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Obama: Enemy of Humanity

Praktik said:
No need to keep playing on this one though Darth, was just curious if Marc thought that allies should have veto power over the American public, like he thought America should have over the Turkish public in the run up to the war.
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When all was said and done, Don Rumsfeld and others in the Bush team were unable to sell their idea of the "goodness" of the idea that Turkey accomodate an entire heavy division, and it's logistics train, attacking into Iraq. Given some of the Bush team's utterances of the time, they were trying to strong arm a few allies here and there, with less than wonderful results.

Had a different sales job been attempted, maybe it would have worked out. Maybe, just maybe, the Turks had made it clear from the Get Go that there was no way 4th ID comes in from the North, and the entire "4th ID is coming in from Turkey" was part of the deception plan. (Maskirovka in Russian).

DR
 
Darth Rotor said:
@ drkitten: Your premature adulation is noted.
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Actually, it's Marc39's premature adulation, not mine. He noted, and I quote, that "when his tenor [sic] as president is up, he will have been a very mediocre president," which puts him about midway down the list of the 44 presidents so far, 21 or 22.

W is widely recognized as being among the worst presidents ever; C-SPAN's non-partisan survey of professional historians put him at #39 (IIRC), while US News and World Report's survey put W at # 38. So right out of the box, if Obama does nothing but be "average" all term he'll still be either 16 or 17 points ahead of W. (And probably more than that, given that recent presidents tend to be viewed as better than average, since people remember their accomplishments. Recent items in general, whether presidents or theatrical performances, tend to be remembered more positively.)

I'm merely noting that "very mediocre" represents a tremendous step forward in terms of presidential quality. Judging from history, there's a significant probability that we've already seen the worst president of the 21st century.
 
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drkitten said:
W is widely recognized as being among the worst presidents ever; C-SPAN's non-partisan survey of professional historians put him at #39 (IIRC), while US News and World Report's survey put W at # 38. So right out of the box, if Obama does nothing but be "average" all term he'll still be either 16 or 17 points ahead of W.
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Probably. Funny old thing on the widely recognized: we may be too close to it in time, or it may be spot on. The longer Nixon was out of office, the more people appreciated some of his talents in foreign policy, Watergate stain and all. I'd need to re look Hoover, he took a real face shot for the Depression.

W may not get the Nixon treatment -- hell, he probably won't. In that light, muddling through probably is all Pres Obama needs to do to be more highly regarded than W. But that's not setting his own bar very high. ;) I expect he has loftier goals.

DR
 
Darth Rotor said:
When all was said and done, Don Rumsfeld and others in the Bush team were unable to sell their idea of the "goodness" of the idea that Turkey accomodate an entire heavy division, and it's logistics train, attacking into Iraq. Given some of the Bush team's utterances of the time, they were trying to strong arm a few allies here and there, with less than wonderful results.
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Ya it would be interesting to get some idea of the internal discussions over there in Turkey but from what I have gleaned it was more the carrot that was tried with them, a 4 or 6 billion dollar carrot if I remember correctly.

The government was pretty keen on it from what I have read and the vote on the deal was very close and was only beaten by a slim margin. In my research yesterday I came across the question of a 2nd vote, that apparently didn't happen. So it seems there was still some procedural avenue through which it could have happened that was subsequently closed.

Perhaps it was closed in the face of the rather harsh and petulant reaction in America to the results of the first vote?

Entirely speculative would be nice to see some studied looks at this from people with insight into Turkish political culture.
 
Marc39 said:
No, please do so.
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Goodbye Marc39!;)

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