“Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is.”
-Governor (and now President) George W. Bush (R-TX), 1999.
“This has been an unmitigated disaster & Ask the Chinese embassy. Ask all the people in Belgrade that we’ve killed. Ask the refugees that we’ve killed. Ask the people in nursing homes. Ask the people in hospitals.”
-Representative Joe Scarborough (R-FL), 1999.
“President Clinton is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation’s armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy.”
-Senator Rick Santorum, 1999.
Now is the winter of our discontent…. The 9-11-2001 hijackers lived amongst us for years. And they never “went native.” Never appreciated that Americans marry, raise children, help their neighbors, welcome visitors… That we’re thankful for having a good job, clean water, available food… That we’re thankful for abundant power that drives our cars and appliances
They must have been some cold-hearted killers.
So, instead of influencing them to be more like us. They shocked-and-awed us to make us more like them.
In the kid world, you’re either a bully, a toady, or one of the hapless rabble of victims. In the grown-up world…, it’s the same.
Hey, don’t forget DeLay!
http://blog.dccc.org/mt/archives/003011.html
“Bombing a sovereign nation for ill-defined reasons with vague objectives undermines the American stature in the world. The international respect and trust for America has diminished every time we casually let the bombs fly. We must stop giving the appearance that our foreign policy is formulated by the Unabomber.”
– Floor Statement on Resolution on Peacekeeping Operations in Kosovo, 3/11/99
Vincent – generalize much?
Congrats! You’ve proved that the Democrats are currently acting just as petty and short-sighted as Republicans used to!
Wait. That’s not what you were trying to prove with this little “gotcha!” game, was it?
Well, good try anyways, champ.
Who’s generalizing, Zappa? Was Oliver’s point not to highlight the dramatic shift in Republican rhetoric between the war in Yugoslavia to the present?
And is the tenor of Democratic “criticism” of the war not almost a mirror image of all three of the above cited quotes? Have “no planning, no exit-strategy, total disaster” not been trotted out constantly? Is there not debate in Congress about demanding a “timetable” to get us out of what Ted Kennedy (and others) has repeatedly called “a quagmire”?
Where’s the generalization? All I see is role-reversal.
But, but, but….
9-11 changed everything!!
All you see is role-reversal?
Then maybe you can tell us who the Democrates were who said “the words of George Bush and Rick Santorum put the lives of our troops at risk,” or which one said “You don’t have to look any farther than Joe Scarborough’s words to see what the real motives of conservatives are.”
Which of the Dems said those things, Vincent?
Iraq dead: 1,700
Yugoslavia dead: 0
W, Scarborough And Santorum
Oliver Willis has a post with some great memories from the Clinton years.
The only difference between Kosovo and Iraq is that the Republicans were wrong on both, and the Democrats were right on both.
Clinton had a plan for Kosovo which maximized effect and minimized US casualties. Bush has neither.