There have been 3 speeches in recent weeks that are worth reading on their own, unfiltered by media spin. So, here they are, in alphabetical order:
- Iraqi Interim Prime minister Iyad Allawi's address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress. There was also a press conference later.
- U.S. Democratic Party nominee John Kerry's recent "What I'd Do About Iraq" speech on Sept. 20.
{Groan}
{Splutter}
Jordan is a moderate country! LMAO!
From Mr Bribed and Coerced, that's quite a statement.
In his speech on Wednesday, John Kerry said, "If I were president, there would have been no Fallujah." Or maybe he said, "If I were president, there would be no Fallujah." I guess we'll never know.
Remember: Kerry and is ilk believe that ANYTHING justifies their being in power. There is probably not one honest person left in the entire Kerry campaign
Oh, I'm sure there are a few honest people - it is politics, but within those limits you can find them in every campaign.
Kerry may have a problem re: which statement of his to believe, and the party as a whole may have been living in the fever swamps too long, and gerrymandering is definitely worsening the divides on both sides of the aisle. But you can always find good people on the other side of the aisle if you look around and meet a few personally.
Its true, these arent bad people, but when you combine arrogance with total self-righteousness and add to that the kind of fever swamp idiology that Move-on has been pumping into the DNC's basement it becomes difficult to tell the difference.
Does Joe Lockhardt realize that calling Iraq interim leader a puppet will be rebroadcast ad nauseum on Al Jazeera? I dont know, but clearly he either never considered it or doesnt care. Either way points to a mindset that whatever it takes to defeat Bush is more important than whatever damage is done to the US in the meantime. They are willing to burn this country to save it apparently.
I'd be curious to know why Jordan isn't a moderate country. Not everyone is moderate, but the government is pro-Western and slowly liberalizing. Frankly, if we wanted to remake the Middle East, we should have started there with the cooperation of the government, except the "I want my War-po!" crowd had other ideas.
And if Iraq sees Allawi as a puppet, here in the USA literally to trade election favors, it doesn't hurt matters if the Democrats mention it. Mind you, Allawi's description of the situation on the ground was wildly overoptimistic and his commitment to democratic government suspect. We might have been more polite if everything Allawi said, not to mention the existence of his trip, didn't seem designed to boost W's re-election chances.
Maybe Allawi is a puppet. His encounter with Saddam's goons looks more like a falling out between thieves; he was a member of the Ba'ath Party. He's lived in exile, on the CIA payroll. (Would you like a president on Iraqi Intelligence's payroll?) He was selected by a committee, also laden with exiles, picked by the United States, who appear to have divvied up the parliamentary seats and the swag that comes with third-world development.
The best thing I can say is he isn't an Iranian spy, like our first pick for Pliant Strongman, Ahmad Chalabi.
Hey, I'm part of the war-po crowd! Sweet. Too bad I'm a veteran; otherwise I could be a member of the "chickenhawk" contingent of the war-po crowd. Ah well...
"Moderate" governments in the Middle East come and go (sometimes with the help of a hale of bullets). The failed, finger-pointing cultures remain. Billions in aid and uneven encouragement to liberalize these societies hasn't worked over the past 60 years. How would focusing on Jordan in the early 21st century yield different results?
"And if Iraq sees Allawi as a puppet, here in the USA literally to trade election favors, it doesn't hurt matters if the Democrats mention it. "
It hurts. Its one thing for the typical conspiracy mongers of Iraq to say something, quite another for the opposition campaign in the US to say it. Of course it hurts. Even if it was true it would be an idiotic thing to say if you have the best interests of the US at heart, whoever the president is.
"Mind you, Allawi's description of the situation on the ground was wildly overoptimistic and his commitment to democratic government suspect."
Mind you that it is a politicians job to be optimistic and it is Allawi that is insisting on January elections while the famously apathetic to democracy Koffi Annon is badmouthing the idea. You do the math.
"We might have been more polite if everything Allawi said, not to mention the existence of his trip, didn't seem designed to boost W's re-election chances."
You should have been more polite under any circumstance. How long does it take to wrap a slam into proper diplomatic spin? 2 minutes? Hows this:
"With great regard to Mr. Allawi, whos bravery in serving his country we admire, we find his judgement to be suspect and perhaps too flavored with unsupportable optimism. In his defense, perhaps President Bush's seemingly inalterable view that everything is fine in Iraq has rubbed off."
Instead we get some bufoon calling him a puppet and the presidential candidate being utterly dismissive. Here's the problem, the only diplomatic track record we have of Kerry is his meeting with the North Vietnamese while the war still raged and his getting taken to the cleaners by Daniel Ortega. Add to that the hamfisted and destructive way he has approached the allies we do have, why in gods name should we believe Kerry will be a good diplomat and negotiator, which is critical to his agenda (such as it is)?
Mind you that it is a politicians job to be optimistic.
Really? I'd like a little more realism and a lot less groundless optimism for a change. Our long-term economic future would probably have been better without George Bush's optimistic prediction that his tax cuts would not wipe out the surplus, followed by his equally groundless claim (post-9/11) that the deficit would be "small and short-lived". Heaven help us from his optimistic scenario for the privatization of Social Security, a triumph of hope over all economic data.
The optimism of his jobs forecasts is near-hallucinatory. We're over five million jobs short of the forecast from the beginning of his term, but granting the Excuse President the intervening terrorist act, which in his rosy optimism he neglected to do much about while enjoying that refreshing August vacation, we're still a million jobs short of what he predicted in Feb 2004 we would have right now. Perhaps if he wasn't such an optimistic politician, we would have had more funding for unemployment benefits, or tax cuts skewed more towards the middle class where they would be spent to grow the economy.
And yes, his optimistic predictions for Iraq have been refuted over and over. Remember when the sovereignty hand-over was the magic date? Now it's the Iraq election. What comes after that? How much optimism have to suffer?
I guess Bush should go find the 'job creation' knob in the White House and give it a yank. Its the business cycle, i think we're all grown up here enough to recognize about the only way a president can produce a new job is to hire a new hair stylist. Almost everything Washington can do to effect the economy is negative. To argue tax cuts somehow kill job growth is a new exercise in spin. Sorry, but the mighty Bob Rubin himself wouldnt have faired any better on the job front. 5.6% unemployement for goodness sakes. That used to mean full employment.
AJL
Last time I checked my Social Security account was empty. Nothing but a promissory note with the signatures of installments payable upon demand by future generations. Ask your congressman or senator what your account number is and if you can have the money you’ve put into it now.
As for the tax cuts and the extensions; the debates in the house and senate aired by C-SPAN / C-SPAN2 were rather entertaining to say the least. Seems the Democrats were adamantly against it yet they voted for it. Why? Either it wasn’t that bad or it was that good to get a yes vote. Was this political spin trying to make it a bad thing when it’s really a good thing?
AJL just what exactly is it you want the government to do for you and how would you implement, manage, and verify your agenda?
AJL:
The government might be relatively moderate, but the population certainly is not. Liberalising has to be a bottom-up affair, IMHO. In those terms, Jordan is closer to Saudi Arabia or the PA than Iraq.
Colt, I'm still wondering whence you get this characterization of Jordan, especially if we factor out the likely radicalization of the country since the Iraq War began. (That would hardly be relevant to my suggestion that the rebuilding of the Islamic Middle East should have started in Jordan.)
Mark B., you are distorting my words. Tax cuts are a standard way of dealing with recession, and I did not claim that Bush's tax cuts per se cost us jobs, but that a different structure of tax cuts would have created many more jobs. Our current unemployment rate seems to be distorted by a large number of persons who were in the workforce in the Clinton years who have left it discouraged, and are no longer considered unemployed. I think you'll must admit, too, that when job figures showed a false dawn after the passage of the last round of debt-hikes (ooops, tax cuts), the Bush Administration and its pundit allies were quick to claim credit.
AJL:
A Palestinian friend grew up in Jordan. In his extensive experience, jihadism is far from a minority opinion there. The stuff said within the family about infidels... The Jordanian parliament is a good indicator, too. While the Muslim Brotherhood has almost always had the majority, there was a swing towards the Ba'ath party after the invasion.
There was a recent Pew poll, too, that found something like (don't hold me to the exact number) 55% supported Osama Bin Laden in Jordan.
I don't doubt that Jordan is more radicalized now. That should be factored in as another deleterious side-effect of Operation Bush War Hero. I don't think that's representative of the pre-war possibilities. The Bedouin (who comprise, IIRC, a bare majority of the population including the royal family) aren't, or at least weren't, jihadists by any stretch of the imagination.
You used to be able to buy Hebrew guidebooks to Jordan, in Jordan. That's how un-jihadist the place used to be.
I'm not talking about now. I'm talking about before Iraq, before 9/11, during the 1990s.
The Bedouin are about 35-40%.
So? That is not representative of the population. And if you want to compare that to the experiences of a guy who lived there immersed in Arab family and culture, go right ahead.
Well, Colt, I lived three years pre-9/11 30 miles from Jordan as the crow flies, and maybe the Israelis were all mistaken, but they didn't share your picture of Jordan. That's why there was enough demand to warrant Hebrew guidebooks, and why Jordanian tourist shops were willing to display and sell them. Except for some areas in the south that were, even then, Islamist, even those Jordanian Palestinians who had been able to resettle (as opposed to stew in camps) didn't appear to have any appetite for jihad. Given subsequent events, and don't forget that Jordan needs money from Iraqi commerce via Aqaba that's probably much attenuated now, I don't aver that this is still the case.
I could trade your friend for my Jordanian-immigrant auto mechanic, but would that say much?
In Israel?
The difference between what they say and how they act, and what they believe, is immense.