Bush-bashing commentary from the German publication’s Washington correspondent George Peter Schmitz:
The smoke was still rising from the rubble of the World Trade Center when Richard Armitage, at the time the US deputy secretary of state, spoke in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. “History begins today,” he said.
In the coming decade, Armitage would turn out to be right — except the politician could not have foreseen how tragic the history would be following the epochal event.
It is the history of the decline of the USA as a superpower.
Immediately before the attacks, this country was in full bloom — like Rome at its peak, as TV host Joe Scarborough recalls today.
The Republican President George W. Bush had inherited a fat budget surplus from the Democrat Bill Clinton. In Kosovo, the US, which Madeleine Albright dubbed “the indispensable nation,” had just shown the Europeans how it could resolve conflicts, even in their own backyard. Bill Gates and Microsoft were still cool.
And who gets to replace us? Europe? Not so fast, George Peter Schmitz.
Der Spiegel has an amazing facility for being wrong.
Congrats, Charlie … for yet another zero-fact, zero-reference, wholly unreasoning claim. No-one can question yer ideology-first fervor and purity!
Two harsh truths are (1) Der Spiegel’s article is right-on-the-facts, and (2) The Onion saw it coming, with near-perfect accuracy, ten years ago.
So tell us Charlie, how did The Onion do it?
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Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’
The Onion, January 17, 2001
URL: http://www.theonion.com/articles/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of-peace-and-pros,464/
And congratulations to you, John, for managing to once again proclaim the “facts” based on an Onion satire.
Charlie, anyone can check that The Onion *did* scoop Der Spiegel … not by days or weeks, but by ten years.
So it is very natural to ask, however did they The Onion do it?
Ridiculing this question ain’t near as good as answering it, eh Charlie?
The libertarian-founder economist Hayek too saw this ideology-first train-wreck coming, way back in 1960 … and now Ed Dolan has written a pretty good essay on Hayek’s insight into the willful ignorance of today’s American conservatism.
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Why Rick Perry’s Position on Climate Change Makes Him a True Conservative
by Ed Dolan in The Economic Monitor
URL: http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2011/08/18/why-rick-perrys-position-on-climate-change-makes-him-a-true-conservative/
Why is it that the Left insists on taking its cues from comedians and satirists? Is this some sort of psychic self-defense mechanism to cover a typically clueless and consistently misguided ideology? The obsessive-compulsive use of smiley faces in place of a credible argument doesn’t exactly bolster your credibility.
As Dean Faber once said to
Al GoreFlounder, “fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.”Because they have no sense of humor, so they couldn’t recognize comedy or satire if they were labeled in large-print letters.
Moira and ConservativeWander, you folks might want to learn a little more about Friedrich Hayek.
Cuz it’s clear that the “comedians” at The Onion and Der Spiegel know his work pretty dang well!
While yah read, these “smilies” might put yah into a better mood too!
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Hayek, Libertarians, and Conservatives
URL: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/10/hayek_libertarians_and_conserv.html
Thanks for proving my point for me, Johnny.
You’re clearly completely incapable of recognizing satire even when you read it.
While yah read, these “smilies” might put yah into a better mood too!
And thanks for proving my point, as well. Still waiting for you to say something that doesn’t make you look like a fool.
I want to thank you John, for finally truly proving what an America-hating liberal you really are. You just revealed yourself for true and certain.
A parsons, did you post with these IDs as well?
Dial C For Cocktail Waitress
cuz they can’t speak English, have no identification and use GoogleEarth to find their buttocks.
June 2, 2011 – 7:28 am
James May
Can you provide a link to that CFR thingy supporting the MB cuz I can’t seem to find it.
May 11, 2011 – 3:19 pm
James May
I’m not certain cuz usually I rely on facts rather…
May 11, 2011 – 3:19 pm
Oh well, cuz maybe Bush did it. Or something, anything but reality. Much like the checkout counter at the local supermarket.
Look, A parsons is pregnant by Bush! Therefore the smiley faces. Triplets.
Remember not to remember, A parsons.
Only someone as clueless as “A Physicist” could read that Der Spiegel article…and imagine that it contains any facts.
And yet, as odious as it is, the guy is right about our decline. I have said for a long time that 9/11 succeeded wildly, and that the damage done to this nation is still being tallied. In response to these heinous attacks America embarked on insane boondoggles to rebuild the barbaric Muslim world in our image. Trying to befriend your enemy while leaving his ideology intact is INSANE. We didn’t just leave Islam intact, we enshrined it in the two constitutions we drafted for the nascent “democracies” in Afghanistan and Iraq. It would be like defeating Germany and Japan in WW2 only to enshrine Nazism and Shintoism into their constitutions and calling it a day.
It was depraved arrogance. It was depraved ignorance. It was insane, the act of a crazed unknowing fool.
Today Islam is rising as never before in Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Turkey, etc. We have bankrupted ourselves, treat our citizens like potential Muslim terrorists, attack those who keep warning about Islam as bigots and Nazis, in short, we are doing to ourselves what the Muslims would ddo to us – treating ourselves like second class citizens while placing criticism and war against the Muslms as a high crime.
I am sickened by this ten year anniversary. Our civilization is cringing and crumbling ten years later, and most of our citizens haven’t a clue, or are abetting our Muslim enemies in their evil, dastardly, and ongoing assault.
You hit the nail on the head. This is a war that can only be won if fought at the ideological level. And apart from a few bloggers or writers, who as you indicate are accused as being racists, this has not happened. Ten lost years.
Oh gosh, more informative “understanding your world” poop from our elites in journalism, a bunch of clowns who think they are the source of all wisdom because they are on TV or write for newspapers and magazines. Those who can do, those who can’t and have no clue why, comment on it.
“Then came the planes, piloted by the followers of Osama bin Laden — and for a brief moment, the superpower seemed even more powerful than ever. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had himself photographed donating blood for the victims. Even the French all suddenly wanted to be Americans. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder promised “unlimited solidarity.”-Shmitz
Does Mr. Shmitz think that any of us actually believed all that schmaltz?
Maybe he and people who get paid to scribble pieces reflecting and reinforcing their masters’ biases fell for that gobbledygook, but many, and perhaps most of us, saw through all that “We’re ALL Americans now!” crapola.
We started to decline in America when Hugh Heffner published his slut magazine. It was the beginning of turning people into peeping Toms and snitches. Around the same time the people we call American terrorists now started coming into america and setting up their own little villages for their cult to prosper. (look up “terrorist map” and see how in 1977 they had a group in every state and usually it was near collegs, and family services which they got for free. Those who didn’t went to prison and still had it better than where they came from.
Wake up America.
https://cfns.us/files/HomegrownJihadintheUSA-Final.pdf
HOMEGROWN JIHAD IN THE USA
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Deliberate, Premeditated Plan Now Reaching Maturity.
Yes, that’s right, Hugh Hefner was the first person to publish pictures of naked women.
America’s decline is the direct result of our debt. Our future has been spent in a orgy of fantasy spending. 500 billion on car pool lanes that waste energy or 100 billion on the Osprey that can’t fly,no one cares as long as “jobs” result. Our sophisticated methods of hiding inflation only enable more trillions of waste. But the bill will come due and the pain will be real. The left’s delusions about communism caused the enslavment of a billion people. Now the left’s delusions about climate and massive borrowing will impoverish billions more.
The Republican President George W. Bush had inherited a fat budget surplus from the Democrat Bill Clinton.
That’s one of the most oft-repeated lies that the Left likes to tell. Clinton never achieved a budget surplus and certainly didn’t leave one for Bush.
– Why did you block Comments to your attack-editorial today?
Krugman won’t be answering you because like many bed-wetting Lefty beta males he is curled up in the fetal position, sucking his thumb, waiting for the next “stimulus-producing” natural or man-caused disaster to occur.
He turned off comments because he is a coward who can dish it out but not take it. He is typical of his species.
Yup, anytime I want to know how another country views the USA I think of Germany. The country that started two world wars and committed crimes against humanity on a grand scale, yes that’s the group I want to be preaching to me about my country’s decline. Please go back to bailing out Greece and we’ll go back to sending our worst president ever back to private life.
Not today, Der Spiegel, don’t want to hear this today, far more important things to do like honoring our heroes.
“It is the history of the decline of the USA as a superpower.”
Is that right?
I’ll start worrying about that when there’s German Garrisons in America…instead of the other way around.
Is this German writer trying to say that without 9/11, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan the housing/debt bubble would not have burst? The “bubble” going POOF is what got us into the “Great Recession”, not the Bush defecit spending. That spending did not help things, yet the deficit was going down until the Dems took over the Congress as shown by the famous deficit graph that has been posted here and at Instapundit.
As to US decline as a superpower exactly who did the British, French, and other Euros have to turn to for a good deal of combat support missions and even a resupply of ordinance because they were running out of bombs?
Furthermore, it is a bit odd for this essay to come out now just as Europe’s own economy and banks are heading into deep trouble again, and could drag, or tip, the rest of the world back into recession. From what I have read so far, especially Dr. Walter Mead’s blog and PJM’s own Spengler, Germany is not going to bale out Greece anymore. If Greece and the rest of the “PIIGS” go down, taking the rest of Europe with it, because no one can/will continue to bale them out, will Germany like getting blamed for wrecking the “European Project” because they were “cheapskates”?
“Ask not for whom the Bell tolls, it tolls for thee” Right back at you Spiegel/Mr. George P. Schmitz.
Rifle 308