Obama's "open hand" foreign policy: abject failure

BoneKracker · Veteran Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1488 Location: U.S.A.

Part of the "Hope and Change" was to be "reaching out" to the Islamic world with an "open hand", sitting down "without preconditions" to have rational dialogue, and so on. Well, welcome to the real fucking world, ivory tower idealists; these are not rational actors. The meta-trend is that you either live under militant Islam, or you are at war with it: there will be no middle ground. Wake up and smell the Jihad.

We've had four years of purported "reaching out", bowing and scraping, apologizing, and bending over, and what has it wrought? We've lost Northern Africa to al Qaeda and their militant Islamist brethren -- gave them our sympathies and fought on their side, even. We probably armed and trained the very people who just wiped our Libyan embassy off the map in the most militarily sophisticated operation we have seen yet by Islamic terrorists.

So much for that fucking idea. Yet, here is our government, expressing more outrage over the exercise of free speech that served as an excuse for the attacks than the attacks themselves. Our President made one brief statement on the subject, from a campaign podium, never setting aside his re-election campaign for a moment, like he's pretending it isn't happening. The White House says he's "monitoring the situation". Hello, can we get a Reset button on the Reset button?

dmitchell

BoneKracker · Veteran Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1488 Location: U.S.A.

pjp

BoneKracker · Veteran Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1488 Location: U.S.A.

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Oldthinkers unbellyfeel INGSOC.
-- Headline of a document on Winston Smith's terminal in his cubicle at the Ministry of Truth, seen briefly in the background in one scene of the movie rendition of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

sugar · Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 6:19 am Post subject:

I nominate this thread for pjp's new conceptual vision for OTW
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Jesus Could Be Their Candidate and the Republicans Would Still Lose

BoneKracker · Veteran Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1488 Location: U.S.A.

I nominate sugar to be quarantined to his own thread, where the contagion of his socio-economic cognitive distortions cannot spread to healthy minds.
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Oldthinkers unbellyfeel INGSOC.
-- Headline of a document on Winston Smith's terminal in his cubicle at the Ministry of Truth, seen briefly in the background in one scene of the movie rendition of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

bogamol · Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 6:54 am Post subject:

BoneKracker · Veteran Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1488 Location: U.S.A.

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Oldthinkers unbellyfeel INGSOC.
-- Headline of a document on Winston Smith's terminal in his cubicle at the Ministry of Truth, seen briefly in the background in one scene of the movie rendition of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Darth Marley · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 25 Jan 2007 Posts: 105

big dave · Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 12:42 pm Post subject:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/an-5ueQ4m7bnh7mu/swordfish_2001_the_war_on_terrorism/

pjp · Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 8:25 pm Post subject:

sugar · Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 8:42 pm Post subject:

pjp · Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 8:55 pm Post subject:

I disagree. Based on the violent outcome of the attack, it seems more than reasonable to discuss a sitting president's foreign policy. Claiming the existence of such a discussion is vitriolic is, IMO, baseless at best. But to be clear, you aren't objecting to anything specific within the thread up to that point, so that is a Good Thing IMO.

EDIT:

Oh, and since I specifically wrote "violent outcome," I figured that I would need come up with some explanation for that specific word. So in the other extreme, if the article linked to was about Muslim missionaries planting trees, demining a warzone, or otherwise helping the needy, you would have a strong case.
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sugar · Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 10:03 pm Post subject:

flysideways · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 29 Jan 2005 Posts: 145

Muso · Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 10:46 pm Post subject:

The world is crumbling, and there are still people idiotic enough to support Obama. Fools.
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If I had a dollar for every time capitalism was blamed for the problems caused by government, I'd be a fat filmmaker with a baseball cap

sugar · Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 11:15 pm Post subject:

BoneKracker · Veteran Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1488 Location: U.S.A.

Republicans were just dealing with the mess created by Democrats. If Democrats hadn't created a massive economic bubble, deregulated the economy, ignored housing sector risk, thrown the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan under the bus, let al Qaeda go unmolested after they attacked us twice, and pretended genocide in Africa wasn't happening, then we wouldn't have had any of these problems.

Actually, it's sugar's fault. It's been all downhill since he learned to talk.
_________________
Oldthinkers unbellyfeel INGSOC.
-- Headline of a document on Winston Smith's terminal in his cubicle at the Ministry of Truth, seen briefly in the background in one scene of the movie rendition of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

sugar · Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2012 3:26 am Post subject:

sugar · Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2012 3:30 am Post subject:

sugar · Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2012 3:34 am Post subject:

BoneKracker · Veteran Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1488 Location: U.S.A.

BoneKracker · Veteran Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1488 Location: U.S.A.

BoneKracker · Veteran Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1488 Location: U.S.A.