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Originally Posted by pbradley
How is not taking the nuclear option off the table to suggest that he would be comfortable to use it? And how can you accuse him of dogmatic commitment without any evidence that he has done anything more than appeal to s skeptical Jewish voting demographic? Are you not picking and choosing for Obama what his first term will consist of before its time?
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Nobody in power of a nation armed with nuclear weapons can ever take such a threat 'off the table'. to do so would be to render having them entirely pointless. However in a statement (discussed later in this post) Obama went quite a bit further than to merely suggest that they were in his possession and available for deployment, in principle.
I suppose i am guilty of trying to anticipate how his first term might progress. but I'm only doing this based on my reading of decisions he's made so far. I don't see anything wrong with this. surely, anyone who voted for him did so because they had some kind of an idea how he'd act in certain situations before those situations had actually occured.
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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
well, see, in america, unlike in england, the working class doesn't like to call themselves "working class", they call themselves "middle class", and if you call them otherwise you're pidgeonholed as an elitist. and in fact this working class achieved middle-class living standards at some point in history-- living standards which have sharply eroded in past decades. so this is a semantic issue.
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One of the most interesting things to have come out of this election for me are the very cultural distinctions you mention between Europe and the US. Certainly within Britain, and I'd assume much of the rest of Europe, the term 'working class' is treated very much as a badge of honour. Even those who fall firmly within the 'middle class' bracket tend to look desperately for some kind of way in which they can describe themselves as 'working class'. To describe oneself as a socialist however is now less popular than it was, although even in
that case i believe Europe is far more sympathetic to its tenets than is the case in the US. And so while I'm reluctant to say that Obama's refusal to use the word is a purely sematic one, I do acknowledge the potential cost to his campaign were he to start talking freely about the 'working class'. (And no, 'Joe the Plumber' wouldn't be described, in Britain at least, as being a part of the 'middle class'.)
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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
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LOL. OK, so he said it, then he diodn't, then he
did say it but he didn't mean it quite the way people took it. To be honest, I think too much is made of politicians on-the-hoof comments. (And that even goes for Palin's gaffe while waiting in line to order a cheesesteak.)
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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
obama has a clear understanding that the real front on this fucking "war on terror" (i hope it doesnt end up like the war on drugs, war on poverty, war on etc) is in the afghanistan/pakistan border. he stood out from early on calling for teh withdrawal of iraq to finish things in these other two taliban-infested countries.
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Personally I think that so long as the so-called 'war on terror' continues to turn a blind eye to Israel, it'll never really get to grips with the core grievance of the muslim world. Unfortunately this has reached such a bloody stand-off that I now believe that Israel probably
does require Western protection. However i also believe that this help has to be provided on the condition that Israel plays its part too. Equally, I think that the US's overt support of Israel (even when in the eyes of the rest of the world it is clearly overstepping its legal remit) offers a veil of credibility to muslim extremism that would be far more likely to dissolve were the US to be a little more even handed.
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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
please note, i'm not too excited about hillary's pick for state, but i can see the rationale for getting here there. see for example: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the...wering_th.html (you might need login, sorry, but try anyway). still i have my reservations, like i had when obama asked for lieberman no to be publicly impaled. |
I managed to read that article and i have to agree with a part of its rationale for Obama picking Hillary as one designed to keep both her and Bill under some kind of control. I actually think that this is one of the most intriguing aspects of Obama's upcoming presidency: his ability to neutralise a threat from the Clintons. I certainly foresee Hillary distancing herself from the Obama's administration should things begin to go poorly for the new president but have to admit she's provides far less of a threat while she's a part of his team.
For the record, I should say that were I an American, I would've wholeheartedly voted for Obama, and still would, even given my reservations about those he's appointed to his cabinet. He strikes me as an utterly capable man and I
can see the logic behind his caution. I only hope that his fear of rocking the boat doesn't end up undermining his ability to address the crucial decisions he's going to be faced with in the very near future. If there's one thing that this economic turn and escalation of events within the Muslim world is sure to prove, it's that the necessary progress will not be something that suits every interest.