It’s really sad that these are considered to be “smart” things and not just basic fricking common sense. The bar has been lowered to the bare minimum with this damn election.
Yeah, staying “9/11 happened” is not exactly a brilliant epiphany.
For the GOP, admitting it happened under Bush and not immediately claiming it was Clinton’s fault somehow is very rare.
No, blaming Bush for it, is rare.
But that’s also because it’s idiotic to do so.
Hear hear.
It’s not idiotic.
The Bush team didn’t take terrorism seriously until after 9/11.
Are you all in on the trump trolly?
Well, neither did… anyone really.
Blaming Bush is different from acknowledging it wasn’t Clinton’s fault. No one seriously thinks 9/11 was Bush’s fault but it is customary for GOP pols to pretend that it was Clinton’s presumably because they think the fact it happened in Bush’s administration needs to be defended with an attack on someone else. What was Bush’s fault was his total failure to respond properly to 9/11 after it happened: the tens of thousands of deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, the destabilization of the whole middle east, the rousing of mass Islamic sentiment against the US, setting into motion the creation of ISIS, and the incredible waste of billions and billions of tax dollars spent on a vast corruption pyramid for the corporations chosen to profit off the war.
I don’t blame Bush for 9/11, but it is an undeniable fact that it happened while Bush was president and only Trump had the balls to say that while the other jokes that were once republican candidates bent over backwards to deny it ever happened. To make it extra clear, i’m not talking about whether someone blames Bush for 9/11 or not, i’m specifically talking about whether 9/11 A) happened and B) happened while Bush was president.
Not to mention do you truly believe if 9/11 had happened during Obama’s term, republicans would not be wanting to impeach him for it?
I do think Bush deserves blame for getting us in to Iraq in the first place though and then getting us stuck in there forever after that because he had no long term plan. This is likely the greatest international policy blunder of our (well, mine at least) life time.
That trump took off his partisan blinders and admitted this mistake is something he deserves respect for precisely because it is so rare.
You guys are amazing.
This was actually covered in the Bush/Gore foreign policy debate. When asked what the biggest threat to national security was, Bush said North Korea and Gore said terrorism. Terrorism wasn’t a focus of the Bush administration and it would have been the primary focus of the Gore administration.
I sincerely believe that a better ballot design in one county in Florida would have prevented 9/11.
Eh, maybe. The intelligence community as a whole was blindsided by it, even if Gore considered it important, I doubt they would’ve had the intel or means to see it coming much less prevent it. No one expected that sort of attack on American soil other than Tom Clancy.
Jeb said, at one point, that George kept us safe. I assume he was thinking about his brother’s behavior in the aftermath of 9/11, and the subsequent GWOT. But while that may have been his intention, that’s not what he said.
Trump made the all too easy correction.
You have to consider the bias, but the Clinton guys were frustrated with the incoming administration’s attitude on terrorism. It was a real point of friction in the transition. The Bush guys kept on asking questions about Saddam, the man they had fought a war against ten years before, when the Clinton guys wanted to talk about Al Qaeda. Condi also demoted the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism position, cutting off Richard Clarke’s access to the cabinet. He was a holdover from the previous administration, and she probably wanted to ensure all information flowed up through loyal hands. Still, it doesn’t look great in hindsight and it’s a big reason that terrorism wasn’t a priority for Bush. No one in his inner circle understood just how serious the issue was, and the people that did weren’t able to get their attention.
As to your question. There are things I like about Trump. I agree with him when he says we should get away from nation building. I think he’s right about our relationship with Saudi Arabia. And I think we should have left Saddam and Gaddafi in power. These are things he’s said, but we’ve also heard similar commentary from people like Col. Patrick Lang (ret.), and Col. Andrew Bacevich (ret.). I’ve become quite skeptical of our ability to reshape the world in our image and more importantly I don’t know if it’s actually desirable. Trump’s may not have much substance on the domestic front - but I like his generally conservative positions on war.
The people who worked on the issue thought it was only a matter of time, but the lay public? Absolutely.
I’m taking over, I say 180 a page a day.
To keep with the thread’s intent on focusing on stupid things Trump has said, I’ll simply let Trump counter you with his own words on war.
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Trump’s Updated ISIS Plan: “Bomb The Shit Out Of Them,” Send In Exxon To Rebuild
834 SharesDONALD TRUMP: I said I don’t want to really tell you, but I realized I had to because I’m getting killed by these people [in the media] who say “Trump doesn’t have a plan for ISIS!”
I said no, I have a plan but I don’t want to tell ISIS what it is, because I’m going to win…
People are thinking like I don’t have a plan, I hate doing it. So I was on one of the shows, and I said:
ISIS is making a tremendous amount of money because of the oil that they took away, they have some in Syria, they have some in Iraq, I would bomb the shit out of them.
I would just bomb those suckers, and that’s right, I’d blow up the pipes, I’d blow up the refineries, I’d blow up ever single inch, there would be nothing left.
And you know what, you’ll get Exxon to come in there, and in two months, you ever see these guys? How good they are, the great oil companies, they’ll rebuild it brand new… And I’ll take the oil.
That’s an awesome plan. Bomb the shit out of there and destroy the infrastructure… and then just magically rebuild it. Because we saw in Iraq how easy that was, right?
And this gem:
“I would hit them so had like they’ve never been before,” Trump said. When “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade raised the possibility of civilian casualties, Trump was undeterred. “I would do my best, absolute best,” he said, regarding trying to avoid collateral damage. “I mean one of the problems that we have and one of the reasons that we’re so ineffective, is they’re trying to, they’re using them as shields. A horrible thing. They’re using them as shields. But we’re fighting a very politically correct war. And the other thing is with the terrorists, you have to take out their families. When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. But they say they don’t care about their lives. You have to take out their families.”
Intentionally murdering civilian families of enemy combatants.
Keep it classy!
So basically his plan is to effectively go into bankruptcy court with the country. Great plan.
He doesn’t seem to get the fact that no one is going to accept less than face value on US debt. Or, if they do, it means that you’ve essentially destroyed your credit to the point where they are afraid they aren’t going to get paid back at all, which is going to fuck up your ability to borrow in the future.
I’m going to love seeing folks who were previously supposed to be budget hawks twist themselves in knots to try and defend this absurdity, simply because it comes from the nominee of their party.
I mean, honestly, this stuff suggests a breathtaking lack of any form of engagement or understanding of how government works.
Good lord, what an idiot. Seriously. There is a little over $19 Trillion in national debt right now. Of that, close to $13 Trillion is owned by U.S. interests (citizens, companies, banks, etc.) Even if you were to go with a 90 cents on the dollar payback, that’s taking $1.3 Trillion dollars of “savings” out of the U.S. economy. The second that hits the press, the bank-runs would be unprecedented. The deficit would need to be immediately reduced to $0 because the interest on future Treasury notes would skyrocket.
It does shed light in to why he has declared bankruptcy so many times. “Borrow money. If you don’t make a profit, negotiate a reduced pay-back amount. If your bet pays off, you make a profit. You can’t lose” (paraphrasing). I still find it amazing that any bank lends a Trump-run company a red cent. How much money has he cost them over the years for his bad bets? Eh, most likely the banks bundle his debt and sell it off on the general market, ultimately screwing small investors instead of the banks themselves…