Two more good ones:

# A humanitarian intervention in Somalia was escalated thoughtlessly into nation-building at the cost of the lives of courageous Americans.

# A military intervention in Haiti displayed administration indecision and incoherence and, after billions of dollars had been spent, accomplished nothing of lasting value.

Remember when Republicans were against "nation-building"? Well, at least they haven't wasted "billions of dollars" on projects that "accomplished nothing of lasting value."

LOL...multiple strawmen went down and went down HARD!!!

Everything you said is accurate and worthy of comment Ivo but I am going to focus on just one item because I think it highlights the sheer hypocrisy and ineptitude of Bush. 

Was Clinton "interventionist" in the Balkans?  Yep.  And so was Bush in his invasion of Iraq.  But that is where the similarities between the 2 end.  Clinton built multilateral regional support for intervention in the Balkans and had a specific plan going in about what needed to be accomplished and reached his objectives.  It was to stop a genocide, prevent a civil war from erupting which would in turn destabilize the whole region and maybe the world...all with minimal loss of life.  Bush on the other hand acted unilaterally without the same regional support Clinton had resulting in a massive loss of life, ethnic cleansing, a civil war which has destabilized the region and could lead to a bigger conflict. 

Bush had no plan for Iraq before hand and therefore could not reach his objectives if there were ever objectives other than replacing Saddam by force.  Now in hindsight the Balkans are stable and the Mid-East is in turmoil which threatens to destabilize the whole region.  But like I said on another thread Bush is a dumb ass so why would anyone think that absent of rational thought that his interventionism would be anything but an abysmal failure. 

Time and time again Bush has failed horribly in furthering America's interests.  Almost everything Bush has done has hurt this country's best interests.  Was Clinton's foreign policies perfect?  No, and Somalia is a great example.  But Clinton's M.O. was to work multilaterally with as many other countries possible to do what was in our country's best interests which yielded some great successes.  Bush on the other hand has shown hypocrisy of the highest order in unfairly criticizing the successes of the Clinton administration and then doing unilaterally the same he accused Clinton of doing.  And gravely damaging our country's interests and prestige globally for many years to come in a very much more destabilized world.

I take second place to no one in considering Deputy Dubya Bush a world-class fool -- and a foreign policy disaster to boot. But my Chinese relatives through marriage have a distinctly unappreciative recollection of the day President Clinton (with no Congressional declaration of war against Yugoslavia) bombed their embassy in Belgrade and nearly ruptured our relations with a country that really does matter to us. The Chinese have very long memories and will, at a time and place of their own choosing, settle up accounts. And our military forces -- along with those of NATO -- still haven't departed from the former Yugoslavia.

We should remember, as well, all the Clinton bombing and sanctioning of Iraq that basically left that country a hollowed-out shell awaiting only a good stiff breeze (or an idiot like George W. Bush) to supply the last straw, so to speak. As our UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter has told us on many occations: "Clinton wasn't so good" (or truthful) in regard to US policy in Iraq. Only with extraordinary good fortune did our previous president avoid having his own personal vendetta campaigns against Saddam Hussein result in the collaps of that strategic country on his watch. "Better lucky than smart," the old saying goes.

Or, As a former South Asian ambassador to the US and France once warned me: "If the Americans come, they will only draw an arbitrary line through a temporary problem -- and make it permanent." Given American policy in Korea, Yugoslavia, Afghanistanm, or Iraq: I can certainly see where one might arrive at that sardonic conclusion.

He is an active European politician. Indeed a Leftwing one at that. So he did not give poll data but if it is a choice of his knowing what he is talking about an most of the people here it is not much of a contest. He did mention all the Muslims in much of Europe. Thus he point out that the U.S. can go home and not be bothered by the Middle East. Europeans get virtually all of their oil from there, are next door to the Middle East and have many Muslims within their countries.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

I thought I would see what else Fischer has said. This is from TomPaine.commonsense. A piece entitled "Joschka Fischer Gets It" [ttp://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/02/23/joschka_fischer_gets_it.php]

"'I love America," said former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer last night at a forum sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies . "But when the strongest man in the world tells me that 1+1=3, I cannot agree." Fischer, of course, was talking about his official refusal to accept the conclusions of the Bush administration in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, yet it could also apply to the even larger strategic gap that threatens to permanently divide the transatlantic alliance.

Indeed, Fischer could not overestimate how important the energy question is. During the question and answer period, he chastized a member of the audience serving in the U.S. Commerce Department for attempting to place the blame on the lack of a U.S.-E.U. energy consensus on the European bureaucracy. Fischer retorted that it is America's intransigence on energy that is the major stumbling block and that the proper forum must be the Group of Eight industrialized countries -- a forum Bush has avoided engaging seriously over energy. The G8 reference only underscores Fischer's believe that this problem is rooted in resource economics within developed economies.

In the end, Fischer told America exactly where we can find a new transatlantic consensus. Where the old consensus was based on a common view of an external Soviet threat and the need for a united external policy, the next consensus must be fundamentally different. We "need a common strategic understanding," says Fischer--an understanding that in order to integrate 1.3 billion Chinese and 1.1 billion Indians into the global economy, our own economies must change, starting with energy. From that foundation, then, we can address the Middle East and Russia with confidence."

Daniel A. Greenbaum

And gravely damaging our country's interests and prestige globally for many years to come in a very much more destabilized world.

Yes. For Christmas, all Americans, should send his moma and daddy xmas cards, asking them why they unleashed their  spawn on the nation and the world. How does it feel to know that you are the parents of  not only a colossal failure but a global destructive force of such magnitude that your family name is hated and disdained worldwide for having killed people and  endangered the lives of people in so many countries, including your fellow Americans. How does it feel to know the world despises your son?

Why couldn't they just keep that defective piece of DNA in TX and not have all of us endure their tragic mistake.

I forget:
How many people died in the fighting in the former Yugoslavia before and after our peace keeping mission?

-- How many Americans?
-- How many Serbs?
-- How many Croats?
-- How many Albanian Muslims?

And while you're at it, remind me how many died in Iraq before and after we invaded:

-- How many Americans?
-- How many Sunnis?
-- How many Shiites?
-- How many Kurds?

As far as American troops in the Balkan campaign, I don't believe there was even one US casualty due to hostile action. There was the plane crash with US officials, and a car crash off a mountain road, but not one troop died due to combat.

I also think he was reflecting the knowledge that only the U.S. is in a position to lead and Europeans really want it do so.

/Tuomas

Merry xmas to you, friend.
I hope you and your family have a nice holiday.

Bush II: another day, another failure.

Frankly I think it is past time for Europeans to take the lead on the Middle East. I think we should withdraw from the Middle East, get energy independent, and then let the Europeans figure out how to handle the Islamic radicals, oil rich aristocrats, and the problem between Israel and its neighbors.

Mrgavel

LOL...Merry Christmas to you too G.

And what be wrong with my grammar Dog?  Compared to the dumbass I am Ernest F'ing Hemingway...yes I are (to quote the late singer Bon Scott), lol. 

Did it, didn't he?

Check out the military's 2000 and 2004 vote!  Probably wasn't all that different in 2006.

It might have been more appropriate if Cheney had used Nikita Khrushchev's blunt:

"We will bury you!"

Instead of the line about help being on the way. 

I like Fischer when he talks about energy, the global economy and the rise of China. And at least when he was working for the German government he used to support a grand bargain approach with Iran, which is my preference as well.

But he has grown increasingly hawkish. And I would like to find out to what extent he speaks for Europeans when he expresses these fears about US disengagement in the Middle East. And my guess is that most ordinary Europeans would prefer a very different US approach to the Middle East than the sort of approach Fischer endorses.

"But my Chinese relatives through marriage have a distinctly unappreciative recollection of the day President Clinton (with no Congressional declaration of war against Yugoslavia) bombed their embassy in Belgrade"

Michael you might want to look at some of the side reporting on that one. The US didn't "bomb" the embassy, it put a cruise missile through it. A missile that 'accidentally' 'coincidentally' exploded in that section of the embassy housing the Chinese equivalent of the CIA station. There were rumors (to me), perhaps reports (to Clinton's team) that the Chinese were using their secure communications to assist Milosevic. Which transforms that cruise missile strike from a tragic 'accident' to a deliberate message.

Of course the cover story that the US was just using an outdated street map and thought they were hitting a Yugoslavian Ministry building was transparent crap. The US undoubtedly knew what they were hitting and why. But jumping to the conclusion that the Chinese were innocent bystanders is not particularly warrented here.

"GHaines"? The lead singer of the Butthole Surfers?
YOu rock, man! Also I totally agree with your comment about grammar. It's the sport of kings...

Ritter correctly points out that it was the demonization of Saddam after Kuwait that set us on the regime change path. Once Saddam was Evil there would be no rehabilitation (politically impossible) and the sanctions would not be lifted until there was regime change.

So I think we can extend a little slack to Clinton in that he was hobbled by the narrowing of options, lacked a compliant Congress, actually had an attacking Congress, etc. Ritter also claims Gore would have eventually done something about Iraq, although in a different manner.

It all comes back to that meeting with Glaspie. It may have been decided that it was time to set Saddam up for replacement, and the instruction by Baker was pointedly neutral on the Kuwait issue. This invited Saddam to act. It adds resonance to conspiracy-think here that the Rendon Group acted so swiftly in publicizing baby-killing stories and that we were so quick with faked-up satellite imagery to scare the Saudis.

A more definitive answer on grammar came from Winston S. Churchill, on being told not to end a sentence with a preposition.

"This is arrant nonsense up with which I shall not put."

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Gibby Haines?  Could be.  I missed that one, great catch...lol. :-p

I wonder if that means Jesus built his hotrod, lol?

If memory serves me correctly, the US became involved in the Bosnia-Serbia genocide as a signatory to NATO. The military operation there was a NATO operation. From that perspective, we were obligated to support that operation in conjunction with the European members. We had a legal obligation to participate -- unlike the current fiasco/catastrophe in Iraq.

My guess is that Fischer is far more mainstream both in Europe and the U.S. If the Europeans really want the U.S. to be replaced they would be readying themselves to spend a lot of money on defense which they are not.

Since Fischer cursed out Rumsfeld a more likely senario is that Fischer, and most Europeans, hope against hope that this Bush will go away and the U.S. foreign policy that can go back to Wilson if not T.Roosevelt will largely be the order of the day again.

With the cavet that the new issues energy, the emergence of China, India, Brazil and other economic and trade issues come to the fore. This was more or less the first Bush and Clinton's foreign policy and very popular it would seem globally.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

I would like to say one thing about foreign policy. All nations attempt to influence events in other nations through various channels. Some are completely above board, such as official state visits, and others are very covert. [...] The US is not unique in this.

The unfortunate truth, however, is that the US has a disproportionate amount of leverage it can exert in pursuing its interests; this is not least of all true because our robust economy also means that US-based private interests have much more power than their Latin American counterparts.

Having leverage does not mean it is mandatory to use it. Economically, (West-) German corporations have been economically successful for dozens of years, but by not using this to nationalist advantage (or to exert economic/political pressure on other countries) that nation has achieved a standing, in both Rumsfeld's new and old Europe, that is amazing in the light of the recent WWII.

Clinton was certainly not going to emasculate US foreign policy unilaterally to achieve some idealized form of parity between American states.

/Tuomas

Of course it was a message, and of course the Chinese of all strata will remember it for decades, if not for centuries, to come.

It may, in retrospect, be considered an expensive message to send. One must certainly hope the content was as important, and of more substance than "my dick is harder, longer and thicker than yours."