When should Obama stop blaming Bush?

[downwardspiral 0]

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Here's a question for ya Hippy; what do you think you'd be doing if you were a young lad in Afghan where you'd the option to earn roughly $2 for being a standard grafter or $14 for being in the 'Taliban'?

That's the issue - the blame game is pointless.

I can't believe you remember my call sign after all this time. Embarrasingly I've forgotten yours. I'm blaming my lack of memory on Obama.

I'd take the $14.

www.FourWheelerHB.com

[vortexring 0]

Of course you'd take the $14! And I never told ya my c/s - you'd find it terribly boring; it consists of letters and numbers.

'for it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "chuck 'im out, the brute!" But it's "saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot.'

[Nikki_vZ 0]

I think that Mr Bush must stop shifting the blame and start taking responsiblity for his actions. I really like Barack Obama and I think he is doing his best.

[downwardspiral 0]

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Of course you'd take the $14! And I never told ya my c/s - you'd find it terribly boring; it consists of letters and numbers.

Fuck that IS boring! You poor bastage! [/laugh]

www.FourWheelerHB.com

[vortexring 0]

Nah, I prefer it that way; how could I justify having a macho c/s like Gunslinger that you guys love? I'd end up being called Fister or something . . .

Still, to be honest we're going down that road with formation c/s's, such as when we're working as a 2 ship, etc. Sod that - we should only allow comical formation c/s's!!

'for it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "chuck 'im out, the brute!" But it's "saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot.'

[lawrocket 3]

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Sometimes the shooting victim dies despite the skill of the doctor.

And usually the head cold goes away when antibiotics are administered. And the person may credit the doctor for curing his ills.

Then we find out that long term costs like MRSA may be an issue.

It is NOT black or white. It's interesting that Afghanistan - which had pretty much been viewed as a righteous war - is now being questioned because of the problems. 8 years later.

I have issues with the president's handling of the economy. Of Congress spending like happy times are here (and in happy times they spend more than they have).

There are excuses made for continuing and intensifying the behavior. This is unacceptable. Bush ran record deficits. Obama shattered those records. (Actually, Congresses did).

I really hope that the GOP takes Congress. The country seems to run best with a Dem POTUS and GOP Congress. I'd like to try a grand social experiment - liberarian supermajority in the Senate - but that's just a dream.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[jcd11235 0]

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It's interesting that Afghanistan - which had pretty much been viewed as a righteous war - is now being questioned because of the problems. 8 years later.

I thought invading Afghanistan was a mistake before we did it, and I still feel the same way about the war there.

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[Amazon 7]

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There are people on here still blaming FDR.

To be clear... this is about Obama blaming Bush for Afhganistan. Not you or me or anyone else. Obama.

Which Bush... the first one who did not keep his eyes on the prize of all the help we gave the Afgans to kill Russians.. but walked away in a big way after the Soviets rolled out of Afghanistan... or his son... who could not finish the job HE started and saw something shiny in Iraq????

It must run in the family

Leaving that HUGE power vacuum there in 1989 directly led to the Taliban taking power and AQ having such an impact there.

Leaving the job undone by ShrubCo and friends.. leads us to the situation today.

FUCK yes.. Afghanistan is the Bush.s fault

[billvon 2,396]

>Yes... don't blame him for his mistakes. That would just be wrong.

Now THAT'S irony. (And I bet you can't even see it.)

[rehmwa 2]

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I'd like to try a grand social experiment - liberarian supermajority in the Senate - but that's just a dream.

Just show me one thesis discussing the Dewey Decimal system as an improvement over a Representative Republic governmental system.

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[shah269 0]

Well we all now the war in Iraq was total BS.
Its was all about the little boy trying to prove to his father that he could do what the old man was too smart not to.
So I say we'll forgive him when he has written a letter of apology, read it out loud and maybe paid 1% of the cost of the war?
Sound fair?

Life through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay.

The only thing that falls from the sky is birdshit and fools!

[quade 3]

Just out of curiosity, why do you think we should stop blaming GWB?

What loyalty should anyone have to him at this point?

To me it's a bit like asking a mother when she should stop blaming the killer of her child. It makes no sense.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[shropshire 0]

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Some of the stuff that Bush and his government did is inexcusabvle.... so, on some subjecta, the answer must be never.

I'd like to remind everyone here that it was not Bush's government. It was the government of the american people. It was Your government.

Not mine

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[nerdgirl 0]

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Susan writes:
Obama shouldn't stop blaming the Bush administration at all, because Obama knows that if he stops doing this, then people will easily forget who started it. So, I would always remind the people whose war it really is and how we got into it. How soon we forget.

This quote was an answer from a citizen put on the air. How soon we forget yes indeed.

Concur.

I looked at the link in your original post – genuinely interesting cross-cut of responses, "Tito from Hollywood" particularly, imo.

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To be clear... this is about Obama blaming Bush for Afhganistan. Not you or me or anyone else. Obama.

Would you point me to some specific statements made by Pres Obama that you see as "blaming" Pres Bush?

I guess I’m trying to figure out what is “blame” versus what is recognition of strategic choices or inadequate resourcing decisions? How do you differentiate “blame” from the latter?

/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[nerdgirl 0]

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So in four years when the war in Afghanistan is still viewed as a failure it would be appropriate for Obama to blame Bush?

From my perspective, I’m worried that pursuing a counterinsurgency strategy will be ‘blamed’ militarily & politically. I still think that Afghanistan is a much tougher problem than most are willing to acknowledge and that the path to solution is not solely through more gun(ners). They're very, very important, imo ... but not the whole solution.

In the end for me, much like I’ve written previously w/r/t the Bush administration ‘taking credit’ for Libya’s decision to rollback its offensive chemical and nuclear weapons programs, I don’t care who takes credit *if* the end results are in America’s strategic interests. (And yes, I get to define what those are in this context. )

Unlike Libya, which generated immediate removal and reduction of a chemical weapons stockpile and abandonment of nuclear weapons pursuit, the implications of decisions in Afghanistan are likely to take 10 or 20 or 30 years to be realized. Shipping out of Tripoli tons of sulfur mustard was immediate (e.g., “now-ism”) and something that could be shown to Congress as evidence of progress/success. It’s hard to measure, or in today's OSD-parlance ‘put a metric on’, success in a counterinsurgency. Schools built? (What if they’re being occupied by Taliban-affiliated Haqqanis? Sadly true in at least one case of which I am familiar.) Roads paved? I’m still thinking # of lawyers per capita is a genuine potential measure. It signals stable institutions, civil law, and rule of law.

In addition to the Iranian revolution, something else that happened in 1979, as I’m confident you know, was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. How that destabilized what was a limited but modern-leaning Islamic state (Kabul was the “Paris of the East” in the 1960s & 1970s, and women wore miniskirts) enabled the rise of the Taliban, which made it a safe-haven for al Qa’eda, was only recognized by a few until 22 years later.

/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[champu 1]

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Shipping out of Tripoli tons of sulfur mustard was immediate (e.g., “now-ism”) and something that could be shown to Congress as evidence of progress/success. It’s hard to measure, or in today's OSD-parlance ‘put a metric on’, success in a counterinsurgency.

Difficult in an "elephant repellant" sense, or in the sense that levels of violence aren't expected to decrease in a time frame on the order of the attention span of civilian leadership (regardless of whether someone, somewhere believed things were getting better?)

[petejones45 0]

I don't know.

When are republicans going to stop blaming him for all Bush's fuck ups?

Look out for the freefly team, Smelly Peppers. Once we get a couple years more experience we will be a force to be reckoned with in the near future! BLUES!

[mindfree2yall 0]

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So in four years when the war in Afghanistan is still viewed as a failure it would be appropriate for Obama to blame Bush?

From my perspective, I’m worried that pursuing a counterinsurgency strategy will be ‘blamed’ militarily & politically. I still think that Afghanistan is a much tougher problem than most are willing to acknowledge and that the path to solution is not solely through more gun(ners). They're very, very important, imo ... but not the whole solution.

In the end for me, much like I’ve written previously w/r/t the Bush administration ‘taking credit’ for Libya’s decision to rollback its offensive chemical and nuclear weapons programs, I don’t care who takes credit *if* the end results are in America’s strategic interests. (And yes, I get to define what those are in this context. )

Unlike Libya, which generated immediate removal and reduction of a chemical weapons stockpile and abandonment of nuclear weapons pursuit, the implications of decisions in Afghanistan are likely to take 10 or 20 or 30 years to be realized. Shipping out of Tripoli tons of sulfur mustard was immediate (e.g., “now-ism”) and something that could be shown to Congress as evidence of progress/success. It’s hard to measure, or in today's OSD-parlance ‘put a metric on’, success in a counterinsurgency. Schools built? (What if they’re being occupied by Taliban-affiliated Haqqanis? Sadly true in at least one case of which I am familiar.) Roads paved? I’m still thinking # of lawyers per capita is a genuine potential measure. It signals stable institutions, civil law, and rule of law.

In addition to the Iranian revolution, something else that happened in 1979, as I’m confident you know, was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. How that destabilized what was a limited but modern-leaning Islamic state (Kabul was the “Paris of the East” in the 1960s & 1970s, and women wore miniskirts) enabled the rise of the Taliban, which made it a safe-haven for al Qa’eda, was only recognized by a few until 22 years later.

/Marg

I AGREE

[mindfree2yall 0]

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Just out of curiosity, why do you think we should stop blaming GWB?

What loyalty should anyone have to him at this point?

To me it's a bit like asking a mother when she should stop blaming the killer of her child. It makes no sense.

the blaming game is time consuming in not productive and we need to think about solutions instead of the blaming game at this point '''is getting expensive

[quade 3]

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the blaming game is time consuming in not productive and we need to think about solutions instead of the blaming game at this point '''is getting expensive

I'll agree that it doesn't actually solve the issue, however, it's important to remember who created the issues to begin with so members of that team of insiders aren't allowed to be in control again.

A few weeks ago some people where floating the name of Cheney 2012. I find that repugnant.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[juanesky 0]

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So in four years when the war in Afghanistan is still viewed as a failure it would be appropriate for Obama to blame Bush?

From my perspective, I’m worried that pursuing a counterinsurgency strategy will be ‘blamed’ militarily & politically. I still think that Afghanistan is a much tougher problem than most are willing to acknowledge and that the path to solution is not solely through more gun(ners). They're very, very important, imo ... but not the whole solution.

In the end for me, much like I’ve written previously w/r/t the Bush administration ‘taking credit’ for Libya’s decision to rollback its offensive chemical and nuclear weapons programs, I don’t care who takes credit *if* the end results are in America’s strategic interests. (And yes, I get to define what those are in this context. )

Unlike Libya, which generated immediate removal and reduction of a chemical weapons stockpile and abandonment of nuclear weapons pursuit, the implications of decisions in Afghanistan are likely to take 10 or 20 or 30 years to be realized. Shipping out of Tripoli tons of sulfur mustard was immediate (e.g., “now-ism”) and something that could be shown to Congress as evidence of progress/success. It’s hard to measure, or in today's OSD-parlance ‘put a metric on’, success in a counterinsurgency. Schools built? (What if they’re being occupied by Taliban-affiliated Haqqanis? Sadly true in at least one case of which I am familiar.) Roads paved? I’m still thinking # of lawyers per capita is a genuine potential measure. It signals stable institutions, civil law, and rule of law.

In addition to the Iranian revolution, something else that happened in 1979, as I’m confident you know, was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. How that destabilized what was a limited but modern-leaning Islamic state (Kabul was the “Paris of the East” in the 1960s & 1970s, and women wore miniskirts) enabled the rise of the Taliban, which made it a safe-haven for al Qa’eda, was only recognized by a few until 22 years later.

/Marg

I agree with much of what you state here, but, right now, you can not say all Afghanistan is safe haven for Taliban. Hence the issue at the border towns in Pakistan. And as far as the Eastern Paris goes, it was rather Lebanon, with the french and all....

Take care

"According to some of the conservatives here, it sounds like it's fine to beat your wide - as long as she had it coming." -Billvon

[downwardspiral 0]

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Susan writes:
Obama shouldn't stop blaming the Bush administration at all, because Obama knows that if he stops doing this, then people will easily forget who started it. So, I would always remind the people whose war it really is and how we got into it. How soon we forget.

This quote was an answer from a citizen put on the air. How soon we forget yes indeed.

Concur.

I looked at the link in your original post – genuinely interesting cross-cut of responses, "Tito from Hollywood" particularly, imo.

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To be clear... this is about Obama blaming Bush for Afhganistan. Not you or me or anyone else. Obama.

Would you point me to some specific statements made by Pres Obama that you see as "blaming" Pres Bush?

I guess I’m trying to figure out what is “blame” versus what is recognition of strategic choices or inadequate resourcing decisions? How do you differentiate “blame” from the latter?

/Marg

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSISL12983720090831

It was Gibbs.

www.FourWheelerHB.com

[DanG 1]

From your cite:

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"This was underresourced, underfunded, undermanned and ignored for years," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

Well, since he's telling the truth, I don't see the problem.

What's your opinion? When can Obama take full responsibility for success and/or failure in Afghanistan?

- Dan G

[SkyDekker 1,121]

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Some of the stuff that Bush and his government did is inexcusabvle.... so, on some subjecta, the answer must be never.

Some of the stuff your incredibly arrogant ugly ass queen has done, is very, what was that word again, imperialistic, and I don't see you whinning about it? Hell, the mess in the middle east still has British signatures all over it. Pakistan, Iraq, Palestine, Egypt, Sudan, etc, etc.

The queen is the head of state, not the head of government. Big difference, yet not big enough for you to grasp....what does that say?

[FallingOsh 0]

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From your cite:

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"This was underresourced, underfunded, undermanned and ignored for years," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

Well, since he's telling the truth, I don't see the problem.

What's your opinion? When can Obama take full responsibility for success and/or failure in Afghanistan?

Success or failure? I think it's a little premature to start talking about the end. I also think now would be a good time to stop blaming Bush and make a Presidential decision on how to move forward. I fully understand he inherited the war, but it's not like that was a surprise. The war started before he was a senator. He wanted to be President, so be President. Make a decision and get the job done and stop worrying about reminding people he didn't start it.

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Stay positive and love your life.