[sweetjazz]

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Read my other posts, I do participate in debate. This was a cheap shot that was too easy for me to pass up. To address your statement, I've yet to hear a good idea from Bush for me to embrace other than the obvious attacking those who attacked us, however, he kinda lost me when he decided to attack Iraq for no reason, never come clean about the B.S. intelligence, etc. Plus, it's very difficult to respect a man who, during his first administration, had to look in the mirror every day with the knowledge that the majority of the country voted against him.

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RB, I did read one of your other posts after my reply above, and I appreciate your willingness for dialogue.

I think you may be underestimating how counterproductive the cheap shots at Bush are. He has hidden behind them for a long time, and many moderate people are aware that most of the outspoken critiques of Bush are just lame cheap shots. (Of course, so are most critiques of Democrats as well, and I do think that Republicans manage to get away with cheap shots a bit easier because they play the fear card better.)

I think if you look at the specifics of what is going in Iraq, you see a lot of mistakes but also some good moves and you realize how hard it is to make good decisions there. (Which by the way is the main reason I thought we should have held out longer before invading Iraq -- nation-building is not an easy task and it is sometimes a necessary evil to have to allow an evil dictator to stay in power if there are ways to contain him, and it was certainly possible to contain him longer than we did. Whether he could have been deterred from rebuilding a weapons program indefinitely is debatable and there were serious problems with the oil-for-food program, but I think is fairly clear that we had more time with the inspectors still there.) After the invasion, we moved too slowly in organizing Iraqi security forces (military and police). It turns out in hindsight that disbanding the army formally was probably a major strategic flaw. But there is now an urgency to get Iraqi security forces trained and that's a good thing. So yes, Bush screwed up, but now he's finally getting things right on this matter (or so it appears). So let's applaud that and acknowledge that this is an improvement. Let's focus on other issues with have with Bush's idea. I'd like to focus on understanding the motivations of Islamist fundamentalists and try to pressure Bush to stop with the frequent nonsense implication in his speeches that they are motivated by "hatred of Western values of democracy, liberty, and freedom" when in fact they are motivated by their opposition to the presence of American troops in Muslim nations, particularly Saudi Arabia. That might not fit in as well into political speeches, but it's the reality that we are facing and it's important that the public realize it. There will likely be a debate as to how this particular fact should affect our strategy.

Why not spend more time focusing on improving the understanding of the world among the public (which starts with improving our own understanding by reading a diverse selection of respected news sources -- New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Atlantic Monthly)? Not everyone will agree on what this deeper understanding means for American policy, but at least it would get us on a better track.

Playing the game of Bush sucks versus Hillary sucks is just not productive in my opinion.

FWIW, I don't think the results of the controversial 2000 election are really worth focusing on any more at this point. Bush did end up winning the election through the ugly process and no doubt a different Supreme Court makeup could have changed the result; but he won the 2004 election legitimately and the reality is that it is in everyone's interest to get the president (and Congress and other public officials) to do what is best for America, regardless of how they got there or how much we respect them.

Respectfully,
Mike