On Thu, 17 Aug 2006 04:38:56 GMT, langkd_NO_SPAM@shaw.ca (Road Glidin'
Don) wrote:
>On Wed, 16 Aug 2006 19:28:34 -0700, Alan Moore
>
comcast.net> wrote:
>>>>Or you may prefer to ignore all reality and blame GWB. Knock
>>>yourself out, it's a free country.
>>
>>As I've said before, what I blame GWB for is for making things so very
>>much worse than they were. He has undone decades of progress on the
>>terrorism front, and reversed a long-term trend. According to his own
>>administration's figures.
>
>I think your bias is making it impossible for you to think clearly on
>this subject, Alan. The point is that, doing practically nothing,
>things WERE progressively getting worse and worse - eventually with
>9/11 putting an exclaimation mark to it.
You seem to be blind to the actual published records of the US
department of state, charged decades ago with tracking this very item.
Things were getting better, not worse, until Bush came into office.
Since then, things have gotten progressively worse.
It's a curious thing that a change in long-held policy should precede
a change in direction of world events, and that the people who approve
of the change would then claim that the actual historical events are
different than they have been.
>
>Al Quaeda has made no secret of the fact of what they want and what
>they are planning to do to achieve it. Sure, no matter who is in
>power, there will be mistakes made and things that, in hind sight
>could be done better. But without many of the new measures in place
>(e.g international cooperation interrupting their funding, going after
>them before they strike because of the near impossibility of building
>unbreachable defenses within free societies), you just don't know how
>much worse it could be.
I don't need to know how much worse they could be. I know how much
better they were, and that they were getting still better until Bush
decided on a major change in policy. We're on our way to find out how
bad they can be. Or change administrations and get back to a proven
successful approach.
>
>The biggest problem liberals have is that they cannot seem to change
>to adapt to new challenges and changed realities. They just stay the
>same (or gradually creep to what used to be conservative stands, much
>later). Ironically, the ideas and free-thinking have been emanating
>mainly from conservative quarters for the last 2 or 3 decades, it
>seems - pre-emption when dealing with terrorism, challenging the
>rationale of the MAD doctrine and realizing when it was time to handle
>the Soviets differently being just 3 examples.
Sure we can adapt to the "new" challenges. All we have to do is revert
to the policies that worked when those challenges were REALLY new --
about 25 years ago.
>
>The world has changed much (technologically, economically and
>politically), yet there just seems to be a lack of new ideas coming
>from the left. Education is in trouble, but they (nor can their
>teacher's union backers) can allow different methods even be tried,
>for instance.
I don't see that anything the Bush administration has done shows any
sign of original thinking. They seem to be adopting the same notions
that led to the early demise of the "thousand year reich" and the only
slightly longer lived USSR.
>
>They still have a lot of good to contribute in many areas (e.g.
>society working more together for a common good, encouraging more help
>for the poor), but their habit of sticking with methods of the past,
>in fear of trying things new, hurts them alot when it comes time for
>people to decide who next to pass the reins of power to.
By the way, I believe it was changes under the Carter AND Reagan
administrations that led to the long term decline in terrorism which
Bush, Jr. has successfully reversed.
Al Moore
DoD 734
