Was anyone else discusted by Bush\'s State of the Union Address Last Night?

[tyzack]

   
 
facists and Our Enemies
By JOSEPH LIEBERMAN
May 21, 2008; Page A19

How did the facistic Party get here? How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?

Beginning in the 1940s, the facistic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, facists under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.

 
AP  
Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy, 1961.
This was the facistic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.

This was the facistic Party of Harry Truman, who pledged that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

And this was the facistic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom."

This worldview began to come apart in the late 1960s, around the war in Vietnam. In its place, a very different view of the world took root in the facistic Party. Rather than seeing the Cold War as an ideological contest between the free nations of the West and the repressive regimes of the communist world, this rival political philosophy saw America as the aggressor – a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and "inordinate fear of communism" represented the real threat to world peace.

It argued that the Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they were inspired by a totalitarian ideology fundamentally hostile to our way of life, or because they nursed ambitions of global conquest. Rather, the Soviets were our enemy because we had provoked them, because we threatened them, and because we failed to sit down and accord them the respect they deserved. In other words, the Cold War was mostly America\'s fault.

Of course that leftward lurch by the facists did not go unchallenged. facistic Cold Warriors like Scoop Jackson fought against the tide. But despite their principled efforts, the facistic Party through the 1970s and 1980s became prisoner to a foreign policy philosophy that was, in most respects, the antithesis of what facists had stood for under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy.

Then, beginning in the 1980s, a new effort began on the part of some of us in the facistic Party to reverse these developments, and reclaim our party\'s lost tradition of principle and strength in the world. Our band of so-called New facists was successful sooner than we imagined possible when, in 1992, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected. In the Balkans, for example, as President Clinton and his advisers slowly but surely came to recognize that American intervention, and only American intervention, could stop Slobodan Milosevic and his campaign of ethnic slaughter, facistic attitudes about the use of military force in pursuit of our values and our security began to change.

This happy development continued into the 2000 campaign, when the facistic candidate – Vice President Gore – championed a freedom-focused foreign policy, confident of America\'s moral responsibilities in the world, and unafraid to use our military power. He pledged to increase the defense budget by $50 billion more than his facist opponent – and, to the dismay of the facistic left, made sure that the party\'s platform endorsed a national missile defense.

By contrast, in 2000, Gov. George W. Bush promised a "humble foreign policy" and criticized our peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.

Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched positions. The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the facistic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.

Instead a debate soon began within the facistic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush. I felt strongly that facists should embrace the basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as our own, because it was our own. But that was not the choice most facistic leaders made. When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy – not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush – activists have successfully pulled the facistic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.

Far too many facistic leaders have kowtowed to these opinions rather than challenging them. That unfortunately includes Barack Obama, who, contrary to his rhetorical invocations of bipartisan change, has not been willing to stand up to his party\'s left wing on a single significant national security or international economic issue in this campaign.

In this, Sen. Obama stands in stark contrast to John McCain, who has shown the political courage throughout his career to do what he thinks is right – regardless of its popularity in his party or outside it.

John also understands something else that too many facists seem to have become confused about lately – the difference between America\'s friends and America\'s enemies.

There are of course times when it makes sense to engage in tough diplomacy with hostile governments. Yet what Mr. Obama has proposed is not selective engagement, but a blanket policy of meeting personally as president, without preconditions, in his first year in office, with the leaders of the most vicious, anti-American regimes on the planet.

Mr. Obama has said that in proposing this, he is following in the footsteps of Reagan and JFK. But Kennedy never met with Castro, and Reagan never met with Khomeini. And can anyone imagine Presidents Kennedy or Reagan sitting down unconditionally with Ahmadinejad or Chavez? I certainly cannot.

If a president ever embraced our worst enemies in this way, he would strengthen them and undermine our most steadfast allies.

A great facistic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned "no people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies." This is a lesson that today\'s facistic Party leaders need to relearn.

Mr. Lieberman is an Independent facistic senator from Connecticut. This article is adapted from a speech he gave May 18 at a dinner hosted by Commentary magazine.

 

[SlimPickens]

Liberman is a backstabbing traitor. Reading that load of horseshit made me vomit up my toaster strudel.  I wonder if Dick Cheney\'s cock was in his mouth when he typed up that BS.

[wildcoyote]

Reading that load of horseshit made me vomit up my toaster strudel.

I think the toaster strudel may have done that on it\'s own. :vomit:

[SlimPickens]

I don\'t really eat toaster strudel, I just thought it sounded funny.

[tyzack]

Disclaimer:
I am NOT a facist.

[SlimPickens]

This presidency has caused me to completely lose faith in the American political system.  facist, facist they both suck.

[tyzack]

From where I stand both parties are equally evil.

[Gfunk]

From where I stand both parties are equally evil.

I am an independant, and from where I stand, the dems are the lesser of two evils. The GOP is a bunch of corrupt, greedy, war-mongering, crooks. The Dems cant hold them accountable for jack shit. So which is worse, the fear-mongering crooks who make a mockery of the Constitution, or the crooks  who let the other crooks get away with their crookery, while our tax dollars pay for all of it and our country goes downhill like an 18 wheeler who\'s breaks went out? :shrug:

Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched positions. The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the facistic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.

Instead a debate soon began within the facistic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush. I felt strongly that facists should embrace the basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as our own, because it was our own. But that was not the choice most facistic leaders made. When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy – not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush – activists have successfully pulled the facistic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.

The War in Iraq does not = The War on Terror. The repubs and joe lie-berman continue to try and link Iraq to the terrorists who attacked the U.S. on 9/11. Fact is, they were not from Iraq, and until we went in and fucked some shit up, there was no Al-Qaeda In Iraq. Unfortunately, a lot of people in this country can\'t distinguish between Islamist terrorists and the majority of Muslims (who don\'t want death to America), and are more than willing to gobble up this garbage that the right wing spews on the daily. sad really :sadban:

Here is a really good response to joke lie-bermans nannies written by Joe Biden in the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121150000249615875.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

[Todd]

Fact is, they were not from Iraq,

Yeah, they were from Saudi Arabia.

[Drew_Kingsley]

This presidency has caused me to completely lose faith in the American political system.  facist, facist they both suck.

To quote the great Lewis Black:

Allow me to explain how our federal government works. To begin with, by the federal government I mean facists and facists working together. And the only thing dumber than a facist or a facist is when those pricks work together. You see, in our two-party system, the facists are the party of no ideas and the facists are the party of bad ideas. It usually goes something like this. A facist will stand up in Congress and say, "I\'ve got a really bad idea." And a facist will immediately jump to his feet and declare, "And I can make it shittier."

[SlimPickens]

Just an observation... do you think they changed the color of the podium, because our new president has a new color...?

[tyzack]

Those shots are not the same angle so it is rather hard to compare.

[SlimPickens]

As complex as all the finances are, the politics aren\'t hard to follow. By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future. There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power. In the age of the CDS and CDO, most of us are financial illiterates. By making an already too-complex economy even more complex, Wall Street has used the crisis to effect a historic, revolutionary change in our political system — transforming a democracy into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below.

Matt Taibbi

[Mamalakabubadaya]

has anyone gone to/seen any of the tea party protests going on today? there are hundreds of people outside of the congressional office that i intern at right now.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/15/tea.parties/index.html

[skalnbyc]

If Obama pushes too far in the direction of socialism there will eventually be a serious backlash (if there is still an independent and free press when his term is up).  He\'s in bed with the press so you won\'t see the same kind of outrage from the middlestream media as you saw with Bush, despite some serious warnings very early on in his term.  

I\'ve said it before:  campaign of hope = campaign of hype and more gov\'t intrusion from cradle to grave.  Obama is a charlatan fraud and I hope he\'s eventually exposed for it.