Recently there has been some thoroughly unnecessary and frankly overwrought hand wringing trying to paint Sen. John Edwards as some sort of Bush-style war hawk. What brought this issue to light is that in discussing Iran at a national security conference, Edwards made the "mistake" of saying all options are on the table.
To me, this hints at a divide in liberalism between those who believe that we really shouldn’t ever use force and those like me who think that sometimes at some point you have to. What Edwards said is frankly a mainstream, non-deviant line consistent with traditional American foreign policy. In negotiations with other nations, especially hostile ones, no option is ever off the table (Edwards himself says in Ezra Klein’s interview with him “It would be foolish for any American president to ever take any option off the table.”). But saying that doesn’t mean you start warming up the nukes, as some folks have sought to take it. Instead it means that we go to the bargaining table with that thought in mind.
What has perverted this is the Bush administration’s "diplomacy" in which they made up their minds before they ever got to the table. No matter what Iraq did, we were going to invade them. It made a sham of diplomacy. When the Bush administration says all options are on the table, history shows us they’re lying.
There is no factual reason to believe this about Senator Edwards or any other Democrat, and for that matter any number of rational-minded Republicans (an endangered species, but they exist). Edwards is auditioning for the job of president and the president cannot start pulling things off the table, because then every little group is going to want him to take more and more out of the equation. First it’s nukes, then its smart bombs, then its automatic weapons, pretty soon we have no strength to back up our negotiations. It’s just lunacy and it reinforces my belief that the next Democratic president will have a much of a hard time dealing with his or her left flank desiring their pound of flesh as the right flank trying to oust them from power.
MORE: American Prospect Online – Edwards On Iran.
“those who believe that we really shouldn’t ever use force”????
You really have to get the hell away from the Beltway.
…but I guess we should be thankful that Edwards isn’t in the Senate any more, to cast a reluctant vote to give W the right to go into Iran.
Boy this election is going to be fun!
Watching you try to twist THE EXACT SAME WORDS into completely different “meanings” is really entertaining.
Yup, this is the year the old “google cache” is going to come in handy
If only Mr. Edwards were enough “on message” to have said,”…it would be foolish for any American president to ever take any option off the table. But at the same time, not all of those options are rational and appropriate to the situation at hand. The option to invade Iraq was an historic strategic blunder, and this President was wrong to exercise it.”
FB
Of course when Tel Aviv is a smoking, radioactive hole, we will likely judge that ignoring years of chest thumping and weapons research by the iranians probably shouldn’t have been ignored….
It will be fun to see how the american leftists spin THAT
Of course when Tel Aviv is a smoking, radioactive hole, we will likely judge that ignoring years of chest thumping and weapons research by the iranians probably shouldn’t have been ignored….
It will be fun to see how the american leftists spin THAT
We won’t have to spin it, Pedro, because it ain’t gonna happen.
That’s your typical conservative right there: subsisting on a diet of Fox News and “24,” and it’s turning you people into quivering, pants-pissing basket cases who see terrorists under every bed and the whole world is out to get us so we need to get them first. (Of course, the “we” who go out and do the actual fighting are someone else’s kids.)
It’s funny, in a pathetic sort of way, but it’s also tragic that this mindset is currently running the show and driving this country over a cliff.
Yes, just like that Iraqi-generated mushroom cloud was coming any minute, according to you guys on the right.
Pedo will it be, When Tehran is a smoking hole, we will likely judge that ignoring years of chest thumping and weapons buildup by Americans shouldn’t have been ignored… by the Iranians?
Splutter a bit now.
“It ain’t going to happen”
Chamberlain when asked about the possibility of Nazi Germany taking over the european contintnent.
“It ain’t going to happen”
Nixon when asked about the instability in southeast asia after the americans left
“It ain’t going to happen”
Bill Clinton after being asked about the possibility of Osam Bin Laden planning an attack on the US after not taking advantage of an opportunity to capture him in the sudan
Yea pidgy, Iran=America. See THAT is why people are correct when they refer to the american democrat party as “america haters”…..
Except nobody with a brain believes that, and certainly not all those voters who made us the majority party.
You tell me, Pedo. Bush has drove the Iranians away from the table, branded them an enemy of America, and is now building up rhetoric and forces around Iran, in much the same way he did with Iraq. The concessions the US is looking for from Iran are the same concessions Iran offered three years ago that Bush refused. Do you think Iran looks at the US as an aggressor nation? Why would they give up their nuclear programs, their neighbor did and we invaded, North Korea didn’t and we don’t talk war about them. Bush has made nuclear weapons a prerequisite for real diplomacy. I guess that is why the left sees Bush and his supporters as dangerous lunatics who are hell bent on destroying America.
Incidently, you forget that Clinton evolved with the growing threat of international terrorism, it was when Bush came into office and turned the national security clock back to the cold war that bin Laden was able to pull off 9-11. It was Clinton and Bush’s terrorism czar that said Clinton’s vigilance may have stopped 9-11 and that Bush was disengaged and unable to. Oh, and on 9-11, it was the Bush administration that couldn’t scramble a fighter for an hour, and whose CIC was hiding behind school children instead of making decisions as the nation was under attack.
DEMOCRATIC PARTY FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY IT’S THE GOD DAMNED DEMOCRATIC PARTY AAAAAAAAUUUUGH
Edwards comments were careless saber ratttling designed to please the crowd he spoke to. Now can we have someone who will speak truthfully to the rest of us who are tired of lies and chest pounding and hearing the neocon lite crowd creat one bogeyman after another?I like Edwards until I heard his warmongering. From the communists to the cold war to Saddam Hussein to the Iranian president. We just always seem to need a bogeyman to prove our cojones. Can we just drop the bullshit and realize the empire is dying and we better start saving ourselves. Isreal has its own nukes and they know how to use them. How about we start taking care of the homefront. ?
sorry nimmer, I do it just to get a rise out of you….I’ll stop, it is starting to become too much like poking a stick a caged animal….
democratIC party….
See pidge, we are different than rogue regimes, that is why we have the nucs. We have kept major peace for decades. The world doesn’t actually TRUST the iranians with a nuc. When you put a regime like the iranians on the same page as the US? Well, clearly you don’t think much of the US.
We unfortunately will never know WHAT happened with regards to OBL and clinton. Sandy Burglar made off with the goods, and those ARE long gone. So, the leftists are free to invent a NEW history. good work guys, its like something out of “1984″…..just erase the source documents, and its like it never happened.
I see, so the US can do as it pleases as far as you are concerned? Other countries should just trust us to do what is right for the world. Right, which would account for the renewed weapon build ups in China, Russia, and some of the smaller rogue states like North Korea and Iran. Right.
Then you dip into blatant and nutty conspiracy theory. Good job. We may never know, right, we do KNOW that Bush came into office and degraded US anti-terrorism efforts to reprioritize on the cold war. Funny how it is YOU trying to rewrite history. You were probably hiding behind children on 9-11, just like the president. You were probably paralyzed with fear and unable to make decisions, just like GW. He was the conspicuously absent decider that day.
The US has been the policeman for the world for decades now. When there is a problem, people don’t go running to Iran to get bailed out. LIke I said, you don’t like the US, fine with me, THIS is a free country.
It isn’t a nutty conspiracy theory when someone destroys original national security documents just when there is an investigation into what those documents say. The guy stuffed them under a trailer and then shredded them, he has admitted that. I won’t beat you over the head with facts about that anymore, clearly you won’t listen.
When 9/11 happened I was forward deployed with the US Navy piddgy widdgy….readying the 6th Fleet to deploy to Afghanistan and kick some taliban ass, a little something call OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM, you might have read about while eating your cheerios one morning. Seeing as I was the person in Area of Operation with my speciality, I didn’t really get the opportunity to be paralyzed with fear, I had too much work to do. So don’t bother getting up leftist pidgy, someone else will do the heavy lifting, as usual.
So I guess Piddgy, as usual, you have the facts wrong. Seems like YOU were hiding behind ME eh?
The problem with Edward’s wording is that he has effectively adopted and advanced the Bush position by mirroring Bush’s exact words regarding Iran. Edwards himself addresses that very point in the linked article, clarifying his intentions, but I think many people will never read that and simply hear Bush’s words coming out of Edward’s mouth. It’s like the whole marketing scam behind the phrase “war on terror” (or “war on drugs,” for the older set). It’s the kind of phrasing that insidiously ratchets up the rhetoric while squelching reason. As reasonable as “all options are on the table” sounds, Bush has rubbed his taint all over it, making it nearly impossible to use the phrase without coming off like you support him.
And for the record, it’s “nuke.”
sorry to get you with that Bill I know it is “nuke”, you seem a reasonable guy…but it is sort of like saying “democrat party” and “nucular” it drives some these folks batty….
sorry to get you with that Bill I know it is “nuke”, you seem a reasonable guy…but it is sort of like saying “democrat party” and “nucular” it drives some these folks batty….
Well, that and your constant inane bleating about how the 21st century Middle East is exactly like 1930s Nazi Germany and how Bill Clinton was responsible for 9-11.
And speaking of “batty,” I owe you a hearty thanks for proving my original point about how all you right-wingers are a hopeless bunch of brainwashed bedwetters.
Funny, I don’t recall Iraq being that big of a problem, nor do I recall the world running to the US to protect them from a toothless Saddam Hussein.
So much for those fact based arguments you’ve been touting. There is no proof that Berger destroyed any original documents. The ones he removed were copies dealing with after-action reviews of the foiled millenium bomb plots. So yes, it is a nutty conspiracy theory.
So, you are claiming you weren’t hiding behind children with the president, well good for you.
Pedro:
“When 9/11 happened I was forward deployed with the US Navy piddgy widdgy….readying the 6th Fleet to deploy to Afghanistan…”
So you were already preparing to deploy on the morning of 9/11? If Operation Enduring Freedom was our response to the attacks, how could you have been preparing for it while the attacks were happening?
If you were forward deployed on September 11, 2001, that must mean that the invasion of Afghanistan was planned for, prepared for, and underway before the attacks of 9/11.
Seems odd we would begin responding militarily to an attack that hadn’t yet happened.
You are right Pedo, after rereading what I wrote, I do owe you an apology. Those should have been questions like “Were you hiding behind children like President Bush?” Instead of the personally accusational “you were probably hiding behind children like the president.” I am sorry.
thanks Pidge, and you see how easy and unoffensive it is for me to answer those questions?
ND the US military is always forward deployed. 9/11 occurred in the evening where I was, and our Marines were armed and on the fence in about 20 minutes.
But you were just being obtuse right?
Great Scott, if this is how the debate is going to go for the next two years, I’m bailing out now.
To say that an American president shouldn’t take any options off the table is just plain, old negotiating strategy. You know, walking softly with big sticks and all that.
Negotiating strategy is never pursued in a vaccuum. It happens within a context and is married to morality and political reality. To take a single phrase out of an interview and call it definitive of a man’s character is just loony.
The only option Bush ever takes off the table is effective diplomacy.
Oh, and post-invasion planning.
And that his wisdom and that of his administration could ever be the slightest bit flawed.
Pedro,
I am skeptical by nature and obtuse by necessity.
Is “on the fence” a military term? Does it mean waiting at the border?
Also, 20 minutes from when? from when the first plane hit? The second? From when Building 7 came down? Just curious.
On the fence: Armed and patrolling the fence line of our base
20 minutes from the pentagon hit….give or take 10 minutes….
Why that was a faster response than the president! Let’s see, aware of it, read kiddy book for a few minutes, go outside, hold photo op for 45 minutes, run to Nebraska.
piddge you ain’t that bright are you?
Name the last time midderpidge was banned from OW’s blog.
ahh yes, back to the old brownshirt methods of squelching dissent are we?
Ollie, say the word and I won’t post another word here, the’re your electrons, bought and paid for…
There isn’t any squelching dissent. You’re suggesting midderpidge of not being bright when you get banned from the blog because you imply someone is a child molester.
Let’s summarize Pedo’s posts:
1. “Watching you try to twist THE EXACT SAME WORDS into completely different “meanings” is really entertaining.” — Lack of reading comprehension leaps to mind.
2. “Of course when Tel Aviv is a smoking, radioactive hole, we will likely judge that ignoring years of chest thumping and weapons research by the iranians probably shouldn’t have been ignored….” — call to emotion. When logic and facts fail, better try the emotional hysterics.
3. “It ain’t gonna happen” with Nazi germany reference, Vietnam reference, and nutjob Clinton – Osama bin Laden conspiracy theory. Pedo demonstrates lack of historical understanding and his fervent extremism.
“THAT is why people are correct when they refer to the american democrat party as “america haters”– fails to understand my demonstrating how his type of emotional hysterics can be used against the US coupled with personal attack.
4. –Admits he’s trying to provoke arguments coupled with personal attack.
“we are different than rogue regimes, that is why we have the nucs. We have kept major peace for decades. The world doesn’t actually TRUST the iranians with a nuc”—Useless blathering, continued expounding on earlier point that he completely missed, while completely failing to address rebuttal points on his failed argument tangent.
and “We unfortunately will never know WHAT happened with regards to OBL and clinton. Sandy Burglar made off with the goods, and those ARE long gone. So, the leftists are free to invent a NEW history. good work guys” — in trying to defend his nutty conspiracy theory, he claims something as FACT that he earlier and in the same sentence admits is wild speculation. Pretty much confirming NUTJOB Conspiracy theory while trying to defend against that claim.
5. –Continues to miss point, fails to defend against rebuttal points again.
“It isn’t a nutty conspiracy theory when someone destroys original national security documents” — when I called this as BS, instead of providing proof of this claim he just rewords it and presents it again. You can say it a dozen times, it just doesn’t make it true.
Then he falls on to personal response to inappropriate comment I made.
6. Admits he is trying to provoke arguments again by using inflammatory language.
7 and 8. Responds to unrelevant tangent started by me.
9. Personal attack.
10. Unrelevant.
I may not be too bright, Pedo, but at least I don’t have to curse the darkness like you.
That’s kind of odd, because the way I remeber 9/11, we didn’t respond until, what, November?
It took them that long to convince Bush it wasn’t Iraq-time.
I just find it interesting that Pedro was on his way to “kick Afghani ass” 20 minutes after the Pentagon attack, when no one else in command knew who was responsible for the attacks at that time, or where an appropriate response was going to be.
Of course, we haven’t seen the intelligence…..
for quite some time.
Yeah, Duros. It’s almost like our military was on its way to Afghanistan before september 11th.
Hmmm…..