Wednesday, June 04, 2008

 

Obama Versus Canute the Great

Let's start with the old guy. It is a 1000 year old story that King Canute, king of England and most of Scandinavia, Canute the Great, in order to shut up his sycophantic courtiers, had them place his throne at the shore where he commanded the incoming tide to stop, which, of course, it did not. There is indeed a limit to human ability vis a vis the power of nature.

Compare that to this little piece from Senator Obama's speech last night:


...I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war...


Yeah, if Obama tells the seas not to rise, they should tremble and obey.

Oh, and there are two ways for us to end the war being waged against us, beat the Jihadists or surrender to them. Any bets which way Obama leans? Anyone? Anyone?

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Comments:
Rog,

Is there more way to skin a cat? Are there 13 ways of looking at a blackbird?

B/f everyone in the Blue Nowhere begins gnashing their teeth and rending their garments over the prospect of Barack Obama's foreign policy, let us examine the ways in which our current policy is not working and determine whether his ideas are viable or no.

I have concluded that unfortunately, there will always be jihadists. There will always be some impressionable person who believes tha his or her ticket to the 72 houris is in strapping explosives to his or her body or blowing oneself's up in a vehicle where the slaughter of innocent civilians will be maximized.

Whether Al Qaeda is waxing or waning, continued containement and extermination efforts in Afghanistan are necessary. Quashing Iran's nuclear ambitions and stopping that country's export of terrorism is also a high priority and our current policy seems to be accomplishing little in these regards.

If not talking the Iranians, having removed Saddam Hussein who was the major foil to Iran in the region, is failing what other policies are available to us?

T
 
In my experience, there is only one way to skin a cat, but who would want to do it in any way? You can look at a blackbird 13 ways but only if you're the Emperor of Ice Cream. If your complaint is that we don't have the enough guys to attack al qaeda and al qaeda types in more than two countries, then the guy to blame is Bill Clinton--in 1992 we had more than two million in uniform and spent 4.1% of GDP on the military. After Clinton, we had 1.7 in uniform and spent under 3%. We have yet, despite two successful wars, to get back to 4.1%. I'll use you logic, if we can call it that: If we went after Iraq for terrorist support and nuclear weapon development and left Saddam alone, would things be better? Wouldn't Saddam be filling the military vacuum there about now? Iraq was the right choice after Afghanistan. The rest will just have to wait their turns.
 
Rog,

During the Clinton administration, the Cold War had recently ended and it was not foreseeable that we would invade tow countries simultaneously. Think about it.

It certainly was not foreseeable that we would invade Iraq b/c anyone who had ever read anything about Iraq's history or who had studied its culture woulkd have advised against it.

Iraq was completely the wrong choice after Afghanistan.

Someday you will realize that it was the wrong choice so I will just keep working on you.

T
 
I'm sure you'll be saying Iraq was the wrong choice even if it is a shining beacon of how well life goes under a constitutional republic. I wasn't blaming Clinton so much as giving the reason we have relatively fewer troops now.
 
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