Matthew Dowd made a rather public break from the Bush Administration today on the front page of the Sunday NYT. Although this normally would scarcely be front page news (we know why it wound up there), it is still interesting to read what Dowd says and thinks.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have met Matthew on two occasions and liked him. Most recently I was behind the camera videoing Dowd when he spoke with PJM’s Bill Bradley at the Schwarzenegger victory party last November.
Also, one of his major criticisms of Bush is one I have leveled frequently on this blog. According to the NYT: “[Dowd] criticized the president as failing to call the nation to a shared sense of sacrifice at a time of war, failing to reach across the political divide to build consensus and ignoring the will of the people on Iraq.”
I couldn’t agree more, at least with the first two parts of the criticism. The third part has become moot largely because of partisanship and media bias.
The first part (my principal criticism) is Bush’s near-fatal flaw. He told us all to go shopping when he should have enlisted us all in the cause. This shows a severe lack of knowledge of basic human psychology by the president or his advisers or both. Definitely not Churchillian.
Still, I found Dowd’s apostasy peculiar. Why this and why now? It seems extremely self-serving given the world situation. It’s all about Matthew and not at all about the problems faced by civilization. He is headed off (according to the end of the article) on an individual crusade to help folks in Africa. Laudable, I suppose. Meanwhile, Khamenei and Ahmadinejad are still in power in Iran, developing nukes. Musharraf is on the ropes in Pakistan with Islamists ready to inherit its already-existing nuclear arsenal. Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad are arming themselves as never before, etc., etc….
… but Matthew has severed his ties with the “inept” Bush administration, the only ones around dealing with this in the slightest. Good for him. (And bad for us.)
UPDATE: Annals of the New York Times… “Israel Warns of Hamas Military Buildup in Gaza” was below the fold this morning, the Dowd Apostasy story above.
Roger,
You missed this from the article…
There is this
“one of Mr. Dowd
The death of a child is certainly horrifying, Soldier’s Dad. And I completely understand what you’re saying in that regard.
As for having a child going to serve in Iraq, well, I know several people in that position. It’s tough for all. But it always is time of war. How could it be otherwise, no matter what cause or locale and no matter what justification for the war – unless you believe in suicide bombing?
– failing to reach across the political divide to build consensus–
I call BS.
I think Dafydd did a better job talking about Dowd than I could.
And I think it is interesting that this Democrat turned Republican is turning Democrat again. Who does he find interesting? Obama. And exactly how much sacrifice is Obama asking of us all?
I don’t think it is a fair criticism. Bush made it plain in the days and months and even years following 9/11 that we were in a generational war. Just because he did not ration coffee and beans did not mean he did not expect some sacrifice. Besides as far as the Democrats are concerned we have already sacrificed our civil liberties. right?
And I also found the idea that Dowd was ok for the war until his son volunteered for duty to be just kind of selfish. All those young people are someone’s son or daughter or friend or lover or husband or sibling.
Then there was the laundry list which included Bush’s refusal to see Sheehan for a second time. And then of course there was Bush’s refusal to fire Rumsfeld sooner and the complaints about Katrina. Interestingly he says that he liked Bush to begin with because of his dedication to immigration reform and education, two things which certainly have not changed.
No, I am sorry. Dowd can talk about going and finding gentleness in Africa {what?} but the truth is he is looking for a new gig and so he has gone back to the Democrats. And that will last until a better deal comes along.
This is a small part of what Dafydd says:
Were it not for the Bush administration’s rapid pre-landing response and post-landing followup, thousands more people would be dead.
So what exactly was it about Bush’s handing of the hurricane that so saddened Matthew Dowd? I would love to know if Dowd still believes the long-discredited urban legends of multiple murders, rapes, and cannibalism in the Superdome…
And now we really get to the meat: Dowd was stunned that President Bush refused to meet — for a second time — with Cindy Sheehan, during the time she had become “the angriest dog in the world” (that’s a David Lynch reference, not a comment on her perfectly average looks): camping out in front of Bush’s Prairie Chapel Ranch, calling him the most vile epithets, accusing him of “murdering” her son, and in general, acting like an unstable mental patient undergoing an episode.
But Bush should have met with her, Dowd says, because…? He offers no reason.
Has he even thought through what would have happened had Bush met with her? She would have berated him, hectored him, lectured him, screamed at him, insulted him and the office, issued diktats that he could not possibly obey, and belittled Bush, the presidency, and the United States — all on national TV. This would be live, if Bush were foolish enough to allow cameras at the meeting; or if not, then later, when Sheehan would gleefully have reenacted her tantrum for the cameras.
It would have been a PR nightmare, and it would certainly have further damaged the war support, already precarious. If that really were Dowd’s advice at the time (which I highly doubt), then thank God he’s out of the White House. Were I a Democratic candidate for the presidency considering hiring him for the upcoming campaign, that comment alone would kill the deal for me.
It’s as nutty as saying that Bush should attend an anti-war sit-in. It’s not merely bad advice, it’s stupid advice. But at last, this leads us into the crux of Mr. Dowd’s complaints…
It really seems to boil down to the Iraq war. But there is an aspect of Dowd’s change of heart that particularly disturbs me (repels me, actually): Dowd admits arriving at his new moral denunciation of the war for reasons as personal, if not as drastic, as Cindy Sheehan’s:
His views against the war began to harden last spring when, in a personal exercise, he wrote a draft opinion article and found himself agreeing with Mr. Kerry
Roger:
I am sorry that was so long. I did not realize how much space it would take. I promise I won’t do that again.
Take as much as you want, Terrye. I enjoy reading what you have to say. But I question this:
“Just because he did not ration coffee and beans did not mean he did not expect some sacrifice.”
I was talking about rationing. That was necessary. I meant that Bush never tried to galvanize the populace in a time of war… at least he didn’t try hard enough or in the right way. This takes a lot of work, I am sure, but not enough effort was put into it. Perhaps the Republicans aren’t Hollywood enough. They certainly are clueless at PR. Maybe the DO need a heavy dose of Fred Thompson – someone who communicates and does stop. It’s not a once a month thing. That’s far from enough to counteract a reactionary media. You have to keep on it every day. Speak, speak and speak again. Bush did not do enough in a time of asymmetrical war when perception is everything.
(Now I’m taking up too much of my own bandwidth!)
Well, he’s framed the war and its stakes in many, many major speeches, and as is he’s routinely accused of exaggeration and scare and fear mongering.
I dunno–a claim that he has failed to connect must be true–it’s its own proof. Maybe the problem has always been that the downside of losing the war is always in the future, and the pain of fighting it is in the present.
Terrye, you never take up too much bandwidth.
Roger, I agree with your contrary to Terrye.
Buddy, few wish too live in the present. You’re right.
I think the USA too disparate anymore, for one person to hit all the nodes. 51 percent may be the best we can hope for. Thank the God’s we don’t live under a parliamentary system.
Well OK, I neglected the topic. Dowd is for Dowd. How’s that?
Dowd has a point, sadly enough.
The tragedy of Bush is that he combines an ability to make correct decisions with no ability whatsoever to ruthlessly execute them or defend them politically. Dowd is a symptom of this problem.
I don’t give a fig about Bush personally at this point, and frankly I long for the day when in the face of the gravest dangers this nation has faced we might have a standard-bearer who can actually string two coherent sentences together and rouse the country out if its slumber.
Wow. Lots of info. I didn’t read the story, I wonder if the newspapers had any of this info…
Is Mr Dowd the guy who ran Ah-nold’s reelection campaign? Ah-nold was elected on a promise to serve the people, not the elites and certainly not the spendthrift Dem legislators. He seems to have backed off from that and has become a go-along-to-get-along girly-man sort of guy. Is Mr Dowd part of that transformation? Not impressed….
No disrespect, Mr. Simon, but that = same old recycle tripe.
I have An Evening Star (later to be renamed the Washington Star) newspaper from the time of JFK’s inauguration and one of the articles in that paper talked about how Kennedy will have to… wait for it.. Restore American (Are you still there?) Prestige (can you guess what’s coming next?) ABROAD!!! Because, you know, that Eisenhower guy squandered the prestige that Roosevelt and Truman guys had gained us. I just started laughing when I read that. Same sh!t (aka democrat media talking points) different decade.
What’s also funny is that there are columns in that paper written by Mary Mcgrory and Haynes Johnson two clinton butt kissers who wrote for the washington post when clinton was in office. Mary’s now deceased and Haynes is teaching at Maryland University with his lips still firmly attached to clinton’s bunghole.
Roger:
I don’t think Fred Thompsom would have been any more successful, after all as Dafydd points out Bush had approval ratings in the 80′s there for awhile and if that is not connection I don’t know what is. People just got tired of it all. And ofcourse the press did not help because they were never really fans of Bush in the first place. I mean really, when a CNN reporter like Ware is heckling someone like McCain in Baghdad I think it is a bit naive to think all we needed was someone who bring us all together. As if that were possible.
As for Dowd, well did he say he was going to support McCain who does indeed call for America to buck up and fight? NO. Does he say he will support Fred Thompson if he runs because he is the one real conservative? No. Does he say he likes Rudy and might support him in 08 because he is competent and a good administrator? No. He likes Obama. I think that says it all.
Sally ):
I am so tired of hearing people talk about Bush as if he could not speak. He speaks just fine and he has given many good speeches in his time in office. His last State of the Union was a lot more than just coherent. I have seen him very concise and to the point at press conferences as well. The problem here goes way beyond public speaking.
And btw in th epolls taken after his SoU he got very high marks from a strong majority of the people polled and they were not all Republicans either.
I looked at the Hot Soup web site that Dowd is affiliated with and that told me all I needed to know about him. The story about his two children fills out the picture but he looks like a guy whose feelings trump every rational thought. He is a pollster, for crissakes.
Bush has done a poor job of communicating. He has gotten better at speaking as the time has gone by but he has failed at several important points. The “sixteen words” controversy is a good example. We all know that Presidents live in a swarm of advisors but Bush’s seem a gutless lot, for the most part. The yellowcake story has been an albatross around his neck for three years and it needn’t have been. That was a terrible failure and I blame his staff.
The other great failure, I believe, is the Army. The Army, unlike the Marines, has been uninterested in COIN warfare since before Vietnam. Colonel Nagl has tried to get converts but, until Petraeus, he seems to have had few converts. We now have a brain trust of senior officers there but it is three years late.
Pearl Harbor blew up the Battleship Navy and left the conduct of the Pacific War in the hands of people who knew how to do it. This three year fiasco has shown us how lucky we were then and how unlucky this time.
I am with Terrye on this one, 110%.
The alleged failure of the Pres to mobilize public opinion and keep it in a state of high alert leaves me wondering if the sheep, aka the public, haven’t also some responsibility beyond milling about without any sustaining ideas in their heads.
Me too, 110%. Roger says “He told us all to go shopping when he should have enlisted us all in the cause” –but remember, Bush inherited a recession, and 911′s attack on confidence could’ve driven money into mattresses a la 1929.
Knowing how much harder everything–including fighting a war–is in a contracting economy, maybe he did drop a clunker with “go shopping” but it was not frivolous advice by any means.
As far as enlisting us in the cause, I don’t understand what else was necessary besides continually framing the context (which he has done) with 911 and all the other acts of terror burning in the background.
Maybe the problem has been the memory of past wars, where enemy nations with uniformed armies required different sorts of efforts against different sorts of war machines.
I guess Roger and others have a point, that if a president has let so many of us stay so dumb, then he hasn’t his job. But maybe that job is impossible, given that so many have decided to stay dumb at all costs.
“Why this and why now? It seems extremely self-serving given the world situation. It’s all about Matthew and not at all about the problems faced by civilization. He is headed off (according to the end of the article) on an individual crusade to help folks in Africa. Laudable, I suppose.”
Um, the horrific state of Africa isn’t a problem faced by civilization? Somehow, Roger, the Islamic Menace has blinded you to the broader problems of “civilization.”
Sad.
There we go again. We’re about to elect, on the basis of “heart” and “concern”, the other half of the president who thru the 90s did zip of any consequence (except maybe focusing by omission via Rwanda) “for Africa”, while knowing, or caring, nothing at all about what the current president has done, is doing, for Africa–starting with trying to attack Africa’s overriding problem, the problem that renders all other aid almost perverse: Thuggery from top to bottom, from jihadists to tribalists.
Who knows, maybe he’s related to Maureen Dowd! In the article he struck me as a kind of gooey idealist. His new love interest is Obama. Then Obama will have feet of clay and then…?
Team Bush has had trouble communicating well, even early in its Administration. But it is also difficult to sway the public when the news frames every bomb in Iraq as a disaster and never frames the enemy as an enemy. The story arc of the bombings or deaths is the inability of the US to prevent this from happening and that being evidence that we need to get out because “they all” hate us and are telling us to go. The story is about hopelessness and futility. The truly hideous nature of suicide bombing and beheading receives hardly any consideration. Of course, this is all the more reason that Team Bush needs to communicate better.
Waging war involves a form of hate. To kill an enemy you have to hate them (or that is what enables most people to overcome their highly socialized prohibition against killing). But the media will not go there. When it comes to covering religion, the MSM never met a religion it ever liked. When it comes to covering war, the guiding principle of the MSM seems to be turn the other cheek.
“They certainly are clueless at PR. Maybe the DO need a heavy dose of Fred Thompson – someone who communicates and does stop. It’s not a once a month thing.”
Well, there is the “noisy channel” problem. (How exactly DO you get the message out when the medium itself is dead-set on distorting it?) That being said, Thompson may “get” it in ways that no one since Reagan has. (And that, of course, was Reagan’s great strength, and something parodied by the Clinton administration; staying on topic is vital to leadership. Reagan believed in his message, and Clinton knew people had to believe he believed in the message.)
Thompson’s lack of experience frightens me; if he does well assembling a team and picking a qualified VP, that will go a long way toward allaying those fears.
“I guess Roger and others have a point, that if a president has let so many of us stay so dumb, then he hasn’t his job. But maybe that job is impossible, given that so many have decided to stay dumb at all costs.”
Posted by: Buddy Larsen at April 2, 2007 09:30 AM
buddy -
my concern is that the obvious(and willful)
Denial is a symptom of the effectiveness of
Terror as a technique.
no society is made up of 100% warriors
(even Sparta,in “300″,as a recent example).
some portion of the public will forever remain “unwilling to look”.
self-loathing is the much safer course.
(BTW,a recently read that only some 300,000 americans regularly read blogs…if the numbers are accurate and reflect voting patterns, that’s about 150k Left and 150k Right…
the rest of the US is getting its news from the MsM outlets…where/how are they going to get un-dumb??)
I dunno, gumshoe. Maybe a national fund-raising effort to hire the ad agency that does the Geico cavemen ads? You know–stay out of politics, just run a campaign talking about lost civilizations, in a humorous way?
WHAT TOOK MR. DOWD SO LONG?
We who have been fighting the fight for the past seven years were able to see right through Bush and Cheney…
Families have been destroyed, this country is bankrupt in more than one sense,
Rome is burning… and he’s just now speaking out?
Too little too late Mr. Dowd.
And history will judge you in the same breath as it judges this moron of a president and his trusty sidekicks cheney and rove.
And that skeeza condoleeza!
Gumshoe, I wonder if your “…the effectiveness of Terror as a technique” applies also to the actings-out of what we’ve come to call ‘BDS’?
BDS acting-out, meaning the gamut from endless hyper-fulminations of conspiracy-maddened bloggers, academics, and entertainers to the forms of politcal speech by recent oppo candidates, to the coming avalance of congressional witch hunts?
Could conspiracies to wholly-invent (Dan Rather, Michael Moore) to fraudulently criminalize (Libby, most recently) to the current ludicrous (but lethal) Leahy/Schumer congressional star chambers, be considered a form of terrorism?
If not, why not? Because it kills people only indirectly?
We who have been fighting the fight for the past seven years
Which fight is that, JenCoolFLA?
Here, I’ll help you, multiple choice, and there’s only three possible answers:
1) The fight that the jihad has been fighting against USA?
2) The fight that USA has been fighting in defense?
3) The “fight” in the middle (which is not actually a fight in the same sense as the other two, but is more of a political support for fight #1) ?
Buddy,
Jenn surely means the fight against the eeevil GOP.
You know, the only battle that actually matters. Everyone knows that there is no such thing as jihadis, just misunderstood, marginalized minorities. The World Will Be a Better Place When a Democrat Is in the White House Again.
That’s what it is all about.
That’s ALL it is about.
***
Speaking just for me, the Left’s seven-year temper tantrum has permanently turned me off. (And if I forgot that, someone like Jenn would come along and remind me.)
{Gumshoe, I wonder if your “…the effectiveness of Terror as a technique”
applies also to the actings-out of what we’ve come to call ‘BDS’?}
yeah,buddy.
i think it directly applies to “the actings-out of what we’ve come to call ‘BDS’”.
i think the psych-blogger Dr. Sanity would agree with that view…pointing out that it is clearly SAFE to attack one’s political opponents at home,
and that it is *fear* not “understanding” or “compassion”,that prevents,say Hollywood,
from making contemporary films about Islam,about Jihad,or even ANY sort of public commentary about free-speech/Theo Van Gogh type issues.
Jen Cool:
I would vote for Bush and Cheney again.
Jen Cool is a perfect example why good public speaking is not enough.
Rome burned indeed. My guess is to people like Jen Cool the only war worth fighting is the one against the neocons. Get rid of them and the world will be a happy place with no war or pestilence or famine or injustice etc.
Right–Rome may have fallen, but that was long, long after it burned. It burned (a little, in the center of town) under Nero–who was nothing if not a Hollywood-type liberal.
The span of time between Rome burning and Rome falling was three or four centuries–about twice as long as we’ve been a nation.
Bostonian speaks for me also.
I am the US American that I was raised to be.
I have spent thirty years in public service (primarily in ed.).
I vote.
I don’t mind paying taxes; I feel it is an obligation.
I help.
I don’t whine (too much).
I work hard.
I don’t get in trouble (I did once get a speeding ticket as an adult – I discount the teen one due to the general testing at that age).
I am one of those Americans that you seem not to have heard from: I think we SHOULD get out of Iraq and the middle east in general. Our infrastructure is dated; we are abusing our natural resources; I see some of the most fertile land on this planet being turned into strip malls for profit.
I help people who can honestly not help themselves.
We are in trouble; what on earth are we doing participating in an argument that is older than our nation? Why aren’t we defending our other ‘borders’ (all types: economic, physical, environmental, etc.)
I had reason to make a call to the UK a few weeks ago and found myself saying: “I am American, but I am not George Bush.”
That is a very sad thing to have to say.
Much as I love what this country originally stood for, I am seriously looking at leaving. I’ll still pay my taxes on investments; I do not believe we are what we say we are. I no longer feel free here. I do feel surrounded by a government and media that lie and want my money for silly things.
The only thing that makes is hard to leave are the wonderful people. People are what life is about; I don’t need a foolish toddler toy that spins, creates colorful light designs, made of plastic when I know that people are starving outside the door as well as around the world.
Hope this isn’t too long; hope it doesn’t sound ungrateful. But I love life and creation. It’s time to help the rest of the world.
Mercy. Curiouser123, may I pick a few random remarks and ask you for clarification?
The foolish toy: who made it, and how will they eat if no one buys the toy? Why aren’t the toymakers among the people you care so much about?
Why aren’t the people who want to live near, to shop and/or make a living at, those offensive new malls, among the people you care so much about?
Why aren’t the millions of people who were or are living under tyranny–the people your country is trying to free in order to end the terrorism that is oppressing the entire world–among the people you care so much about?
What help can we give anybody anywhere, among the people you care so much about, if we don’t try to spread liberty and opportunity, if we or someone somewhere doesn’t put an end to the tyranny, terrorism and slavery that beset so many of the people you care so much about?
And who are those people abusing those natural resources, and why don’t you care about them?
Do you know where your computer, and your home, car, job, and security came from, if not via natural resources and the liberty to create better lives?
And the ‘profit’ you decry–what is it but the way to invest the future, so that the next generation can live as well as you?
I too, we all do too, hate to see the excesses that liberty allows, and who does not want to help folks who need safety nets?
Lord knows we have troubles and need to improve many things. But does it make sense to give up in disgust, on the only country with the will, the ability, and the history of helping others? And give up in order to do what? Help others more directly? In-person, say, in Darfur? If so, more power to you. If not, you’re just basically wailing about humanity’s inhumanity–again, like back in high school.
And yes the fight in the Mideast is old and maybe we should’ve stayed out of it–but could we have, once modern technology and globalism had made it spill out onto us, in intolerably destructive volumes (as you must know if you’ve been around over the last quarter century)?
What were we to do but fight back, and what on earth makes you think that if we quit fighting back, if we were to revert to the 90s, that soft-power would have better success now than then?
And did we not already give the jihad two decades of the most moderate response, in order to ‘not provoke’, in order to let it simmer down of its own accord? And what happened?
And as far as trying yet once again to ignore it all, do you really think that it will let us?
If so, then can you give us a hint as to why you think it will let us now when it would not let us before?
And, if not, then isn’t your prescription a little bit dangerously irresponsible?
But, back to your theme, what is really the best way to help the people most in need of your help?
Would it be to stay (or become) involved in the struggle to permanently liberate them from the fear and poverty of tyranny, or would it be to, say, quit your country and go hand out doughnuts somewhere in the third world (where unless you’re heavily-supported you’ll just further burden the overburdened)?
But yes, we all need to be more generous and helpful, and we need to follow the Golden Rule, and try always to be better people.
However, if you–like many of us–feel as if you’ve been coming up a little short in the virtue department, please, put the blame where it can do some good–on your own self, not on your country. Your country has a few warts, but it’s still the one to bet on if you need help.
The mideast is not the neighbor’s backyard, we can not just get out. We have the sixth fleet at Dubai, central command at Qatar and a base in Kuwait..and is Afghanistan part of the ME? I think not, but I think the people wanting us to get out think so. So, just say to hell with all those people risking life and limb to cast a vote and sail on home to hide behind our oceans.
The UN passed all those resolutions against Saddam Hussein and he consumed so much of the world’s attention because it is the Middle East. The strategic importance of the area to the world economy and the international community can not be ignored. People can try, but if a bunch of autocratic madmen take control of the region we can kiss the world economy and anything like global stability goodbye. When that happens the poor suffer the most, both here and in the third world. All the prattle about being kind to the earth will mean nothing if people are starving.
Then of course there is the subject of our Word. America’s Word. That ever important commodity which the left and many liberals consider to be disposable. But then I am sure they are saying to themselves that they never promised those strange little brown people anything, no siree…it was the Republicans making the promises and they don’t count.
Well I have bad news for the cut and run element out there, it was America’s word. That is how the world sees it and that is how the votes came down. And the left has laid that word on the line. They have said that they will abandon that word because they do not consider themselves bound by it. So that means they are part of America when and if it suits them. Otherwise, count them out.
The truth is this makes violence in Iraq more likely, not less likely. It makes attacks on our troops more likely. Why? Well, because the terrorists are counting on certain people to run and take the military with them. All they have to do is keep up the good work on their end and kill people.
The violence in Iraq is down and attacks on our military are down as well. However, I have noticed that since the Congress passed their useless politically motivated back handed slap at Bush there has been something of a renewed assault on our troops. It seems that the US Congress has given the enemy a renewed sense of purpose. The self serving cretons.
Curiouser:
If you want to go, just leave. Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.
After the last election presidential election all sorts of people promised they would leave, but they are still here bitching and moaning and whining and claiming that America is not {sniff} America anymore.
Promises Promises. Talk as they say is cheap. Just go. Get. Vamoos.
The key line in Curiouser123′s whine is this one: “I have spent thirty years in public service (primarily in ed.).”
Of course ! You are the reason my kids went to private school. It wasn’t cheap but thank God I could afford it. You think we can just up and leave a part of the world. Everything is our fault. England is now deciding not to teach school kids about the Holocaust because it might upset Muslim students to hear something their parents and imams deny. I suppose you agree. Turn the other cheek.
I’ll bet you still think Paul Erlich knew what he was talking about in the 1950s when he said everybody would starve to death by 1972.
“I see some of the most fertile land on this planet being turned into strip malls for profit.”
Profit ! That evil invention at the root of every injustice. I have news for you. Lenin was wrong.
Pop quiz: Have we increased or decreased food production with all that “fertile land” being built on ?
Listen, I don’t have a lot left after all that private school tuition but, if you need a few bucks for that plane ticket (one way, of course), I’d be glad to do what I can.
Curiouser,
You spend a lot of time talking about how you want to help people who cannot help themselves. I find this passing strange.
You would prefer for us abandon 25 million people in Iraq who voted for the first time in their history.
You would prefer for us to say to any would-be democrats in the Islamic world, “You’re on your own. You will get no help from us.”
You would prefer for us to say to terrorists, “Have at it. We will not interfere with your goals of gaining political power by murder and threats.”
Because like it or not, pal, those are exactly the messages you are broadcasting to the world.
There is one part of Iraq that shows what might have been, and could still be if the terrorists who want chaos can be defeated. You might read this to see what is happening in northern Iraq. I suspect you may not be interested, prefering Bush hatred for knowledge.
I guess curiouser123 is not a history teacher.
History teachers presumably understand the forces at work in the world today, and would understand that the war we are in is as much as anything a “spoiling action” to prevent a much bigger war, possibly a WWII-sized war, that will soon enough follow the jihad’s becoming the power player in the governments of the Mideast.
A history teacher would understand that there was nothing at all inevitable about WWII, that small mid-1930s spoiling actions against the fascisms would’ve prevented it, at a tiny fraction of the cost in blood and treasure.
Something to think about. We better think about it, because the Pelosis and the Reids won’t.
Strip malls for profit? I call BS, not even a teacher would say something that stupid. Well golly gee, let’s just nationalize all the land and give it back to the people so that the capitalists can building icky malls.
If not for profit, there would be no taxes and if not for taxes…public education would be up a creek.
Profit = incentive = Standard of Living.
Banish them and you end up somewhere between Pol Pot and Joe Stalin. Fun lives for all.
Many, many K12 teachers need to go back to school. Or sayonara, adios, auf weidershan, au revoir, dosvidanye, the future of the country.
ok, “wiedersehen” –i too need go back skool
In one breath, we are told we should be told to suffer more — in the next breath we are told that the lines at the airport are too long, security too minute, the Patriot Act is intrusive, you need a passport to go to Canada. Why are all these measures not treated as part of the “war effort”? Does it only count if we ration butter?
Curiouser123 has to be a parody poster. Not even public school teachers are that stupid.
CH, have you forgotten last Novemer 7th?
No, Buddy, I remember it all too well. I just keep waiting for sanity to prevail and I saw none in that post by Curiouser123. Hence my reaction.
Yeh–just tossing you a softball, CH.
I’m waiting, too, for sanity to prevail.
Gee I always learn something here. To think being a teacher is now public service.
“Not even public school teachers are that stupid.”
Not all of them, no. Some of them are very bright. The average brightness, however, is distinctly below the average on the population at large. You do the math.