I wouldn’t know. I was in the gym yesterday (it’s become the only place where I’m subjected to broadcast media) when I saw Karl Rove and other awful people from the 90s who I’ve tried to forget, and my brain shorted out, I saw a Tunnel of Light open before me, and my short-term memory flitted away like a cloud of butterflies. Still, I’m sure this is referring to something.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I will say one thing. When Saddam Hussein started lobbing scuds at Israel, and the Arab members of the coalition nearly found themselves on the same side of the conflict as Jews… Israel did contain its enthusiasm, and the coalition did hold together, and Bush allowed or made the war end when it ended. That war could have been way more trouble than it was.
One way to look at it, a lot of what you’re hearing is allegory, pointing out not so much what Bush was but lamenting what Trump isn’t. Not that any of it sinks into mega-heads.
These are the strange times in which we live. I don’t see it ending well.
Damn autocorrect. Make that “MAGA-heads”. Stupid autocorrect.
Re. # 1, have you already forgotten the massacre of the kurds that happened after Bush ordered the war to cease? The ethnic cleansing of the “swamp arabs” that followed? The rebels that were shot up by Saddams helicopters because USA allowed them to fly unhindered, reasoning the rebels were the “wrong kind” of rebels and it was in western interests to let Saddam kill the insurgents???
I went to the gym again this morning (I need to stop that bad habit). The Wall O’ TVs is still full of talking heads going on and on about how good and wonderful some dead guy was.
If you want another awful person who will be lauded when his evil body finally gives up its breath, consider State Department liar-in-chief George Shultz, who -during Reagan- allied USA with the Khmer Rouge and with the UNITA warlord Jonas Savimbi (who disrupted food production in Angola by placing land mines indiscriminately across the countryside, thus earning the title “freedom fighter”.
Schulz also supported the leader of the death squads in El Salvador, D’Aubisson (Shultz succeeded Haig as Reagan’s secretary of state). After D’Aubisson’s murder of the archbishop Romero, the American geopolitical interests protected the Death squads from reprecussions. Encouraged, D’Aubisson ordered the murder of four American nuns, who were abducted. raped and murdered.
Jimmy Carter briefly withdrew military support to El Salvador, but let the military support resume. Reagan never faltered in his support for the Salvadoran military (meanwhile the US-trained Contras spread terror in Nicaragua)
USA made sure the low-ranking soldiers were convicted for murder. while hiding the role of D’Aubisson. Afterwards released documents showed the State Department lied to cover up the conspiracy – the state department knew very well that D’Aubisson was involved.
The former American ambassador to El Salvador tried to expose the truth, and was fired without any pension.
The Gipper slid into Alzheimrs’ and got a state funeral, naturally attended by George H Bush. Haig, secretary of state until 1982 was allowed to die without ever paying for his collusion. When Schultz dies, he will also be lauded in the press and a shitload of dignitaries will show up for his funeral.
Technically, being an accessory to murder after the fact is as bad as pulling a trigger, but if you are in government you will never, ever have to fear consequences of your actions.
Check Wikipedia: “1980 murders of U.S. missionaries in El Salvador”
“Robert White (ambassador)”
“Roberto D’Aubuisson”
“George P. Shultz”
Well, the thing is, two out of the three bone farmers who came before him (Nixon and Reagan) and both bone farmers who came after him (including the one he spawned) were much, much worse. So, umm, by the rules of logic that makes him a great guy, right?
One of the sets in my gym was on Fox News. I saw them talking with a prestigious mass murderer who has advised many presidents. I couldn’t hear what he said, but his mechanical arm kept trying to sieg heil as he spoke.
By the way, when Lyndon Johnson was about to reach a peace agreement in Vietnam, a certain Republican politician sabotaged it, letting the daughter of a famous WWII general serve as a proxy and contact the South Vietnamese government, promising a Republican government would give South Vietnam better peace terms . They didn’t, of course -the peace terms in 1972 were identical to the suggested terms in 1968- but by making South Vietnam reject the suggested peace treaty, Nixon deprived Johnson of his only chance of winning a re-election.
As a result, the war dragged on, and the deaths -American and Vietnamese -were twice of what they would have been if the war had ended in 1968.
Nixon was allowed to get away with it. The other people in the Republican party who set up the coup were also allowed to get away with it, even though a journalist exposed the deal in the 1970s. I am sure several of them are still alive.
bigerjohansoon @ 9
Point of information: Johnson didn’t run for re-election in 68, he ran against Hubert Humphrey (and, if you want to count him, George Wallace).
Update: and by “he” I mean Nixon.
Oops, my bad. I missed that detail (in my defence, I was seven years old).
That is such a great Lubchansky cartoon. It will be endlessly reusable.
re @9:
Nicely documented by Rachel Maddow in a recent MSNBC special, called “Sabotaging the Election”.
How Nixon was able to crash the negotiation between N. and S. Vietnam, in order to have them say they’ll only negotiate iff [nb] Nixon is elected.
TRMS may send me a stipend for advertising. My address will follow shortly
birgherjohansson@#4:
I am curious what you see as the better course in Iraq at that time. Hussein had been murdering the Kurds pretty relentlessly before the invasion, so not going to war in Iraq wouldn’t likely have done much to stop him. And we’ve seen what happened when we actually did take the next step after invading and dethroned him. I’ve not seen any particular evidence that any other course in Iraq would’ve produced better results.
Even if we went back in time and stopped Bush from giving Saddam the green light to invade Kuwait, I don’t see how that prevents the slaughter of the kurds–if anything, forcing him to stick to internal enemies might’ve sped up the process.
The only option I see would’ve been to try to go in there with the intent to remake the country right from the start, with all the commitment we gave to rebuilding post-War Japan. And the country just wasn’t in a place where the population would support that kind of effort.
(I’m not a GWH fan. I think he was the least horrible of the Republicans in my lifetime–possibly excepting Ford, about whom I know very little–but that’s such a low bar as to count as condemnation in itself. But I genuinely would like to hear an actual, positive and plausible alternative strategy for dealing with the Middle East.)
I watched a bit of the coverage of 41’s arrival in DC. My first thought was, along with the other emotions he felt, how weird it must be for W to be watching a preview of his own funeral. For me, seeing all that pomp and ceremony for a Bush, I had to keep reminding myself that it was in honor of the office, not the man. And then, of course I realized that someday Trump’s going to get the same treatment.
That’s when I had to down 2 shots and change the channel.
@15-freemage
Hindsight is 20/20 but first off we need to build a time machine and give Winston Churchill and Gertrude Bell a serious scolding and given our after the fact perspective on how not to parcel out the Middle East after the War to End All Wars would they do differently?
Did we give a confusing signal to Husayn before he invaded Kuwait? And there’s much to be said for the H&K promoted incubator propaganda that helped gain traction for the Gulf War much as Gulf of Tonkin did for Vietnam and WMD would do for our preemptive attack on Iraq later.
If we did nothing after Husayn invaded Kuwait what would our world now look like? Osama and his ornery band of Arab Afghans would have one less grievance and maybe the World Trade Center would still be standing. Actually would Osama had launched guerrilla war on Husayn? Would al Qaeda or its ISIS offshoot be a thing? Would Israel have another common enemy, in addition to Iran, to make them tacit strange bedfellows with the Saudis? Would Iran have taken a more moderate or radical trajectory? Would there be another iteration of bloodletting between Iraq and Iran that we could play both sides?
Re. Ragutis @16
There will be no body to bury if he has an accident at the pirhana tank.