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notageek
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 Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 8:17 am Post subject: Should Obama politicise Bin Laden's death? |
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17900811
Bonus points to those who're able to guess the person in the first photo of the article.
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 8:45 am Post subject: |
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Probably should have gone here:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-922050.html
Bush's carrier landing stunt was cheesy. Having said that, a single special operations raid is not the same thing as a major military campaign to invade a foreign country and topple its government. But despite it's cheesiness, you didn't see the military getting on his case for taking undeserved credit.
Bush got ragged incessantly by Democrats for that stunt for the next five years. So, now they hold it up as an example of what is appropriate? Excuse me? This has nothing to do with Bush.
Having denying Bush any declaration of victory in Iraq, Obama has already taken unmerited bows for that success, after doing nothing more than following Bush's draw-down plan and lying about it, pretending he has now withdrawn our forces, because he hopes the people who voted for him because he said there was no way we could win and that he'd put an immediate end to that war won't notice and will supidly vote for him again.
I'll tell you what. When the U.S. wins the war in Afghanistan, then Obama can take credit for his strategic military leadership. Until then, he should sit his narrow self-pimping ass down, shut the fuck up, and try to actually do something a real leader would.
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notageek
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 9:26 am Post subject: |
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I think the Democrats incessantly criticized Bush not because he took political gain out of a war but because he failed in that war and took credit prematurely. In Obama's case this is justified by the Democrats by the fact he's taking credit for a task completed and not premature by any stretch.
So...
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Prenj
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 12:03 pm Post subject: |
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| notageek wrote: | I think the Democrats incessantly criticized Bush not because he took political gain out of a war but because he failed in that war and took credit prematurely. In Obama's case this is justified by the Democrats by the fact he's taking credit for a task completed and not premature by any stretch.
So... |
But both is just a spin, so why is it recognized as spin in first case, but not in second case? Of course he is gonna politicize Bin Laden's death, he's a politician.
If the public, on the other hand, decides to be naive and gullible, because they need a "leader" (daddy), its up to them, but it is what it is, nevertheless. |
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 12:22 pm Post subject: |
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| notageek wrote: | I think the Democrats incessantly criticized Bush not because he took political gain out of a war but because he failed in that war and took credit prematurely. In Obama's case this is justified by the Democrats by the fact he's taking credit for a task completed and not premature by any stretch.
So... |
Bush celebrated success prematurely, but his effort was eventually successful, unlike Obama's half-assed surge in Afghanistan. What Obama is taking credit for now is far less significant and in fact the success of what Bush set in motion and enabled.
The point of Afghanistan was to bring to justice the people who perpetrated 9/11 and prevent something like it from happening again. While Obama has been slowly assassinating al Qaeda in Pakistan, and unsuccessfully expanding and dragging out his inadequately-resourced nation-building war in Afghanistan, trying to win hearts and minds and turning into Vietnam Fail 2.0, al Qaeda has run away to and grown strong in the Maghreb (AQIM) and the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and he has done little about it. Al Qaeda linked groups have also been active in Somalia, Sudan, and Turkey, and they actually received help from Obama in Egypt and Libya.
So, comparing Obama's undeserved credit-grabbing for the elimination of bin Laden with Bush's premature celebration of victory in Iraq is a comparison of apples and oranges. More accurately, it's a comparison of somebody else's sesame seed with an unripe watermelon.
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 12:29 pm Post subject: |
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| Prenj wrote: | | notageek wrote: | I think the Democrats incessantly criticized Bush not because he took political gain out of a war but because he failed in that war and took credit prematurely. In Obama's case this is justified by the Democrats by the fact he's taking credit for a task completed and not premature by any stretch.
So... |
But both is just a spin, so why is it recognized as spin in first case, but not in second case? Of course he is gonna politicize Bin Laden's death, he's a politician.
If the public, on the other hand, decides to be naive and gullible, because they need a "leader" (daddy), its up to them, but it is what it is, nevertheless. |
Not all of the public are stupid, and absent the partisan spin, they will sometimes follow the lead of the intelligent among them. Instead of doing what Obama did, anybody with actual leadership experience would have made a big point of humbly denying any credit, and making sure to give it to others. The appropriate credit would have landed on such a person anyway, and they'd be respected for being loyal to the people actually making things happen.
One other notable difference between Bush's premature celebration of victory and Obama's taking credit were the speeches they gave. Bush's was filled with the words, "You" and "We", while Obama's was filled with the word "I". Go read them.
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Prenj
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 2:00 pm Post subject: |
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| BoneKracker wrote: | | One other notable difference between Bush's premature celebration of victory and Obama's taking credit were the speeches they gave. Bush's was filled with the words, "You" and "We", while Obama's was filled with the word "I". Go read them. |
Both speeches were written. It could be the deliberate wording based upon the marketing strategy and public image.
Bush had very weak presence and oratory skills, his staff knows this, so he is presented as a part of a team. If Bush was saying "I" nobody would dare follow, because he cannot tie two sentences together without making a lapsus linguae. So he alone cannot inspire confidence, so they package him as the part of the whole, the team, We, Patriotism, etc etc.
Obama has very strong presence, it is why he was chosen in relation to Bush. The concept of We, and "The Team" has been spent during the Bush era, so now you need something else to turn heads. Enter Obama, the guy who sounds like JFK.
Both personas are a product. Both presidents have staff that writes speeches for them. Both represent powerful interests that donate money to their campaigns, often same interests. To those who are making money, buying congressmen and senators via various proxys (lobbyists), so that laws are adjusted and decisions are made that are in their interest, ideology and all the jazz doesn't matter. What matters is that they put their guy in the seat. Romney and Obama are the same in that aspect, its just the spin on both characters.
Nobody runs for himself as himself except maybe Ron Paul, and that is exactly why corporate controlled media doesn't give him any spotlight (and they gave spotlight to that lunatic Santorum), because he is not their guy. Which is exactly why I would vote for him, if I was US citizen, but thats just how I tick, if I'm gonna be cynical, it's maybe because I don't share the same interests as the people who are running the show.
Even tho they try really hard to convince me that I do. |
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 2:12 pm Post subject: |
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| Prenj wrote: | | BoneKracker wrote: | | One other notable difference between Bush's premature celebration of victory and Obama's taking credit were the speeches they gave. Bush's was filled with the words, "You" and "We", while Obama's was filled with the word "I". Go read them. |
Both speeches were written. It could be the deliberate wording based upon the marketing strategy and public image. |
I think it's simpler than that. I think one administration understood leadership, and the other does not. Bush saw his audience as the Armed Forces and a nation threatened by terrorism. Obama saw his audience as the voters heading to the polls in a year. It's a fundamental difference in values and purpose. One said, "You did a great job. We will prevail." The other said, "Look at what I did! I pooped in the potty, Mommy!"
I'm not saying Bush was great, but this comparison is a desperate attempt to gloss over an obvious act of immoral self-aggrandizement.
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pitcrawler
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 4:07 pm Post subject: |
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| BoneKracker wrote: | | Prenj wrote: | | BoneKracker wrote: | | One other notable difference between Bush's premature celebration of victory and Obama's taking credit were the speeches they gave. Bush's was filled with the words, "You" and "We", while Obama's was filled with the word "I". Go read them. |
Both speeches were written. It could be the deliberate wording based upon the marketing strategy and public image. |
I think it's simpler than that. I think one administration understood leadership, and the other does not. Bush saw his audience as the Armed Forces and a nation threatened by terrorism. Obama saw his audience as the voters heading to the polls in a year. It's a fundamental difference in values and purpose. One said, "You did a great job. We will prevail." The other said, "Look at what I did! I pooped in the potty, Mommy!"
I'm not saying Bush was great, but this comparison is a desperate attempt to gloss over an obvious act of immoral self-aggrandizement. |
If you're talking about " Bush's premature celebration of victory in Iraq" as you quoted above, Bush saw his audience as the majority of Americans and people of many other nations who had just witnessed a highly unpopular, and arguably illegal war based on lies about WMD. |
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dmitchell
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 4:20 pm Post subject: |
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Of course Obama should politicize Bin Laden's death. To ask is like asking if a hammer should strike a nail.
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notageek
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 4:35 pm Post subject: |
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| dmitchell wrote: | | Of course Obama should politicize Bin Laden's death. To ask is like asking if a hammer should strike a nail. |
++
 And anyone complaining is just whining.
Although the point I was making with this article is that it starts with a photograph of Bush first. And you don't really have to read the rest.
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 9:36 pm Post subject: |
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| dmitchell wrote: | | Of course Obama should politicize Bin Laden's death. To ask is like asking if a hammer should strike a nail. |
Quibbling. It's a question of the extent to which he does so, and the misleading nature of his claims. Let's rephrase the question: "Should Obama try to pretend he was heroically responsible for this nation's successful elimination of bin Laden, and that the elimination of bin Laden is some kind of penultimate victory over al Qaeda or terrorism?"
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juniper
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 9:41 pm Post subject: |
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| BoneKracker wrote: |
Bush celebrated success prematurely |
um, that would be like hitler celebrating taking over the world after getting poland. prematurely? cumming prematurely doesn't mean doing it 7 years too early. |
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pjp
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 11:13 pm Post subject: |
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| BoneKracker wrote: | | Bush's carrier landing stunt was cheesy. Having said that, a single special operations raid is not the same thing as a major military campaign to invade a foreign country and topple its government. But despite it's cheesiness, you didn't see the military getting on his case for taking undeserved credit. |
I have no recollection of it being linked to reelection. Did I miss that advert? I thought it was just a general "I done good" tooting of his own horn in preparation of "easy wins" to follow.
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 11:44 pm Post subject: |
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| juniper wrote: | | BoneKracker wrote: |
Bush celebrated success prematurely |
um, that would be like hitler celebrating taking over the world after getting poland. prematurely? cumming prematurely doesn't mean doing it 7 years too early. |
The point of the trip was to celebrate the fall of Saddam Husein's regime. The fuck-up was allowing that "Mission Accomplished" banner to be put up. A picture says a thousand words, and in this case, with that as a backdrop, it was the wrong thousand. Nobody, except perhaps people who have no understanding of the military situation, thought anything was over, except for the invasion (i.e., the same morons who think the killing of bin Laden is somehow tantamount to victory in Afghanistan or over al Qaeda).
What's true, however, is that the Bush Administration completely failed to anticipate that secular violence would break out on the scale of civil war. The Rumsfeld DoD erroneously estimated force requirements based on the experience of Desert Storm, which was pretty much a large-scale hit-and-run operation, involving no occupation, no regime change, and no counter-insurgency requirement.
But, no matter how you slice it, you can't compare a couple of helicopters going to take out one guy to a major invasion that destroys one of the largest militaries on Earth and unseats an entrenched totalitarian government. It's ludicrous.
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Last edited by BoneKracker on Tue May 01, 2012 11:46 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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mcgruff
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 11:46 pm Post subject: |
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Bush let bin Laden get away at Tora Bora. He let him go (!). Then he just sorta drifted off and forgot all about it, once famously stating "I don't think about Bin Laden much". And of course there was the small matter of a whole new war in Iraq to distract everyone and suck resources away from the main task. You couldn't make that up.
Obama stuck his neck out on the campaign trail, and, once in office, he re-energised the hunt for Bin Laden, leading from the top until the job was done.
Is any of that political? Maybe just a teeny bit.
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pjp
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 11:53 pm Post subject: |
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| mcgruff wrote: | Obama stuck his neck out on the campaign trail, and, once in office, he re-energised the hunt for Bin Laden, leading from the top until the job was done.
Is any of that political? Maybe just a teeny bit. |
It's certainly a fabricated political spin.
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 11:55 pm Post subject: |
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| mcgruff wrote: | | Bush let bin Laden get away at Tora Bora. He let him go (!). |
What would you have done differently? You said something ridiculous about sending in 800 Rangers. They would have been slaughtered, bin Laden would still have escaped, and you would have been blamed for the worst military blunder since the Charge of the Light Brigade.
| mcgruff wrote: | | Then he just sorta drifted off and forgot all about it, once famously stating "I don't think about Bin Laden much". |
They were actively looking for him, just like all the other perpetrators of 9/11. But the truth is that he's not as important as Democrats now want to believe. His death was more symbolic than anything, and given the opportunity to do so, a True Democrat would have captured him and brought him to trial. Fail on that. Not politically expedient; death is preferable to due process, despite everything else he said when he "stuck his neck out on the campaign trail" (about human rights, Guantanamo, due process, "Enemy Combatants", trials for terror suspects, and a whole truckload of what turned out to be lies). As we just read, Obama "pushes the kill button every time".
| mcgruff wrote: | | Oh and of course there was the small matter of a whole new war in Iraq to distract everyone and suck resources away from the main task. You couldn't make that up. |
If you think the war in Iraq was nothing but a red herring, you have smoking too much crack and reading too many conspiracy theories. You are probably one of those people who thinks 9/11 was inside job too, right? And blurting out cliches like "you can't make this stuff up" when it's not appropos is not clever; it looks ign'ant.
| mcgruff wrote: | Obama stuck his neck out on the campaign trail, and, once in office, he re-energised the hunt for Bin Laden, leading from the top until the job was done.
Is any of that political? Maybe just a teeny bit. |
He didn't do shit. All he did was run a dog and pony show (one that cost lives) to take credit that was due others, in a desperate attempt to distract from the abject, undeniable failure of his administration. All he did was say "okay". Now, because he's got nothing else to campaign on, we are asked to believe saying "okay" makes him Captain America. 
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dmitchell
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2012 2:33 am Post subject: |
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| BoneKracker wrote: | | Quibbling. It's a question of the extent to which he does so, and the misleading nature of his claims. Let's rephrase the question: "Should Obama try to pretend he was heroically responsible for this nation's successful elimination of bin Laden, and that the elimination of bin Laden is some kind of penultimate victory over al Qaeda or terrorism?" |
Yes he should. He is a politician, so that is his nature. It's disgusting and dishonest, but since he is a politician it is precisely the thing he should do.
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richk449
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2012 2:45 am Post subject: |
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| dmitchell wrote: | | BoneKracker wrote: | | Quibbling. It's a question of the extent to which he does so, and the misleading nature of his claims. Let's rephrase the question: "Should Obama try to pretend he was heroically responsible for this nation's successful elimination of bin Laden, and that the elimination of bin Laden is some kind of penultimate victory over al Qaeda or terrorism?" |
Yes he should. He is a politician, so that is his nature. It's disgusting and dishonest, but since he is a politician it is precisely the thing he should do. |
Charles Manson IS a murderer, so he SHOULD kill people. |
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dmitchell
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2012 2:58 am Post subject: |
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| richk449 wrote: | | Charles Manson IS a murderer, so he SHOULD kill people. |
Lucky for me that I don't have to treat political posturing the same as murder! But maybe instead of talking about what Obama should do, I should talk about what we should expect Obama to do.
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Muso
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2012 3:53 am Post subject: |
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| richk449 wrote: | | Charles Manson IS a murderer, so he SHOULD kill people. |
He is?
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richk449
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2012 4:30 am Post subject: |
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| Muso wrote: | | richk449 wrote: | | Charles Manson IS a murderer, so he SHOULD kill people. |
He is? |
Okay, bad example.
Although if I wanted to quibble, I could point out that Manson was convicted of murder, so technically he is a murderer. |
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aidanjt
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2012 4:33 am Post subject: |
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| dmitchell wrote: | | But maybe instead of talking about what Obama should do, I should talk about what we should expect Obama to do. |
We all know what that is, turn white and become republican.
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Muso
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2012 4:36 am Post subject: |
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| aidanjt wrote: | | dmitchell wrote: | | But maybe instead of talking about what Obama should do, I should talk about what we should expect Obama to do. |
We all know what that is, turn white and become republican. |
The only people bringing race into it are his own supporters... and you, though that might be redundant.
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