Schoolyard Diplomacy (U.S. Sends Troops to Gulf)

and I quote:


"We don't comment on specific unit deployments. However, forces will be flowing to the region to be in place should the president decide to use them," said Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman at U.S. Central Command, which would oversee operations in Iraq.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week such deployments will "reinforce diplomacy." The Bush administration hopes the threat of military action will increase the pressure on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to fully disclose his efforts to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.


Washington Times, December 28th

"Reinforce Diplomacy"???? What sort of diplomacy is that? Maybe they learned it from the school-yard bullies they encountered. Essentially, the message received reads something like this: We are going to attack you. Just look at what we've got. Give in now.

Yeah, that's diplomacy all right.

This is the sort of rhetoric I find disgusting. This is not the way to go about handling a delicate international issue.

 

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I'm right there with you, tastybrain. These guys were never looking for a diplomatic solution in Iraq. If it weren't so damned shameful I'd laugh everytime Bush says it's up to Saddaam whether or not we invade his country. What a rediculous statement. War sure as hell isn't HIS idea, it's Bushy's.

It's also shameful that ALL these guys that are pushing so hard for war right now, dodged the draft during vietnam.

I'm absolutely disgusted with them.

 

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When walking softly doesn't get the job done then you pull out the big stick.

Good ol' Teddy.

 

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Yeah, but the problem, Mr. G is that these guys never heard the walk softly part. They just grabbed the big stick and started swingin'.

 

felix:

Democrats and Republicans generally approach foreign affairs differently. Both walk softly and occasionally use the Big Stick, but Dem's tend to do more of the soft walking and less of the big stick, while Repub's tend toward the reverse.

Well, I guess it was Johnson--a Dem--who by doing his Gulf of Tonkin-thing began the official Viet Nam war for us.

But generally, I think I'm pretty close.

As an Independent, I prefer periodic big stick Repub foreign policy because the world isn't quite the wholesome, utopian paradise everyone seems to wish it was, and some of those unwholesome folks out there need to be reminded occasionally that getting along would have been a better option for them than insisting on dying horribly.

 

Right, and it's up to us to decide who's not quite right upstairs.

 

ok i decided

gb you idiot!!!

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g
lets have a list of these unwholesome folks

??

 

Sure. Let's start the list with those people who get through your locked doors at night to meet your 12-gauge face to face.

Ah, that's right. You'd let them take whatever they want as long as they leave you and your family poorer but in peace with your soiled underwear.

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Mr. G

By "walking softly" do you mean giving options and incentives, like when Madeleine Allbright told Iraq that sanctions would stay in place regardless of whether or not they let weapons inspectors in? Or when Clinton said, that they will stay in place "until the end of time" unless Saddam Hussein is removed from power?

 

who are we?

subject says it all. of course, GB, I assume you are being sarcastic... god, i hope so...

Mr G., I give you credit for being an Independent; however, nothing disgusts me more (well, some things) than Republican foreign policy. the Dem's seem to do a better job at international politics. but then, it makes little sense to compare rotten apples with rotten oranges.... as my brother pointed out during the most recent election... it was a choice between the lesser of two evils...but then, it always is. i don't think we should sit back and accept things as they are.

Allow me to quote the band Smith and Mighty: "The way we want it to be has a right to emerge..."

 

tastybrain:

Thus we have a nuclear-armed North Korea. Thank Clinton--it occured on his watch. He signed an agreement with N. Korea to supply fuel oil, and stuff, if they didn't work on nuclear bombs.

N. Korea worked on nuclear bombs anyway, while Clinton was busy monitoring his zipper.

In the Darwinian sense, sure--if you can make it so.

 

I'm far more worried about the USA, France, and Pakistan with their nukes than I am about North Korea. It's simple numbers. Compare the USA and North Korea in:
- civilians killed by their armies.
- number of nukes.
- chem/bio weapons used against own civilians.
- countries attacked in the past century.
- nukes civilian cities.

Really, the numbers alone should have any rational person saying "If I can only trust one nation with nukes, USA or NK, I trust NK..."

 

i agree adam.. but i just feel that if some other country had the same nuclear capabilities as the USA, they wud've already deployed em... at the same time, its really uncomfortable knowing the nuclear, biological power the US has...

 

Not surprising.

 

sycoindian:

As it should.

 

The joy of unassailable logic...

Logic. Pure numbers. Unassailable. No response.

 

The voices help, too, no doubt.

 

But trust them to do what. I trust female mosquitoes to try to bite me. I trust a rabid dog to drool.

I trust North Korea to wave a nuke threateningly over everyone's heads every time someone does something they dont like.

 

Why do you Americans not trust North Korea? Because you invaded them? Because you put sanctions on them for political reasons? Because you put a million landmines across the middle of Korea? What reasons?