Cutting through Inaugural rhetoric

[iamthewalrus109]

Today in Pat Buchanan's WorldNet daily article he cuts through one of the biggest inconsistencies of the new and improved Bush doctrine as stated in his inaugural address of 1/20/2005, saying:

"President Bush is championing a policy of interventionism in the internal affairs of every nation on earth. But did we not learn from 9-11 that intervention is not a cure for terrorism, it is the cause of terrorism.

Clearly, the president does not understand this, or believe it. For, in his inaugural, he describes 9-11 as the day "when freedom came under attack." But Osama bin Laden did not dispatch his fanatics to ram planes into the World Trade Center because he hated our Bill of Rights. He did it because he hates our presence and our policies in the Middle East."

This is a telling observation, one with which I agree. Bush's intnent has a far greater reach than say, Woodrow Wilson. Buchanan ends the article aptly noting that such a policy will end only in dissillusionment and grief for the people of the United States.

-Walrus

Article can be found at: http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42557

[Happy Monkey]

The Republican Party has fallen a long way when Pat Buchanan is the one sounding reasonable.

[Torrere]

Pat Buchanan has been a contributor to antiwar.com for over a year, and he's held these opinions for some time. However, he still voted for Bush.

[Happy Monkey]

I know. It's the rest of the party that has gotten worse, Buchannan has remained where he always was.

[Troubleshooter]

You could almost believe that he has classic liberal leanings.

[Happy Monkey]

Add Ron Paul (R-TX) to the list of liberal-leaning Republicans.

[iamthewalrus109]

When one thinks about it, in many ways, some classic conservatives would be considered liberal today. Two great cases are Dick Nixon and Barry Goldwater. The glaring example from Goldwater's idealogy is the concept of not invading people's homes with what the government thinks, period. Before his fairly recent death, he was not pleased with the Christian right's attempt to intrude on the lives of citizens through gestures to Bush, he believed in no overt government intrusion in the personal lives of citizens. With Dick Nixon, there's a number of examples, but one striking one, one that made him many enemies, is detente, and his backdoor shuttle diplomacy. There's no way people on the JCS, defense contractors, and the military-industrial complex would ever want detente with the Russians, especially then.

-Walrus

[russotto]

You only learn that interventionism is a cause for terrorism if you take some of Osama bin Laden's proclamations at face value.

Perhaps Osama would have preferred if the US had failed to intervene in Afghanistan.... when the USSR held it.

[Torrere]

http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/link...brzezinski.htm

According to Carter's NSA advisor (trying to take credit for the collapse of the Soviet Union), the United States began stirring up the mujahideen several months before the Soviet invasion, in an attempt to give the Soviets a Vietnam of their own.

[Griff]

Pretty damning of the Carter administration. eh? Is the interview real?

[Torrere]

The article with Le Nouvel Observateur is said to be confirmed by material from the Carter-Brezhnev Project's archives, and:

In his memoir published in 1996, the former CIA director Robert Gates made it clear that the American intelligence services began to aid the mujahedin guerrillas not after the Soviet invasion, but six months before it. http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=3927

At that time, there was already a Soviet-supported communist government in Afghanistan.

"The anti-Communist revolt that began at Herat in western Afghanistan in March 1979 originated in a government initiative to teach girls to read. The fundamentalist Afghans opposed to this were supported by a triumvirate of nations – the U.S., Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia"

[Undertoad]

So you guys are big fans of the USSR?

[Happy Monkey]

[russotto]

Originally Posted by Griff

Pretty damning of the Carter administration. eh? Is the interview real?

Why is it damning? Pretty typical Cold War stuff, I think.

[Happy Monkey]

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during 1981-82, Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review? Liberal-leaning.