Re: war protests Kosovo njc

[vince]

You searched a little more than 2 months and found threads in 2 of the 3.

I agree that the threads on Columbine and gun control were very emotional, flame wars, much more so than the ones on Kosovo, but I totally disagree that the Kosovo threads were any less intense than what is being said now. And I do not believe that the discussion of Kosovo was "few and far between" because it did range on for a period of time and not confined to threads where it was in the title.
What also was posted? From those who disliked Clinton, that Clinton was doing what he did, acting in the exact moment that the Moslems of Kosovo were being slaughtered, because it was a "wag the dog" move to distract from Monica Lewinsky. Those same charges were made when Clinton went after bin Laden with limited (and unsuccessful) use of force.
That is as opposed now to Bush, who has only the purest of motives and is not trying to hide his total failure to "get bin laden dead or alive." Yeah sure. In fact, if he were not threatening war against bin laden, the focus might be on exactly what has Bush accomplished in his "war on terrorism."
Bush of course is in no way wagging the dog to hide the dreadful state of the American economy, specifically the budget deficits which were large surpluses when he came into office. On today's NPR it was reported that Bush is estimating the current one year deficit at $300 billion, not including the costs of any war (which I think is a huge "not including...') And at the same time Bush is proposed what is it $634? $654? billion in tax cuts for the wealthiest 255,000 Americans (himself included) the Republican Senators at Bush's request pushed through a spending bill that cuts $5 billion from homeland security because it "can't be afforded." And was it just last November that Bush was on the stump attacking people like now defeated Senator Cleland of Georgia - who lost his legs in Vietnam, unlike Bush who only forget to report to the national guard - was soft on homeland security because Cleland wanted the usual NLRB protections in place for the department of homeland security. In other words, Bush is a lying hypocrite whose position on homeland security is totally transient and only for political advantage, who opposes $5 billion in homeland security spending because of his $634 billion "Leave No Millionaire Behind" tax cut proposals. At Bush's request, every one of the 51 Republican senators voted against restoring the GOP cut of $5 billion from homeland security. And the tax cut moves forward...
If there were a hell, and I do not believe that there is one, what Bush and the GOP Senate campaign under Frist did to Senator Cleland would merit a special place in it for what they did to Max Cleland in the last campaign. The savagery of that campaign to oust a man who lost is legs in Vietnam by accusing him of being soft on homeland security, in support of yet another Republican who did not serve in Nam or the military because of his trick knee, shows that decency, and building a political consensus across party lines, is totally unimportant to this administration, only raw political muscle is.

But then this administration campaigned on being against saving Kosovo and against nation building and on so many things it now proposes to do. The claim that circumstances are different now after September 11th does not wash because that only shows the narrowness of this administration to conceive of anything that is not in Karl Rove's political strategy book, which is really frightening as this administration continues to refuse to consider what the after effects of a war on Iraq might be, and overlooks that in Kosovo there were people who were at that moment victims of current, continuing genocide, whereas in Iraq that situation has been in containment for many years.

Bush and Karl Rove have proven themselves to be the grand masters of wag the dog. And the utter political calculations behind everything they do makes the charges that Clinton was poll driven seem like a reminder of a totally different and innocent era, even though it was not.



Vince