This idea is brilliant in its simplicity! Giuliani is right, I must vote for either Clinton or Obama. When Osama Bin Laden comes to the inaugural ball, we can grab him!"This is the world we live in. It's not this happy, romantic-like world where we'll negotiate with this one, or we'll negotiate with that one and there will be no preconditions, and we'll invite (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad to the White House, we'll invite Osama (bin Laden) to the White House," Giuliani said.
"Hillary and Obama are kind of debating whether to invite them to the inauguration or the inaugural ball," he added. Rudy Giuliani
I can't believe the Bush Administration never considered this. Certainly Osama couldn't resist an invitation to the Oscars. Or maybe the Indy 500 is more his style. The White House Easter Egg Roll?
Oh, wait, I forgot that they moved "finding Osama Bin Laden" down their To Do list. They plan to get to it right after item # 4567, "Give Michael Moore a foot massage."
10 comments:
There was a time when I was actually hoping Rudy would win the nomination because at least he wasn't as much of a right-wing nut as the others. I guess that time has passed.
Whoever wins, what is he going to do when he is no longer appealing to the lunatic fringe and actually has to get votes from sane people?
Yeah, you know the Daily Show is saving all these clips of Giuliani, just waiting to show them back to back with the new positions he'll take once we hit the general election.
Giuliani's problem is that, because he is perceived as a liberal, he has to go even farther off the deep end to convince the nuts that he is really one of them. So, he won't call waterboarding torture because the "liberal media" might be misleading us about it while McCain comes flat out and says IT'S TORTURE. Do you really need a detailed description to understand what waterboarding is? Just say, it's stuff Jack Bauer would do. (Well, maybe Jack would prefer to shoot the person in the knee.)
Here's what he will do. He will be both for and against abortion. He will be for abortion if it involves people we don't really want around but against it for nice people.
Bah... Guiliani is the best thing that could happen to this country right now. He's socially liberal and a hawk on budget and defense.
The war against Islamism is the flat-out most important issue facing the nation today. Rudy and most of the other Republicans (sans Ron Paul, who is great on most things but his isolationist foreign policy is sincerely naive) would do a better job fighting the Islamists than any of the Democrats, most of whom are just itching to run out of Iraq and damn the consequences. Not to mention the mollycoddling they'd do with Iran.
Joe, I don't buy Giuliana's "liberal" cred. I just don't see it.
Giuliani would simply be more of the same. And we certainly don't need more of the same at this point. He'd be a total disaster.
We heard all of this "Oh, no, a middle-eastern state has WMDs!" bull before. It got us into this mess. We need to negotiate with Iran, not attack them. We haven't even tried to resolve this peacefully. All the adminstration has done is started up the fear machine again.
On a more humorous (yet frighteningly appropriate) note:
http://www.sfgate.com/comics/fiore/
I don't know how the Democrats will do, but Bush's policy has been a disaster. The idea is that you balance toughness with reasonableness. You don't go to Iran hat in hand and say, please negotiate, but you also don't refuse to face reality just because you don't like who is in power. Iran is a power in the Middle East that is not going away and that's a fact of life. As for Iraq, it's pretty clear that it has NOTHING do with the issue of terrorism except that fighting there has created more of it. I do agree, however, that given the mess Bush has made,we can't just leave without considering the consequences. Frankly, despite what the antiwar left believes, I don't think any president, regardless of party, is going to be able to simply withdraw. Unfortunately, Bush has gotten us stuck there. But there has to be a better solution than just going on the way we have.
As for the problem with radical Islam, it's a multifaceted problem that can't be addressed simply by showing how tough we are. Muslims despite the United States and, despite what Machiavelli said about it being better to be feared than loved, this isn't a very good policy for a couple of reasons. First, we will never be willing to take the actions necessary to be truly feared, and, second, it's simply counterproductive. Countries are already lining up against us. And I don't agree that Islamism is the most important issue facing the country today. Why? Frankly, we may have more of a problem with Chavezism in Latin America as he takes advantage of the absolute hatred that Bush (and to be fair, others) have engendered toward the US.
Your assumption, Joe, is that foreign policy is simply a zero-sum game, where you are either being tough or you are a weak-kneed appeaser. But, it's really more complex than that. The Bushies don't get that (although I give Condi some credit for holding her own against Darth Cheney). If you read Cold War history, it was never just us standing up to the Russians at all costs; it was also about calibrating our responses in a reasonable manner so that we didn't look completely insane (and we didn't do such a good job in the Third World).
This is interesting from the AP:
"n an Oct. 29 story about Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani criticizing Democrats on Middle Eastern policy, The Associated Press erroneously reported Giuliani's mention of Syrian President Bashar Assad as a reference to Osama bin Laden.
Giuliani said: "This is the world we live in. It's not this happy, romantic-like world where we'll negotiate with this one, or we'll negotiate with that one and there will be no preconditions, and we'll invite (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad to the White House, we'll invite (Syrian President Bashar) Assad to the White House."
That's a pretty big mistake.
Yes, but it was still a stupid thing for Giuliani to say. What is this, third grade?
There's an article in The New Republic about Giuliani. It's pretty scary (although to be fair, I think you have to take articles in opinion journals with somewhat a grain of salt). Nevertheless, he comes off as a combination of Catholic ideologue and power-mad self-aggrandizer. Basically, the gist is that Giuliani's view of freedom is derived from Catholic teachings that freedom really needs authority to keep from being anarchy. This isn't necessarily crazy but can certainly be carried to far. And when he was mayor, he apparently valued loyalty to a point that makes the mafia (and Bush) look tame.
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