Sometimes I think the pundits are trying to make up for the fact that 10 years ago they were pressing their lips against the neo-cons’ asses so hard they couldn’t see what a disaster Iraq was going to be.
This time around, they are critical of everything. Like, OMG, we found a diplomatic solution that will save lives. But the pundits can’t stop talking about how that will make us look weak. And how it makes Putin look good. So what!
A few days ago, hardly anyone wanted to go to war. And now we have a potential solution that will almost certainly achieve far more than any amount of bombing of Syria (with or without boots on the ground). And if this fails, so what? We would be no worse off than we were a few days ago. This is the closest we get to a win-win in this stinking quagmire of Middle-East politics.
I would think everyone (including the Republicans) would be dancing in the streets.
UPDATE: the UN releases its report and concludes that Assad was responsible for the chemical attack on his people. To me, this answers the question of why Assad and the Russians were suddenly willing to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons, but it doesn’t change my opinion of this diplomatic settlement. Yes, Assad will remain in power and will of course still be free to use conventional weapons against the rebels. But unless we are willing to send in troops and remove Assad by force, and then take responsibility for the country and somehow manage to avoid having Islamic radicals take over, this is the best solution we could hope for.
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I won’t forget until I die that morning in March 2003 that I heard no WMDs had been found in Iraq and next that Baby Bush was going to invade with no proof. Boy the media supported him then while I was one of the 3% of this country crying. All those people in Iraq who would still be alive had Baby Bush not been born.
My president (and very distant cousin)compromises and gets what he wants. Hillary couldn’t get Universal health care because she turned down the Republican plan that my President adopted. My president appealed to the US people to save the citizens of Syria. And to this point has gotten his way without military action.
Well said. I’m not dancing in the street yet but I’m thankful even if it does make a murdering psychopath look good.
I wish we could get rid of the professional pundits. If my memory is correct, when I was young we had reporters and newscasters who interviewed experts and people with personal knowledge of events. Now we mainly have pundits with no sense of history (even their own)talking out of their asses.
P.S. “murdering psychopath” referred to Putin. Obama is no psychopath
What most pundits say has no relationship to what they think or believe. The only overriding factor is whether Obama is for it or against it. He says no, they say yes, he says yes, they say no. As long as you are against anything that Obama says or is doing, you will get facetime.
For the pundits, with the crises averted there are to talking points or headlines and that means a decline in viewers. They seem to be unable to report any other stories or news with any level of creativity that would draw the viewers to their channels. It’s all about their income, those “1% ers”, which at the cable news level they all are certainly in that salary range. I want my contract renewed or increased and I don’t care what the consequences to the american people.
But the pundits can’t stop talking about how that will make us look weak. And how it makes Putin look good.
To whom?
And aren’t these the same pundits who’ve previously ridiculed Obama’s concern for our standing in the international community?
Where’s the concern for “how we look” when our Republicans in Congress make the US look actively crazy? You can bet the pundits will never say a word about “how we look” during the next impending “fiscal crisis”, aka pointless self-mutilation and a complete failure to understand the function of government. If I were the rest of the world, I’d be looking at Michelle Bachmann et al and thinking, “OMG, and they have nukes!”
Westomoon, it gives me the shivers just thinking about people like Bachmann having even a small amount of power over our nuclear arsenal.
I know I buried it in the post, but I hope everyone gives a read to this — http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2013/09/how-putin-outsmarted-obama-by.html
Writing off a bombing is silly. The inspectors have come out and said this mission is borderline impossible.
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You might look to a future where people print their
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