Posted on 05/11/2009 3:33:27 AM PDT by Scanian
Well, of course it is. Everyone from James Carville to Colin L. Powell says so. "The Republican Party is in deep trouble," Mr. Powell told some group willing to pay him serious money to deliver this kind of incisive insight. "Americans do want to pay taxes for services. Americans want more government in their lives, not less."
Whether or not they want it, they're certainly going to get it. And, if you like big government now, just think how big it'll be once both parties are fully signed up to the concept. You'll recall that Mr. Powell voted for Barack Obama, coming out and publicly stiffing his "beloved friend" John McCain, after years of more discreetly stiffing (in leaks to Bob Woodward and others) his not-so-beloved colleagues in the Bush administration.
But, in fairness to the former secretary of state, his breezy endorsement of more government and more taxes is as near as we've ever got to a coherent political philosophy from him. If the Republican Party refuses to take his advice, I would urge him to run a third-party campaign on this refreshingly candid platform.
One of Mr. Powell's more famous utterances was his rationale, after the 1991 Gulf War, for declining to involve the U.S. military in the Balkans: "We do deserts, we don't do mountains." Actually, by that stage, the U.S. barely did deserts. The first President Bush's decision, at Mr. Powell's urging, not to topple Saddam Hussein but to halt the coalition forces at the gates of Baghdad sent the world a message about American purpose whose consequences we live with to this day.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
No, but Republicanism may be.
— Obama won mostly due to the woman’s vote. A female presidential candidate would be extremely difficult to defeat.—
If that were the case, we’d be complaing about President (Hillary Rodham) Clinton right now. As for Palin, she says a lot of good things, but, in my humble opinion, she lacks the hard to define “gravitas” that would enable her to be propelled into the FDR/Reagan political apex.
In this day and age, gravitas is a pure media construct. Obama was perhaps the least substantive presidential candidate in American history.
“Fairly simple. The UN and coalition war aim was to drive Saddam out of Kuwait. Had Saddam been dethroned, we would have had something similar to the insurgency of 2005 to 2007, just 15 years earlier.”
I do not agree.
We were already into Iraq and on the way to Baghdad, smashing his army.
We could have knocked him out as easy as swatting a fly, and in the process, avoided the WMD debacle, as well as the cost in men and money in starting a whole new war.
It would have been so much easier to clean up the whole mess by finishing the FIRST war.
You are looking at it from a purely military standpoint. I agree with you as far as that goes.
What you propose is that we should have violated our commitments to the other coalition partners and changed objectives in mid-stride. In particular, the Arab members of the coalition would be understandably concerned if an outsider suddenly decides he has the right to change Arab regimes at a whim.
The big question is what happens after Saddam’s army is destroyed and he is dethroned.
Did we want to occupy Iraq at the time? No.
If we destroy a government, are we responsible to do something to handle the situation we created? Yes. I believe this is actually part of international law. The winning party is responsible for maintaining order until a replacement government can be stood up.
IOW, the issue was not whether we could overthrow the Iraqi regime, it’s what comes next.
“Did we want to occupy Iraq at the time? No.”
Do we want to occupy Iraq now? NO.
And where are we now???? hmmm.
Do you really think that NOW is better then in GW 1?
We smashed their army and will to fight as we routed them.
In GW 1, we did not just run Iraq out of Kuwait.
We went well INTO Iraq.
We should not have stopped just short of Baghdad.
We brought all the hardware and troops home after GW1, only to start it all over again, after Saddam had rebuilt everything.
As far as the USELESS NATIONS, to hell with what they thought then, or now.
Zero was a perfect example of not having gravitas, but being able to play it on TV. Then again, I’m sure a lot of Americans actually believed that Vince Edwards was a brain surgeon and Raymond Burr was a laywer (and I am really dating myself here!).
Conservatism is in death throes since the neoconservatives possessed Bush’s mind. It won’t recover until the neocon globalists are exorcised.
You actually think Steyn is making a real call for Powell (or anyone) to start a third party in this article? Please tell me you’re not that irony/sarcasm impaired?!?!
bump to read later
See ya and I wouldn’t wanna be ya, loser!
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