(no subject)

[winterbadger]

After seeing two of the clips that ABC is circulating of its interview(s) with Gov Palin.

[Poll #1258459]

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

On that last question, I'll just answer "No." As far as I know she doesn't have any press people separate from McCain's press people.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

On the Bush Doctrine question, I'm willing to cut her a little slack. Not a whole lot, mind you, but Bush has been dancing around the exact meaning of his doctrine since he first articulated it in 2001. I could understand how someone who's not in the Bush administration might wonder just exactly what version of the Bush Doctrine is being discussed. It's not yet anywhere near as clear as the Monroe Doctrine, or even the Eisenhower Doctrine and the Carter Doctrine.

[winterbadger]

True, but it's a darn sight closer in time than any of those others, and it's been discussed a great deal over the last five years int he national press.

To me this is a double failure. A failure on her part to be an informed citizen, and a failure on the part of the McCain team to ensure that she has the ability to answer rather basic and obvious questions.

I take your other point about the press staff, but I think that's sort of a distinction without a difference.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

And having said I'd explain at least one bit in comments...

What floated up from the depths of memory as the "Bush Doctrine" seemed so improbably silly that I assumed I'd got it wrong. 30 sec with Wikipedia assured me that in fact I'd got the basics right.

Is someone seriously suggesting that there are pros to "US troops staging raids across its border without the permission of its national government"?

The British Press, as far as I'm aware, is being entirely fair to Sarah Palin, in that it's reported what she says, and then politely refraining from laughing. I have no idea what the American press, or that of any other nation, is doing.

[blueingenue.livejournal.com]

Is someone seriously suggesting that there are pros to "US troops staging raids across its border without the permission of its national government"?

I would consider the possibility such raids might yield death or capture of the most tenaciously entrenched terrorists a "pro". Recognizing "pros" exist isn't the same as asserting that the pros outweigh the cons.

[cmlc.livejournal.com]

I must humbly admit that I haven't a clue about any American presidential Doctrine. My first thought was that I hadn't realised that Bush was clever enough to have a Doctrine in the first place. Having now looked it up in wikipedia I'd summarise it as "dangerous lunacy".

As for Sarah Palin, she still appears to be in the race so it would appear to me that the press hasn't been remotely unfair enough.

[schizokitty.livejournal.com]

On Pakistan: I'm actually somewhere between choices 2 and 3. I know where it is and have some idea of what's going on and how nuts they've been, but I'm not sure I could formulate policy based on this information.

OTOH, as janewilliams20 said, ARE there pros to a country violating a sovereign nation's borders by staging military raids? I'm sure there is some circumstance under which this might be "good," but damned if I can think of it...

[winterbadger]

There are certainly pros to attacking terrorist command and control facilities, supply centers, training areas, and recruiting locations in whatever countries they appear. Namely, that it will impair the ability of terrorists to carry out operations and reduce the numbers of terrorists available to attack people.

In most cases, we can work with governments against terrorists operating within their borders, usually by supporting them in their own efforts to get rid of the terrorists. It's better for all concerned if the national government cleans up their own house; calling on us to actually send troops in is a last resort for all concerned, as it makes us look like an invader (even if we've been invited in) and it makes the host national government look weak and dependent on us. And no matter how much better our equipment, training, and discipline may be than that of local forces (sometimes there's no difference, or very little) we are handicapped by our unfamiliarity with local geography, language, and culture.

In cases where governments are not willing to allow US forces to enter and unwilling or unable to deal with the terrorists themselves, however, we're left with the choice of doing nothing or taking action without their permission. Doing nothing is a bad option. If the country is hostile to us to begin with (e.g., Sudan) then our main concern is how to act to achieve the greatest effect while losing as little as possible (hence the popularity of missile strikes--means no US troops can get killed, wounded, or captured).

If they're putative friends and allies, like Pakistan, things get really sticky. They have multiple reasons for not doing more against terrorists, but at the same time, they have all the usual reasons for wanting us not to come in and do anything. If we do nothing, terrorists can treat Pakistan as a safe haven, knowing that there are regions the Pakistani military probably won't pursue them. If we do something, the Pakistani people become more radicalised against us, the Pakistani government--already unpopular for being so close to us--is weakened further. And without local knowledge, we end up making more mistakes.

[snolan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Pakistan is a sticky situation. The national government has plausible deniability that they are in anyway helping the terrorists in the mountains, but they also are not being very effective in combatting said terrorists, nor cooperating with NATO forces in taking care of that problem for them.

The harder we push them to do something; the more difficulty they have in holding onto power, and a change of regime would probably not be good news for Westerners at all there. If we take action on our own, and get caught doing it; the same results are very likely. Pakistan is essentially a dry powder keg waiting for a spark...

[winterbadger]

...and one with nuclear weapons.

My impression from reading press reports and books about Pakistan is that the Army is doing what it can, from time to time, to fight the *foreign* insurgents in the tribal areas, but that how hard they go at them depends on political infighting *inside* the army between those who want to crush the terrorists, those who support them, and those who don't particularly support them but find them to be a useful tool and don't want to make them go away entirely.

The situation seems to be complicated by the existence of the extremist *native* guerrilla movement, which is in some ways separate and some ways intertwined with the foreign fighters. The ethnic and religious divisions crosscut the national divisions--many Talibs and their Pakistani hosts are ethnically Pashtun and so have connections on both sides of the border. Many of the religious extremists are Deobandis and so have connections throughout the region.

And of course the terrain makes military operations there very, very difficult. The British really never mastered this area even when they controlled India, and punitive expeditions int he hundreds of thousands sometimes had trouble getting in and then getting back out again.

And, of course, any time that the government tries to push hard against the terrs after we have been pressing them to, they look like tools of the Americans and thus provide fuel to the arguments of the radicals...

[magaidhbhan.livejournal.com]

You missed an option in the "Is the press being unfair to Sarah Palin" question: Yes, the press is giving her a unfair advanatage and unfairly lenient treatment when compared to the treatment of people who actually have qualifications

[snolan.livejournal.com]

Thank you, I was just about to say the same exact thing.

The press needs to be collectively fired for ignoring the substance of the elections and replaced with some ruthless blood hounds who will ferret out every goddamned lie we are being told, expose it for what it is, publicly humiliate every fool citizen who believed those lies and then shoot the lying bastards in a public display of enforced integrity...

Oh, perhaps I should say how I really feel... ... ...

BTW - absolutely none of that vitriol is directed at either magaidhbhan or winterbadger, who provide a wonderful service bringing these issues into public discussion; I save said vitriol for the press and the ~45 million people who voted for Bush in 2004.

[winterbadger]

Thanks, Scott! :-)

The thing I still struggle with is that I cannot bring myself to believe that those 45 million people are all (a) fools or (b) deceived. If that were true, it would suggest to me that democracy is a failed experiment, and we need to pack up and start looking for people with reliable bloodlines to create a monarchy (which are, at least usually much more stable than democracy).

So I'm left to try to grasp the idea that 40-60 million of my fellow citizens really find these people (Bush, Cheney, McCain, Palin, and to reach a bit further back, Reagan, Bush Sr., and Quayle) more desirable than the alternatives (Obama, Biden, Kerry, Edwards, Gore, Lieberman, Dukakis, Bentsen, Carter, Mondale, Ferarro). Obviously the strength of that feeling isn't the same in each person, but a vote for one is, in the end, not a vote for the other and a definite statement of preference.

In my darker moments, I tend to see this as a descent of America into a kind of conservative malaise. I looked at some numbers, tracking the margin of victory (in popular votes) back to the 1960 election. Obviously, Dems have won a number of presidential elections in that time, so it's not all bad news; though Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton are not exactly examples of the kind of dedicated moral rectitude and commitment to progressive ideals I'd like to see in presidents, they were better than the Republican alternatives.

What's interesting is that in the 1960s and 1970s, elections were either blowouts or dead heats. Both Kennedy's win and Nixon's in 1968 were decided by less than 1% of the vote; Johnson's and Nixon's in 1972 by more than 20%. There was less volatility in the 1980s and 1990s but more variation, if you know what I mean (no election decided by less than 6%, but none by 20% or more). Now we seem to be modulating down again, with the last two elections being decided by less than 3% of the popular vote. The nation seems very evenly divided, and the positions of the two sides seem as different as those of the 1960s and 70s. Bitter, angry division seems the order of the day. And that makes me sad, as well as puzzled. Because I just can't see how people can stomach some of the extreme views and positions of the conservative right, but I don't feel I can jsut dismiss them as foolish or deuded either.