Sekrit Muzzlims Not on Distro List for THE MEMO
(posted by Jim Henley)
When Republicans attack you as weak and “reckless” on foreign policy you’re supposed to carp a bit and then try to change the subject. It’s the rules!
“Here’s the truth: the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons and Iran doesn’t have a single one. But when the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev and he got those missiles out of Cuba. Why shouldn’t we have the same courage and the confidence to talk to our enemies? That’s what strong countries do, that’s what strong presidents do, that’s what I’ll do when I’m president of the United States of America.
“So, you know, for all their tough talk, one of the things you have to ask yourself is what are George Bush and John McCain afraid of? Demanding that a country meets all your conditions before you meet with them, that’s not a strategy; it’s just naïve, wishful thinking. I’m not afraid that we’ll lose some propaganda fight with a dictator. It’s time for America to win those battles, because we’ve watched George Bush lose them year after year after year. It’s time to restore our security and our standing in the world.
“And you can vote for John McCain and nothing will change.”
He’s still a weenie for shit-canning Robert Malley, but the important thing is that this kind of rhetoric could be contagious. People might even start wondering, first, if we really gotta be in some war all the time, and then, if we really have to account for half of all the world’s military spending. As I’ve said before, Gorbachev didn’t want to bring down the Soviet Empire; he wanted to save it. But he set in motion a process that went much farther than he intended.
Needless to say, the GOP and the political class will fight this kind of rhetoric - and thinking - with everything they’ve got.
May 20th, 2008 at 2:28 am
[...] (HatTip: The Art of the Possible) [...]
May 20th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Fixed that for you.
May 20th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Barack Gorbachev?
May 21st, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Barack Gorbama.
May 22nd, 2008 at 9:40 am
I especially like this part:
for all their tough talk, one of the things you have to ask yourself is what are George Bush and John McCain afraid of? Demanding that a country meets all your conditions before you meet with them, that’s not a strategy; it’s just naïve, wishful thinking.
But this one requires a whole lot of cleanup action, not just language to let us feel good about ourselves:
I’m not afraid that we’ll lose some propaganda fight with a dictator.
As long as we’re holding thousands of people indefinitely outside the Geneva Conventions and continue to occupy three countries in which we’ve killed civilians by the hundreds (Somalia) to thousands (Afg) to tens of thousands (Iraq), and bring no one to justice for the war crimes committed since 2001, then we’re spotting Joe Dictator quite a few points in that propaganda fightwith