George
I don't think at all, we are France's poodle, but we are only (and I think, a lot more still has to come!) fulfilling French-German Friendship Treaty of 1963:
Quote:Co-operation between the governments is extraordinarily close and greatly institutionalized due to the Elysée Treaty and its amendment of 1988. To name just a few examples:
half-yearly government consultations (summits), which, since 1999, have focused on current topics of society in both countries and therefore go beyond simple co-operation between governments,
the German-French Security and Defense Council,
the Councils for Economic, Financial and Environmental Affairs and
the coordinators for German-French co-operation, which devote most of their attention today to the field of civil society.
In addition, since the beginning of 2001, heads of state and government and the foreign ministers of both countries have been holding informal meetings every 6-8 weeks for open and intense discussion on current topics of European and international interest (Blaesheim talks).
Walter Hinteler wrote:George
I don't think at all, we are France's poodle, but we are only (and I think, a lot more still has to come!) fulfilling French-German Friendship Treaty of 1963:
I agree the treaty was a good thing and the elimination of Franco German rivalry from the European scene is a benefit to all. However, I believe the French view of a United Europe derives a good deal from the lingering ambitions of Louis XIV and Napoleon. Europe and Germany can do better than that.
Let's really talk about removing George Bush...
Earlier on this thread (I think) there was some no small repugnance voiced by women on a2k at a particular cartoon posted.
Here's something even more repugnant...
Quote:U.S. troops use new tactics to hunt down a resurgent Taliban
By Mark McDonald
Knight Ridder Newspapers
PARLE, Afghanistan - The loudspeakers atop the Humvee crackled to life: "The Taliban are women! They're bitches! If they were real men, they'd stop hiding under their burkas and they'd come out and fight!"
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9611543.htm
LOL - think that's quite clever, really ...
From further down the article tho, here's the real scandal:
Quote:The Taliban were driven from power nearly three years ago, but they've staged a ruthless comeback throughout southern Afghanistan. They're recruiting fighters, slitting the throats of local officials and terrorizing rural villagers who have dared to register to vote in Afghanistan's first presidential election.
Lessee. America was attacked on 9/11. Bush announced the War on Terrorism. The terrorists were in Afghanistan, shielded by the Taliban.
Fast forward and here we are, Bush touting his prestige as The Uncontested and Generally Recognized Strong Man in the War on Terror right as those very same Taliban slip back into power again, benefiting from most of America's soldiers being caught up way over in Iraq (no relation with 9/11).
Odd world, isn't it?
Maybe next time he will invade England instead of attacking Russia. Oh! wrong war, same mistake.
nimh wrote:Lessee. America was attacked on 9/11. Bush announced the War on Terrorism. The terrorists were in Afghanistan, shielded by the Taliban.
Fast forward and here we are, Bush touting his prestige as The Uncontested and Generally Recognized Strong Man in the War on Terror right as those very same Taliban slip back into power again, benefiting from most of America's soldiers being caught up way over in Iraq (no relation with 9/11).
Odd world, isn't it?
Nimh,
What alternative do you have in mind? Do you believe Western Europe is doing a better job dealing with the demographic, cultural, political and Jihadist challenge it faces from its Moslem neighbors to the south - most of them former colonies with plenty of bad memories of the experience?
It is relatively easy to criticize action when one is inert. Please explain to me the inherent wisdom of the policies advocated by our French friends and their German poodles.
Funny, George - you ask, "What alternative do you have in mind?" - a good question.
But then, as if you already envisage the (indeed predictable) answers - America shouldn't have underfunded the Afghan war, it shouldn't have hastily retreated the bulk of its force from the very country Osama was operating from, the moment it'd installed nothing much more than a fragile peace in its capital city - it shouldn't have let its obsessive leaders leave the country in a lurch the Taliban would quickly again be able to take advantage of, just because they were so eager to start another war, in another place, that had little to do with Osama and nothing with 9/11, but happened to be on their long-standing hit list -
It's as if you suddenly see all those answers coming, once again, and so, hastily, conspicuously, change the subject into something quite different from the question you asked, something quite other than the discussion about, yeah, what could all the alternatives to Bush's policies have been - namely, you know, the tired routine about how lame Europeans are, in general, so what right do they have to talk.
Odd.
Nimh,
The world is full of critics who have only to find a fault, and run no risk of being discredited in the unfolding of events.
I seriously doubt that anyone in our government ever seriously contemplated any long-term occupation of Afghanistan - with or without Iraq. We already know what that is like from the earlier Soviet experience. We took out a regime that was overtly hostile to us and which was supporting our Islamist terrorist enemies. We established a political dialogue, which led to as much self-government as that unfortunate country is able to sustain right now, and we got some support from our allies in sustaining the new regime. That it would be threatened by Islamists supported by Iran was always a given. The situation is by no means a full success, but it is still a good deal better than it was in 2001 - for us and for the Afghans. If our European friends are convinced that more Western forces are needed on scene to ensure the stabilization of Afghanistan, I'm sure the U.S. government would not stand in their way.
Between Afghanistan and Iraq is Iran, a country of nearly 50 million with a somewhat stagnant theocratic regime sitting on the backs of a young population with substantial desire for modernization and relative democracy. Iran is actively supporting Islamist and terrorist reaction in both Afghanistan and Iraq. One could wish that our European allies would be more supportive in pressuring the Iranian regime to abandon its nuclear weapons program, and its support of Islamist terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq, and around the world. The regime there is vulnerable to a challenge from the West.- if one could be mobilized.
I don't believe it is possible to change the historical march of Islamist reaction without altering the situation among these three countries. Sitting still in Afghanistan would not have materially improved our situation. I believe this is the strategic estimate of the Bush Administration.
Alternatively one could simply wait and hope that the situation will somehow resolve itself. Perhaps this is the European Strategy. If there is another one, I have heard nothing of it. The problem is that Europe does not have the time and the power for such a strategy to work. The demographic, economic, social and immigration aspects of the issues Europe faces will change the internal dynamics in Western Europe a good deal faster than will any reform occur in the Moslem world. I believe Western Europe has more at stake in our success in this endeavor than do we. Evidently this view is not widespread there.
History doesn't reveal its alternatives. We have a fairly complete knowledge of the difficulties attendant to the strategy America is pursuing. We can only imagine what might follow the alternatives.
Yes, but is that because they are accurate polls?
Or is it because the same people who do the hiring at fox are the people who are doing the polling?
The only accurate poll is a fair election.
Get this today, from a British newspaper's (paid service) 'newsletter':
Quote:Friday September 10, 2004
What could inspire a smart human being to vote for George Bush? Andrew Brown on what makes the American world view so very different from the European one
My friend Matt Hoffman may become the first Independent contributor to be burnt in effigy by its readers. He announced last week that he might be voting for George Bush.
He actually has a vote in the American elections, unlike most suppliers of opinion (wholesale or retail) to the British public. And, though he has lived her for a very long time, he retains a knowledge of the gut hatreds of American politics which foreigners cannot acquire without living there a very long time.
You might expect these feelings to diminish with distance; in fact, it seems to amplify them in moments of crisis. The most pacifist and Thatcher-hating British expatriate could be surprised by a storm of patriotism in the Falklands War. You never feel more strongly 'My country right or wrong' than when all around you think it must be wrong.
But it's still a surprise. Hoffman is the kind of American who adds lustre to any country he chooses to live. He's optimistic, energetic, cultured and smart. He is a life-long Democrat; by the standards of mainstream American political debate, a crazed socialist, which means he probably voted for Tony Blair (he holds dual citizenship). For him even to consider voting for Bush suggests something very strange and important is happening that we just don't understand.
A poll last week showed that if the whole world had a vote in the election, Bush would be beaten 4-1. The only countries he would carry are Nigeria, Kenya, and the Philippines, none of which are actually supplying troops for the Iraqi war. In this country, he would poll 16%, rather less than Robert Kilroy-Silk got in the last election - a figure that seems to me about right. Mr Bush couldn't run a daytime television show, and neither he nor Kilroy-Silk could run the country. So why are sane, smart Americans prepared to vote for him?
The answer is that they don't share an assumption so obvious to the rest of the world that it's almost invisible: that the world would be better and safer if America were less powerful. We assume that nice, sane, liberal Americans must agree with us. But we're wrong.
If you look at the pictures and read the speeches, both candidates are running on a message repulsive to the outside world: that we can all be saved only by a strong and powerful America, and they will save it by making America still stronger. This is true of John Kerry as much as George Bush.
I know there is a minority which thinks differently. In November 2001, I went to a peace rally with Patti Smith and others in Boston. Those people certainly didn't want war in Afghanistan. They wanted justice in Palestine, and a whole lot of other policies self-evident to Europeans.
They could have sung along in chorus to most Guardian leaders. And in one of the most liberal cities in America, there were no more than a couple of hundred of them.
And even this tiny minority reaches its 'European' conclusions from very American premises. They believe just as much as the neocons that America has a mission to transform the world. They just disagree about how it should.
The unnerving consensus in the presidential campaign is that America must save the world and itself through war. Outside the USA, the proportion of people who believe that is probably the same as those who would vote for Bush.
A further disagreement is that Americans think the war has already started. We don't. The war in Iraq certainly doesn't feel, in this country, like one in which we are actively engaged. British casualties are very low, and more or less nothing appears in the papers about the activities of British troops. Even the Daily Telegraph complains that there is no access to the army's operations in Basra. Other European countries, of course, have no troops there at all, or very few.
No matter how the Pentagon plays things down, no American can feel that Iraq is someone else's problem. They don't have the option of pretending that it's not happening. Their options are simpler: to win, lose, or settle with the enemy. Since they have defined an enemy - 'terror' - that doesn't exist, it is going to be difficult to negotiate a settlement.
So the question becomes who will best prosecute the war. Even here, Kerry, with his experience and competence, would seem to be the natural choice. But wars aren't fought on rational grounds. The one thing we can be certain of is that however much the rest of the world may dislike an incompetent warmonger like George Bush, we wouldn't like a really competent and energetic American war leader very much better.
* Andrew Brown is the author of The Darwin Wars: The Scientific War for the Soul of Man and In the Beginning Was the Worm: Finding the Secrets of Life in a Tiny Hermaphrodite. He also maintains a weblog, the Helmintholog.
THE BROWN SHIRTS HAVE ARRIVED
or
SEND IN THE GOONS
take you choice
Quote:COLMAR, Pa., Sept. 9 -- Secret Service agents are famous for their willingness to take a bullet for the president. Less famous is their willingness to take out a heckler for the president.
Officially, the Secret Service does not concern itself with unarmed, peaceful demonstrators who pose no danger to the commander in chief. But that policy was inoperative here Thursday when seven AIDS activists who heckled President Bush during a campaign appearance were shoved and pulled from the room -- some by their hair, one by her bra straps -- and then arrested for disorderly conduct and detained for an hour.
After Bush campaign bouncers handled the evictions, Secret Service agents, accompanied by Bush's personal aide, supervised the arrests and detention of the activists and blocked the news media from access to the hecklers.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9703-2004Sep9.html
When President Kerry takes over, he's going to have to replace everyone in government that he's legally entitled to replace, including the Secret Service, whose mission now apparently includes preventing the media from doing its job.
And if our media doesn't stand up for themselves, and each other, then they're worthless.
Here's the most important passage from Dana Milbank's account in blatham's link above:
Quote:One uniformed Secret Service agent complained to a colleague that 'the press is having a field day' with the disruption -- and the agents quickly clamped down. Journalists were told that if they sought to approach the demonstrators, they would not be allowed to return to the event site -- even though their colleagues were free to come and go.
An agent, who did not give his name, told one journalist who was blocked from returning to the speech that this was punishment for approaching the demonstrators and that there was a 'different set of rules' for reporters who did not seek out the activists.
America is supposed to have just one set of rules -- in this case, free speech.
I am
outraged.
Is anyone else?
Here's what free speech gets you when you express it too close to George W Bush:
Where did you get that photo, PD? When & where did that happen, and who are the suits?
It comes from the Associated Press via Yahoo. Here's the link:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/040909/480/pajl10109091829
greenumbrella's's got a thread going with links to the story at the Washington Post. It's
here.
I don't think that this is related:
Quote:With the assistance of party staff, Hitler drafted a party program consisting of twenty-five points. This platform was presented at a public meeting on February 24, 1920, with over 2,000 eager participants. After hecklers were forcibly removed by Hitler supporters armed with rubber truncheons and whips, Hitler electrified the audience with his masterful demagoguery.
Source
PD
Amazing, isn't it? Who would have thought people would get this numb to totalitarian techniques.
A heckler, shouting at John Kerry about Vietnam war atrocities, was manhandled by sheetmetal workers sitting nearby and escorted from the building.
What's amazing is that you believe it's a Bush thing.
Sheetmetal workers are part of the Secret Service
Besides, I thought that officially, the Secret Service does not concern itself with unarmed, peaceful demonstrators who pose no danger to the commander in chief or any other presidential candidate.