Rebuilding the Presidency

[Osiris]

Industrialsize has gotten me thinking since his repsonse in gjorg's Oprah on Obama thread.

I like Obama and probably will vote for him, but one big concern comes up with Obama. Every president comes in with some repairs to make that the outgoing administration leaves undone. Truman after FDR had WW II to deal with. Reagan had the Iranian Hostages after Carter. It is the way things work in the office.

My concern is Obama I think will do great on domestic and foreign policy, but the Middle East since the war is a very touchy thing. The situation is grave and how can a president with little or no military history in his political career handle such a hotbed situation? He has a nation calling for it's loved one's to come home and this war ended. We have created a situation in the Middle East that we cannot turn our backs on and that we have committed ourselves to fixing. I don't hesitate to think Obama will have his hands full putting together a strong cabinet as they will be the main ones dealing with the issue.

Thoughts anyone?

 

[canuck_pa]

Whoever becomes the next president will have many advisors, lets hope they had the knowledge and wisdom to approach the situation rationally.

Personally I don't think the US can or should withdraw troops from Iraq and Afganistan until the situation is stablized.

 

[Mr. Snakey]

Industrialsize has gotten me thinking since his repsonse in gjorg's Oprah on Obama thread.

I like Obama and probably will vote for him, but one big concern comes up with Obama. Every president comes in with some repairs to make that the outgoing administration leaves undone. Truman after FDR had WW II to deal with. Reagan had the Iranian Hostages after Carter. It is the way things work in the office.

My concern is Obama I think will do great on domestic and foreign policy, but the Middle East since the war is a very touchy thing. The situation is grave and how can a president with little or no military history in his political career handle such a hotbed situation? He has a nation calling for it's loved one's to come home and this war ended. We have created a situation in the Middle East that we cannot turn our backs on and that we have committed ourselves to fixing. I don't hesitate to think Obama will have his hands full putting together a strong cabinet as they will be the main ones dealing with the issue.

Thoughts anyone?

I like Obama. I dont think we will ever recover from the mess Bill Clinton left us in.

 

[D_Fiona_Farvel]

The middle east has been a western concern for almost 100 years now; I can't imagine why an intelligent, resourceful individual with good advisors wouldn't be able to make competent decision regardless of direct military experience.

 

[Industrialsize]

I think we need to re-build the reputation of the United States of America...right now I'm embarrassed to be an American when I travel overseas. I think electing a Charismatic Man name Barack HUSSEIN Obama will go along way in healing our nation's reputation.

 

[Mr. Snakey]

I think rather than dwell on the past. Lets turn our attention to a bright new future. It can happen.

 

[rob_just_rob]

The situation is grave and how can a president with little or no military history in his political career handle such a hotbed situation?

I'm puzzled - why do you think "military history" (whatever that is) is important here? I'd say it's probably a drawback.

And how does one get "military history" in one's political career, anyway?

 

[ClaireTalon]

Nothing against Barack Obama, but I would like the next candidate to be a political heavyweight, someone with the credentials and a good credit list of successful endeavors. Seeing the damage that has occurred during the the past seven years to the trust and image of politics, he or she should be clear that her task above and before all will be the one of a receiver who like Gerald Ford has to restore trust that has gone lost. As likable as he is, I don't think that is a task Obama is up to.

 

[dong20]

I like Obama. I dont think we will ever recover from the mess Bill Clinton left us in.

leads to...

I think rather than dwell on the past. Lets turn our attention to a bright new future. It can happen.

I'd say the mess left by Clinton pales into insignificance with the potential for global catastrophe for which the current administration is sowing the seeds. I think the next administration will have to perform at an exceptional level if it's to even begin to meet any expectation of unraveling the worst abuses of the last 5-10 years.

I wish it luck, sincerely.

 

[zumzum]

Excuse me I don't live in the US but you said:

"The situation is grave and how can a president with little or no military history in his political career handle such a hotbed situation?"

how Bush did it?

I'm sorry I really really really don't like your current president and I don't think he did anything right after 9/11.

 

[Elmer Gantry]

The situation is grave and how can a president with little or no military history in his political career handle such a hotbed situation?

That's not a bad thing at all. The reason your in this mess is due to a leader with "military experience".

 

[Elmer Gantry]

I think electing a Charismatic Man name Barack HUSSEIN Obama will go along way in healing our nation's reputation.

Very true. However, the chances of that are slim or non-existent.

Hillary is starting to look better every day.




In a political sense, of course.:biggrin1:

 

[Bbucko]

I personally believe that only a blank slate ready for new ideas can lead us out of the nightmare of the last 6+ years.

Our reputation as a nation has been stained with torture and crime.

I'm an Obama man.

 

[Calboner]

I think we need to re-build the reputation of the United States of America...right now I'm embarrassed to be an American when I travel overseas. I think electing a Charismatic Man name Barack HUSSEIN Obama will go along way in healing our nation's reputation.

You may find an article by Andrew Sullivan that appeared in The Atlantic interesting (if you have not already read it), as he says much the same thing. Here is the passage that your post reminded me of:

Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.
​

For my part, I don't find the claim compelling, but if Obama is elected president, I hope that it will prove true.

 

[Calboner]

If you want a president who will make the era of W. seem like a picnic, then Rudolf Giuliani is your man. Giuliani employs as his advisor on foreign policy Norman Podhoretz. Podhoretz has been a leading advocate of military action against Iran. When I learned of the recently released National Intelligence Estimate concerning Iran's nuclear-weapons program, I wondered what effect it would have on him. I was naive enough to suppose that it would take at least some of the wind out of his sails. No such luck. Here he is in a piece that appeared a few days ago in Commentary (bold type added):

I must confess to suspecting that the intelligence community, having been excoriated for supporting the then universal belief that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction [!], is now bending over backward to counter what has up to now been a similarly universal view (including as is evident from the 2005 NIE, within the intelligence community itself) that Iran is hell-bent on developing nuclear weapons. I also suspect that, having been excoriated as well for minimizing the time it would take Saddam to add nuclear weapons to his arsenal, the intelligence community is now bending over backward to maximize the time it will take Iran to reach the same goal.

But I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations. As the intelligence community must know, if he were to do so, it would be as a last resort, only after it had become undeniable that neither negotiations nor sanctions could prevent Iran from getting the bomb, and only after being convinced that it was very close to succeeding. How better, then, to stop Bush in his tracks than by telling him and the world that such pressures have already been effective and that keeping them up could well bring about “a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program”—especially if the negotiations and sanctions were combined with a goodly dose of appeasement or, in the NIE’s own euphemistic formulation, “with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways.”
​

This guy, who was one of the loudest advocates of our invasion of Iraq, is now citing the fact that the National Intelligence Board gave a faulty assessment of Iraq's development of banned weapons back in 2002—at the instigation of the White House, of course, but he doesn't mention that fact, just as he retails the falsehood that belief in Saddam's possession of banned weapons was "universal"—as a reason now to doubt its assessment of Iran's activities. Perhaps he believes that the faulty intelligence estimates that preceded our invasion of Iraq were part of a clever plot to encourage the president to lead the country into a disastrous war, thereby undermining his greatness. It is hard to put anything past this fruitcake.

 

[Osiris]

I'm puzzled - why do you think "military history" (whatever that is) is important here? I'd say it's probably a drawback.

And how does one get "military history" in one's political career, anyway?

Sorry Rob. Wrong wording. I really had a hard time finding the words for this. What I was getting at is his lack of any experience with the military whether in his curent office or his private life.

Excuse me I don't live in the US but you said:

"The situation is grave and how can a president with little or no military history in his political career handle such a hotbed situation?"

how Bush did it?

I'm sorry I really really really don't like your current president and I don't think he did anything right after 9/11.

Like or dislike, you have to admit that whether it was Bush or another person, the US was very ill equipped to handle 9/11 as we really were not ready or even really expecting a terrorist attack on such a grand level.

That's not a bad thing at all. The reason your in this mess is due to a leader with "military experience".

Never looked at it like that. Thanks for the differnt perspective Chuck.

 

[joejack]

Rebuilding? The office needs to be knocked down a few pegs. The Presidency of the United States of America is not a dictatorship. We cannot allow goons, acting in the name of the president by way of some scheister lawyers' wet dream fascist opinions, to fuck over our Constitution and lock people up in far away places without a hearing and throw away the keys. And torture the bastards so they admit to commiting every outrageous crime since the kidnapping of the Lindhberg baby. And hire a bunch of mercenaries to shoot down innocent people in the street in Iraq now, here at home latter. The House of Representatives must immediately vote articles of impeachment for Cheney and Bush simultaneously, try and convict them in the Senate, get them out of office and let the Speaker of the House be the chief executive until January 20, 2009. We need a leader with balls (Pelosi) in the White House, not a whiner like little boy Bush and his Lord Chamberlin Cheney who are afraid of shadows. Then turn over Bush and Cheney to the Hague War Crimes Tribunal.

 

[hot-rod]

I don't think we know the real story about how, why or who attacked us on 9-11. I think the true story would scare all of us. One thing I'm sure of is no airplane ever crashed into the Pentagon. With all the security and cameras surrounding that place, a large plane would be seen by cameras from a long way away and that never happened. I read once where Pearl Harbor was planned and executed with prior knowledge. I kinda think Laura Bush is sleeping with the real enemy here.

 

[Calboner]

I don't think we know the real story about how, why or who attacked us on 9-11. I think the true story would scare all of us. One thing I'm sure of is no airplane ever crashed into the Pentagon. With all the security and cameras surrounding that place, a large plane would be seen by cameras from a long way away and that never happened. I read once where Pearl Harbor was planned and executed with prior knowledge. I kinda think Laura Bush is sleeping with the real enemy here.

Thank you for your contribution.
:Eyecrazy: :crazy2:

 

[joejack]

I don't think we know the real story about how, why or who attacked us on 9-11. I think the true story would scare all of us. One thing I'm sure of is no airplane ever crashed into the Pentagon. With all the security and cameras surrounding that place, a large plane would be seen by cameras from a long way away and that never happened. I read once where Pearl Harbor was planned and executed with prior knowledge. I kinda think Laura Bush is sleeping with the real enemy here.

On the contrary, I think it was 19 pussy starved arabs with box cutters who pulled it off. But Bush knew something was afoot. He was delivered the briefing that the WTC and Pentagon were the targets of an impending hijack airplane attack in August, but he was too busy playing cowboy on his "ranch" to think, question, or act on the report. I blame right hand "man" Condee for not getting in his face. I think the brain (Karl Rove) thought they would use small planes like the ones they were training with packed with enough explosives to cause a few casualties and make a scare in order to stir up patriotic ferver for an unpopular president and party to win the 2002 and 2004 elections (which they did), but not enough to cause real damage and bring down the two tallest buildings in the NYC. Kind of like Pearl Harbor in that US Naval Intelligence had broken the Japanese diplomatic code, knew something was up, but probably thought the attack would come in the Phillipines. Enough to get us in the war, but not the brilliant coup that Yamamoto thought up: Come in from the North on Sunday morning when everyone was either nursing a hangover or out on the links. Comparable to Atta, as an engineer calculating that enough heat would cause structural steel to lose enough of its rigidity to fail to support the massive weight of building above the impact floors. But it all could have been prevented by stouter cockpit doors on airplanes or the FBI following up on its own leads (the 20th hijacker was in custody) instead of wasting resources infiltrating every peace group in the country or some good old racial profiling of airline passengers: A group of young single foreign arab men traveling on the same plane with no family along? How obvious is that, after you had been warned by NSA? Remember the Republicans were against the creation of the Transportation Safety Administration as more "Big Government".