards all y'all Euroweenies who so fervently want
to meddle in our election process--think of it as a symbolic middle finger
directed in your direction come November.


If a 1940 president had sought to build an alliance to fight
the fascist dictatorships in Europe, say in a 1930s version of
NATO, and would have committed troops to Europe to support
it, I think I would have warmly welcomed that as the only way
to rescue the continent from the abyss. Sadly, at the time that
too would have been rejected by the American people.

The old "only an alliance can wage righteous war" bit, eh? Ignoring the fact
that, like today, nations like Belgium, France, and probably even the UK at
that time, would have decried the idea of the US striking Germany
preemptively, and would not have been willing to do themselves.


I am not opposed to the use of military force to support a policy.
I am opposed to the rash and incompetent use of force.

Oh, but we have been quite competent, outstripping the record for armored
assualt depth versus time, use of precision strike systems to emasculate a
still capable enemy ground force, and doing in a few short weeks what more
than a decade of UN/diplomatic hand-wringing and sanctions (with France
tossing what wrenches it could into that process as well) was incapable of
accomplishing. You may not like what we have done, but don't be so stupid as
to call it "incompetent".


To quote
the dictum attributed to Clausewitz, "war is politics continued
by other means". Like Wilhelm II, the neo-cons seem to have

Yo, you sound like Art--"neocon this, neocon that". Some of us were
conservatives before this strange, not well-defined term even sprang into
use. Given that Bush's approval rating is now around 52%, I guess you think
a bit over half of us are neocons", eh? Fat chance.


adopted military force as an alternative to politics, instead of a
tool of it,

We had some twelve years of trying to let politics take care of the Iraq
problem--it failed, thus the Clauswitzian extension into war.

because they lack the competency and understanding
of the world that are needed to define and implement an effective
policy. As barbaric narcissists, these people have been seduced
by the power at their command, and they can't resist using it even
when it does them and their country no good. Their obsession
with showing "strength" betrays their fundamental weakness.

The above reads like the typical limp-wristed fare we have come to expect
from a lot of Europeans exhibiting their usual stuffy disdain for the US,
and their own cultural and intellectual superiority to all others.
Newsflash--Europe is on the wane, and it won't be long before it moves from
second to third place in terms of economic and political importance (watch
out for Asia...). Get used to it, and get off that high horse you are trying
to stay astride before you fall off and bust your collective rump.

Brooks


--
Emmanuel Gustin