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Hey, that isn't me talking, Maurice Lévy President of one of the world's biggest advertising agencies Publicis, whose company owns Saatchi and Saatchi and has offices in 100 countries across six continents. He is not a neocon.One of the great things about 2005, is that slowly Europe is coming around to see the nightmare of their own creation. Especially after the London bombings and events before, more and more is coming out of Europe saying in effect, "What in the hell were we thinking? What have we done?" Behold the below from The Telegraph and The Sunday Times.France had failed to get the 2012 Olympics because the world now saw it as a nation of perdants - "losers".
For good measure, he described the 35-hour week as "absurd" and the wails of complaint that followed Paris's loss of the Games to London as "pathetic".
"What I wrote was hard, but true. France is not in a crisis, it's worse than that. A crisis is usually sudden and short, while we are in an endemic situation," he said. "I've just had enough and wanted to say what I felt."
In the article, Mr Lévy said the French had only themselves to blame for losing the Olympics, and that the country needed a wake-up call. "We have narrowed and stunted ourselves and we paint ourselves as losers, and no one wants to be among the losers. It's time we opened our eyes wide, took an icy shower and looked reality in the face: we are in decline, going down a slippery slope.
"The Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry has reminded us of our [public] debt and the fact that we are living beyond our means. We knew the figures, yet no government for the last 20 years has wanted to draw a conclusion from them. The figures that attest to our decline are known to all."
He said that unemployment, at more than 10 per cent, was a "cancer that gnawed at our society", complaining that companies had lost their competitiveness and that job creation had broken down.
And he hits the core to the problem."In the global economy we give the impression of being a Gaulois village, but unlike those in Astérix, it doesn't make us laugh and it will raise even less of a smile among our children and grandchildren in 20 years' time," he said.
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"Later, when it was necessary, alas, to make redundancies (fire people during economic slowdown), the compensation was set at 90 per cent, therefore allowing those made redundant to earn yet more without working. Why in that case, make any effort to find a job? In doing this, trying to avoid any difficulties for them, we have turned the French into children.
"The final straw has to be the absurd decision to introduce the 35-hour working week when we were told repeatedly that we could work less and earn more. How on earth in this context can we expect the same French people to accept necessary reforms?"
Senator Kerry, call your office.Now let's shift our flag across the Calais to Londinistan.They (Muslim terrorists) despise us for our decadence, and I feel more and more forced to accept the painful truth that they have a point. I don’t want to exaggerate; there are many things about Britain that are still great. People have shown courage and compassion in response to the bombings, and a restraint that is truly heroic. And the police have discovered and arrested the failed suicide bombers with an efficiency that is anything but decadent.
All the same, it can hardly be denied that with all our celebrated freedom, and all our wealth, we have somehow created a society that is characterised by growing disorder, uncertainty and loss. For a long time now Britain — or rather many of its institutions and traditions — has been suffering from a loss of nerve and a loss of will which amounts to a national moral funk.
I can't find the reference, but I remember reading where Pope Benedict XVI stated that Europe has lost interest in its own culture.And there is a connection between all that and the miserable failure of Britain’s schools; illiteracy here is beyond belief, disruptive behaviour is normal, exams and degrees have been debased and ministers have just had to concede that social mobility — once the pride of British society — has declined in the past 30 years and has actually fallen since Labour came to power. The education secretary has come up with the contemptible sort of gimmick that passes for a political initiative these days; she has promised (at a cost of £27m) to give every baby a book bag, containing volumes like The Very Hungry Caterpillar, to encourage parents to read with their children.
What’s gone wrong in education is a template for what’s gone wrong in other institutions. Hospitals, for instance, are badly run, filthy and in financial trouble, despite all the reforms and all the cash that have been directed at them. Last week, for instance, it emerged that though the NHS desperately needs more doctors, hundreds of junior doctors will find themselves without an NHS job when their contracts end this week; there are not enough jobs for them. The British Medical Association blames this astonishing situation on poor NHS planning.
Oh, and they are both gov'munt socialist projects. Senator Clinton, call your office.There’s a thread running though all this and what has been happening to the army. Whatever the rights and wrongs of human rights legislation it is quite clearly horribly wrong to demoralise officers and other ranks with threats of legal action (other than their own courts martial) at a time when they are facing extreme danger in extreme heat in the service of their country. It is not just wrong. It is decadent.
For if we lack the will to defend ourselves, or rather to defend those who are there to defend us, we are simply rolling over and showing to the world’s scavengers and beasts of prey the soft underbelly of decadence.
...and then he nails one of my favorite targets, Baby Boomers and their steaming gift to the world.It takes a long time to react fully to a disaster. After the first shock comes a kind of disbelief. So it has been with the two terrorist attacks in London. It is only slowly that people have begun to recover and come to terms with their feelings and it is only slowly that they begin to reflect on the wider implications. Our perspective and our focus need to be sharpened by time.
One of the things that strikes me more, not less, forcibly as time has passed is the contempt that Muslim extremists feel for us. They despise us for our decadence, and I feel more and more forced to accept the painful truth that they have a point. I don’t want to exaggerate; there are many things about Britain that are still great. People have shown courage and compassion in response to the bombings, and a restraint that is truly heroic. And the police have discovered and arrested the failed suicide bombers with an efficiency that is anything but decadent.
All the same, it can hardly be denied that with all our celebrated freedom, and all our wealth, we have somehow created a society that is characterised by growing disorder, uncertainty and loss. For a long time now Britain — or rather many of its institutions and traditions — has been suffering from a loss of nerve and a loss of will which amounts to a national moral funk.
The results are everywhere, in each day’s news. There is a connection between working-class lager louts looking for a fight and rich kids vomiting and copulating drunkenly in public, both here and on holiday abroad. Standards in public life have fallen very low, whether it’s the prime minister’s wife or a slaggy Hooray Henrietta on a Cornish beach or simply Big Brother.
And there is a connection between all that and the miserable failure of Britain’s schools; illiteracy here is beyond belief, disruptive behaviour is normal, exams and degrees have been debased and ministers have just had to concede that social mobility — once the pride of British society — has declined in the past 30 years and has actually fallen since Labour came to power. The education secretary has come up with the contemptible sort of gimmick that passes for a political initiative these days; she has promised (at a cost of £27m) to give every baby a book bag, containing volumes like The Very Hungry Caterpillar, to encourage parents to read with their children.
What’s gone wrong in education is a template for what’s gone wrong in other institutions. Hospitals, for instance, are badly run, filthy and in financial trouble, despite all the reforms and all the cash that have been directed at them. Last week, for instance, it emerged that though the NHS desperately needs more doctors, hundreds of junior doctors will find themselves without an NHS job when their contracts end this week; there are not enough jobs for them. The British Medical Association blames this astonishing situation on poor NHS planning.
The immigration system is characterised by incompetence that is the same in kind but perhaps even more astonishing in degree; the truth has finally emerged after years of government and evasion. And there can be very little doubt that the failures of the immigration system have created serious and unnecessary social problems here, including a comfortable environment for terrorists.
There’s a thread running though all this and what has been happening to the army. Whatever the rights and wrongs of human rights legislation it is quite clearly horribly wrong to demoralise officers and other ranks with threats of legal action (other than their own courts martial) at a time when they are facing extreme danger in extreme heat in the service of their country. It is not just wrong. It is decadent.
For if we lack the will to defend ourselves, or rather to defend those who are there to defend us, we are simply rolling over and showing to the world’s scavengers and beasts of prey the soft underbelly of decadence.
It has been decadent to let extremist imams preach hatred and violence on the pavements here. These people could perfectly well have been sent to prison under existing legislation concerning incitements to violence or to racial hatred. But somehow the authorities lacked the will or the conviction to do it.
What connects all these things is an unwillingness, which has developed since the Sixties, to stand up for things that matter. I think it began with an unwillingness to reproach our own children. Some of my parents’ generation were very lax with their children; people began to speak of the permissive society. And since then parents (including me) have seemed ever less able, or willing, to control and discipline their children. The very word discipline sounds almost prehistoric and possibly abusive.
Yet without proper discipline from parents, children can never develop self-discipline. And it is on self-discipline and self-restraint that a civilised society rests. With a loss of self-discipline goes a loss of standards of behaviour, a loss of efficiency and a loss of a sense of what matters. There is a very painful tension between instinct and society; that is the tragic discontent of civilisation, repression its painful price. The right balance is hard to find, and harder to maintain. But we can see today in Britain and in the West generally what happens when that balance fails.
I don’t suggest that this loss of conviction affects everyone. Yet it has to be said that almost nobody has really done much to resist what has been done to our institutions and our manners. There has been a long march through the institutions of a nameless and shapeless ideology, misleadingly called political correctness. It is far more important and powerful than that name suggests and it is largely responsible for the long decay of the institutions and has contributed a lot, indirectly, to the decadence I'm talking about.
Multiculturalism, for instance, has been deeply demoralising to all kinds of people in all kinds of ways, undermining their values, undermining a sense of common purpose, above all undermining the confidence of the host country. Even leading multiculturalists now, belatedly, agree on that.
But there is, as always; hope.Despite all this, I do, now for the first time, feel a faint glimmer of optimism. One of the responses to the bombings might be a new awareness of what matters most, and how best to defend it. If that means a new sense of purpose and a new sense of conviction, then perhaps some good will have come out of this evil.
The question is if it will hold. We had a coming together after the 9/11 attacks until some decided to attack the war for political gain. They lost, but the scars remain. We will see. The debate is good. The war is real. The costs are great. It is critical to remember that the right and just do not always win in war.
This should be a no-brainer, but one would think that the United States and the largest democratic country, India, would be natural allies. Well, as a result of a Cold War hangover and our flirting with Pakistan over the years, it just has not been so.
Long overdue and a slow boil, we are moving closer and closer with India.
Peter Brooks from The Heritage Foundation has a good take on the warming realtions. The Bush administration's most unheralded foreign policy success -- besides Libya's WMD disarmament and freeing Lebanon from Syria's iron grip -- is the dramatic upswing in U.S.-Indian relations.
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Strong relations with (New) Delhi make sense for many reasons, including energy security and counterterrorism, but, perhaps, for no more important purpose today than balancing China's strategic rise in Asia.
China's emergence onto the world stage as a major regional -- and global -- power will define this century's international political landscape. Fortunately, India and the U.S. are natural, even well-suited, allies in managing and tempering China's ascendance.
BINGO. A billion plus voters that don't trust China either. Very nice. But here is the kicker. After decades of suffering under the ill-educated followers of Fabian Socialism, India is finding its capitalist footings. India, though still a developing country, has the world's fastest-growing economy (behind China) and the world's 12th-largest, posting an impressive 7 percent growth rate since implementing reforms in the early 1990s.
The U.S. is India's largest trading partner, with bilateral trade topping $18 billion per year. America is also the largest investor in India's economy, and over 40 percent of U.S. temporary work visas go to Indians -- most for the IT sector.
On the security front, after China, India has the largest military in Asia with an armed force of 1.3 million -- not to mention a nuclear arsenal. Concerned about its security environment, Indian defense spending is up by 33 percent. ...some Indians are increasingly wary of Chinese regional intentions. (like) China's security relationship with India's long-standing rival and nuclear neighbor, Pakistan.
China provided significant assistance to Pakistan's conventional, ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs over the years.
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India is also troubled by China's financing of a major port facility at Gwader in western Pakistan. Delhi fears that the Chinese navy will use the strategically located port (near the Persian Gulf) for future Indian Ocean operations.
Equally disturbing is China's robust military buildup -- ... China now has the world's third-largest defense budget (after the U.S. and Russia) at $90 billion per year. ... Beijing has the world's fastest-growing peacetime defense budget. In fact, Beijing recently announced a 13 percent addition to its defense budget, compounding more than a decade of double-digit increases. ... Indian strategists (have) taken careful notice of reports about Beijing building military airfields in southwestern China near India and its presence in nearby Burma -- both far from the Taiwan Strait.
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That likelihood makes it critical that both Delhi and Washington continue to develop an effective partnership for not only addressing regional/global challenges, but for building a strategy for peacefully balancing China's inevitable rise in the international system.
As a bonus on this building trend, for the first time PACOM will have an Indian Navy liason officer on staff. Excellent.
There is another thing that goes unmentioned here. As one who went to a Engineering and Science focused University, I cracked the code early on this; have you seen MTV India? 'Nuff said on that! That is all the reason to "cozy up to India" that a Sailor needs!
Hat tip Dawn's Early Light via Chester.
I have been getting quite a kick out of watching one of my pet peeves (I know, I have a lot of them) in full bloom this weekend. The flood story from Mumbai...or is it Bombay?The PC Police are all a titter in the last half decade changing names and pronunciations all over the globe. Why change? Let the Indians (dot not feather) name their cities whatever they want, that doesn't mean the English speakers have to. If they want to call it Mumbai, great, we can still call it Bombay. On one radio report I heard them use both Mumbai and Bombay in the same sentence. I think ABC has confused themselves.We still call Germany, Germany. The Spanish call it Alemania, the French L'Allemagne. The Germans call it Deutschland, but I don't see the MSM or anyone in the English speaking world, "Reporting live from the capital of Deutchland..."This can go on forever. Livorno=Leghorn. Munchen=Munich. Peking=Bejing=Peiping...ad naseum.Another manifestation of this is best seen, or really heard, at NPR. If there is a Spanish language city or name, they pronounce it like a Spanish speaker does. You never see Hong Kong pronounced like a Chinese would. You never hear of the "Munchen Conference" (in Bayern not Bavaria) or the "Treaty of Roma."All this is a unintended manifestation of one of the not-well-hidden core beliefs of the Left; a hypocritical paternalism toward non-Western or non-First World cultures. "Europeans and Americans can handle a non-native pronouncing of their names, the Great Unwashed Primitives however must be treated with care and love. They might riot and eat us, you know."This doesn't make me mad anymore, just makes me laugh. The best example was one late midwatch when we were listening to airline traffic on HF oceanic frequencies. A pilot with a Brit accent was updating his clearance with "Bombay," and the growing emphatic Indian kept replying as "Mumbai." I would love to by that pilot a beer.
Interesting piece in the Washington Post today from Princeton professor of Economics and Public affairs, Uwe Reinhardt.
First thing that came to mind after reading it was, "Dad, why is your isolated, insulated, Ivory Tower ideology more important than understanding and supporting your son's desire to preserve the freedom you enjoy?"
Perhaps he is bitter that he does not see more of his peer's children or his students taking up the call to serve. Perhaps he is bothered that in his peer group no one seems to see the personal side of war as he does. Perhaps he is bothered that so few of those in the university show any real support for the families that have people serving. I know I am....but I am getting ahead of myself.
His piece is titled Who's Paying for Our Patriotism?. Let's Fisk, nicely, but let's Fisk nonetheless.At most, 500,000 American troops are at risk of being deployed to these war theaters at some time. Assume that for each of them some 20 members of the wider family sweat with fear when they hear that a helicopter crashed in Afghanistan or that X number of soldiers or Marines were killed or seriously wounded in Iraq. It implies that no more than 10 million Americans have any real emotional connection to these wars.
I don't buy the math. I think he is making the logic error of applying the specific to the general; though to be fair in Princeton his data point is well beyond two standard deviations from the mean. Of my neighbors in my cul-de-sac, only 1 of 5 have any connection to the military. All of them, however, worry more about my well being and than my family does while I am deployed. Sure, my family has more to lose, but no more than the family of a policeman, or a commercial fisherman. They know that. We accept it. Only immediate family with "real emotional connection?" Not in this town. Not with these people. My college friends who are all civilian and my parents in another state all have about the same experience. Between active duty, reserves and National Guard, about one in every 6 families in our circle has someone serving. We don't come from a military background either, and most are not, well, ahem, working class either. Just a Red State. Southern Red State. If you assume that friends care about each other's families, then I think the war touches about everyone we know.Again, his comments perhaps relate more to his community in NJ I would assume. He needs to look inward and challenge his peer group, because his numbers do not match with the "Red America" I have lived in most of my life. Even in very blue Hawaii and New England there was a solid community connection.The administration and Congress have gone to extraordinary lengths to insulate voters from the money cost of the wars -- to the point even of excluding outlays for them from the regular budget process. Furthermore, they have financed the wars not with taxes but by borrowing abroad.
Fair point, but hasn't this been true for all our wars? Isn't there the need to keep a strong economy at the same time? He should talk to his non-Keynesian buds in the Econ Deptartment (one hopes there are a few); what would have happened to the economy in early 2002 if it had been saddled with huge tax increases. Major points will be deducted if Herr Professor uses static analysis.The strategic shielding of most voters from any emotional or financial sacrifice for these wars cannot but trigger the analogue of what is called "moral hazard" in the context of health insurance, a field in which I've done a lot of scholarly work. There, moral hazard refers to the tendency of well-insured patients to use health care with complete indifference to the cost they visit on others. It has prompted President Bush to advocate health insurance with very high deductibles. But if all but a handful of Americans are completely insulated against the emotional -- and financial -- cost of war, is it not natural to suspect moral hazard will be at work in that context as well?
A policymaking elite whose families and purses are shielded from the sacrifices war entails may rush into it hastily and ill prepared, as surely was the case of the Iraq war
Yes, you are a health care expert. Polite golf claps all around. This is an interesting concept, but for this case you are really looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Though they may not agree with their politics and/or all their policies, every one of MY PEERS that work with the civilian leadership in the DoD and the White House to a man (and woman) have nothing but the highest opinion for the MUTUAL respect shown toward those in uniform. Many members of the Cabinet and appointed Administration officials (former Attny General Ashcroft for one) have family members on Active Duty. The last time we felt like we were looked down on and used like cattle was during the previous Administration where we were made to serve food like servants, dismissed as primitives, and seen as a necessary evil. Not this bunch though. We may not agree with all their policies and programs, but no one feels that they are indifferent to the sacrifices being made. Again, Professor Reinhardt needs to look at his peer group, because his comments are out of phase with the majority of the rest of the country I live in. No, the insulated elite are the Leftist in our universities who refuse ROTC and military recruiters from even coming to campus and dishonor those who do decide to serve from their students and family members.Moral hazard can explain why, in wartime, the TV anchors on the morning and evening shows barely make time to report on the wars, lest the reports displace the silly banter with which they seek to humor their viewers. Do they ever wonder how military families with loved ones in the fray might feel after hearing ever so briefly of mayhem in Iraq or Afghanistan?
He is seeing it from the wrong end again. What we want to see is some more of what is going right in Iraq and Afghanistan in the news. Not the negative spin and focus on the "mayhem" that is so totally out of phase with what we see with our own eyes.Moral hazard also can explain why the general public is so noticeably indifferent to the plight of our troops and their families.
Again, maybe with his peer group in Princeton. Not in SE Virginia. Not in NE Florida. Not in SW California, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas.We offer a pittance in disability pay to seriously wounded soldiers who have not served the full 20 years that entitles them to a regular pension. And our legislative representatives make a disgraceful spectacle of themselves bickering over a mere $1 billion or so in added health care spending by the Department of Veterans Affairs -- in a nation with a $13 trillion economy!
If he thinks support is all about $$$$ then he is truly lost. Focus on $$$$ and gov'munt largess is missing the point. The support of the people and the nation's institutions are much more important and is what we are talking about. Look at the services we have now and look at what was waiting for the WWII or Civil War veteran. Compare our "pittance" to theirs. Did their country not value their service? Did they have more or less real support? Were they concerned about the $$$ they would receive, or the way neighbors, friends, and children's school mates treated their kids while they were gone?Last year kind-hearted folks in New Jersey collected $12,000 at a pancake feed to help stock pantries for financially hard-pressed families of the National Guard. Food pantries for American military families? The state of Illinois now allows taxpayers to donate their tax refunds to such families. For the entire year 2004, slightly more than $400,000 was collected in this way, or 3 cents per capita. It is the equivalent of about 100,000 cups of Starbucks coffee. With a similar program Rhode Island collected about 1 cent per capita. Is this what we mean by "supporting our troops"?
YES!!! that is exactly what we are talking about. During Desert Storm the picture my then-fiancé sent me of her and some fellow law students at a "Support the Troops" rally to counter the anti-war types meant more to me than anything else. The "Any Soldier" packages were some of the best morale boosters we ever received. That IS support. We are not focused on how much milk we can suck out of the gov'munt teat. The implication otherwise is a slap in the face.
Here is what I hinted at earlier that really hit me in the chest. It is bad enough when the usual subjects in sheltered academia spit on you in their arrogant cluelessness, but it is mitigated by the fact that they are strangers that don't know you from Adam's off ox. We are a free country. Let them rant. But what do you do when it is someone you love?When our son, then a recent Princeton graduate, decided to join the Marine Corps in 2001, I advised him thus: "Do what you must, but be advised that, flourishing rhetoric notwithstanding, this nation will never truly honor your service, and it will condemn you to the bottom of the economic scrap heap should you ever get seriously wounded." The intervening years have not changed my views; they have reaffirmed them.
Wow. I almost didn't Fisk this out of respect for that Marine (your son Professor R.), but if you do a quick Google search Professor Reinhardt has for some time been using his son's service as a shield to attack everyone in the Administration and/or pro war. In the MilBlog world, IMAO, this makes you fair game and the Marine's Dad needs to be taken to task. He may be able to get away with that in Princeton and on the letters to the editor section of the NYT, but around the MilBlog world it's, "That is great about your son's service. He's in good company, take a number. But let's talk about you."
It sounds that like most professors, he is used to speaking in a echo chamber. I will apologize ahead of time for speaking up in class, but he is the one that put this in a national paper.
Great job Dad, way to support your son. You owe it to him to strip away your ossified politics and meet the family and friends of his fellow Marines. Get out of Princeton. Spend some time in Coastal Carolina. Go to SW California around 29 Palms. Go to Yuma, AZ. Have dinner with some of these families. Let go of your pride and self-righteousness. Your words just scream that you have spent too much time in the rarified air of academia. Understand that, as all mortals do, that you may not have 100% of the picture or the truth. Heck, I don't.
Take a couple of weeks off. Take the axe off the grindstone. Stop being a Professor and just be a Dad. If he is not deployed, go see your son. Give him a hug and manly handshake. Meet his friends and listen. Open your mind. It is a great, complicated world when you have a family member who serves. Go explore.
If he is deployed, ask him if there is anything you can do to help out the families of his enlisted Marines who have young kids. What has he heard? Is the family of one of his men having trouble with their air conditioning? Find out who they are, give them a call, and buy them a new unit. You could even stay anon. You've got the spare cash. Use some of the tax cut I am sure you feel guilty about receiving.
Call your local Navy and Marine Corps Relief society and ask how you can help. That is how you support the troops. Writing something for the WaPo asking for more taxes is macro politics. Use that for something else. The best thing you could do for your son is to let one of his Marines tell him, "Sir, I just found out that someone dropped off a new window unit to replace the the bad window unit in the kid's room I was telling you about. That was totally unexpected. The person that bought it wanted to stay anon, but I would love to tell them how much this means to us. The wife is so relieved, maybe she will get off my back for a week or so." Or...."Lieutenant (though Capt. by now I assume) Reinhardt, look what your Dad sent us....."
It's that easy, and doesn't cost the taxpayers a red cent.
Errata: In the first post I identified Professor Reinhardt as female. My bust, I have made the changes ro reflect the father vs mother in the above text. I need to review my German names better. No insult or hidden slight intended. My appologies for the mistake. Though I play hardball some, I have no doubt that Professor Reinhardt is a good and honorable man in his own right. I just happen to disagree with his ideas and perspecitve; and if one of my parents took his position, it would eat away at my heart.
UPDATE: I had a pleasant exchange of emails with Professor Reinhardt. You can say what you want about his ideas, but he is a honest fan of the 1st Amendnent. Good people can disagree.
I'm not even going to go into the context of the story because it is really disconnected to the image that went with it....kind of.
The MSM is not stupid, I assume. They know what the American flag represents. They know the meaning of the 50 stars. They know what radical Islamists want to do to the United States......and yet they do not know what this flag means?
I don't buy it. If they did not do this as a Dhimmi-like desire to be dominated by Islamofascists, then they are too uneducated to work for a major news organization. So, do we call them al-CBS and al-AP now?
This is how they honor their flag.
Oh, and what link did CBS offer at the end of their article? Why the German-American Bund.....I mean CAIR. What a shocker.
'Nuff said.
Hat tip Hyscience via Jawa and Clarity & Resolve.
If you ever needed evidence of a lasting insult from the Clinton administration to the military, it would be the heavy weight of naming one of our most important submarines after the "President that will not be named in this blog" (PTWNBNITB). Why bring up this seven year old subject? Harupmh."I think what's going on in Guantanamo Bay and other places is a disgrace to the U.S.A.," he told a news conference at the Baptist World Alliance's centenary conference in Birmingham, England. "I wouldn't say it's the cause of terrorism, but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts."
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"What has happened at Guantanamo Bay ... does not represent the will of the American people," PNTBNITB said Saturday. "I'm embarrassed about it, I think its wrong. I think it does give terrorists an unwarranted excuse to use the despicable means to hurt innocent people."
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"I thought then, and I think now, that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and unjust. And I think the premises on which it was launched were false," he said Saturday.
Thank you for your support. Overseas. During a war. In front of a camera. Narcissist. Clueless. Usefull idiot.Ok, he was a submarine qualified President, but honestly, what did he do for national security or the Navy to justify this? Might as well name the next tank after General McClellen.
There are many great submarine names we can recycle, and there are still some great WWII heros that deserve a sub named after them. Bubblehead has to have an idea or two.
Trader Rob put it well.For me this man is the perfect negative barometer. If he is on one side of an issue, you can bet the farm the other side is the place to be.
UPDATE: Well stated quasi-counterpoint from Bubblehead. We may see things slightly differently, but we are on the same sheet of music when it comes to naming warships. Talk about a burr under my saddle...give it a read.
Oh, one more thing. Now and then, the former submariner had to come out of the former President. Well, you know. I'll let you judge for yourself.
