Can you help Dick Cheney understand why he is so unpopular and why he should care?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Bad link. 404 from IE6, white page from Firefox 3.0.5
I’m guessing this is probably the correct link.
from HuffPo, Dick Cheney: the Only Person in the World Who Doesn’t Know Why He’s Unpopular.
Did you actually use the words “Dick Cheney” and “care” in the same sentence?
Hardball and Countdown tonight are doing pre-taped memory-lane shows. Hardball did a fair accounting of the MANY failures of the Bush Presidency and Countdown is doing a good show of how Obama got to the nomination and won the Presidency.
Worth watching in re-runs later tonight if you missed them.
Can someone explain to me the problem with partitioning Iraq?
The same problem as when Britain divided up the region the last time around… It’s none of our damn business who should live where and what the place should be called in that part of the world.
In other words, pull out and let the chips fall where they may? I personally don’t have a problem with that, but is that what you’re saying?
When the Brits divided the Middle East up, they did so on the basis of oil fields. I’m pretty sure that if we worked with Iraqi Sunni, Shia, and Kurds, as well as the Iranians, the Turks, the Syrians, and the Saudis, whilst at the same time throwing a little weight around to keep everyone reasonable, we could do a bit better.
If you just stayed the hell out of Iraq’s business you would do a WHOLE lot better.
The diverse peoples of Iraq have been living together just fine there for thousands of years. Sunnis and Shi`as have been living together just fine in Iraq for about 1350 years since the mid-seventh century. They have always gotten along in the same way people do in most diverse socieites, and resolved whatever occasional tensions arose from time to time the way people do in most societies.
Oddly enough, in the approximately 1350 years prior to the U.S. aggression of March, 2003, there had been only three episodes of violence between Sunnis and Shi`as in Iraq. Each of the three episodes was fomented by a foreign invader who occupied the land for a period of time, and when the invaders departed, relations quickly returned to normal. There are accounts during those episodes of Sunnis protecting Shi`as from attackers, and vice versa.
The intermarriage rate in Iraq is about 30%. The most common intermarriage is between Sunni and Shi`a Arabs. Most extended families have members from at least two or three different ethno/linguistic/religious groups. I a personally aware of a number of cases of mixed Sunni-Shi`a marriage in which neither family knew the religious affiliation of their prospective in-laws until after the engagement was officially announced because it was so unimportant that no one thought to ask. In most cases they know, but they just don’t care enough for it to be an issue.
Virtually all of Iraq’s larger tribes, and many of its smaller ones are mixed Sunni and Shi`a. Tribal and family ties have traditionally been much more important than sectarian ties.
You think that working with this one and that one and the other one, and “throwing a little weight around to keep everyone reasonable” is the way to make everything OK? The exact opposite is the case. Everyone has been pretty reasonable for the last 1350 years. It is you sticking your guns and your bombs, your ignorance, and your self-serving economic, political,and social transformation plans into Iraqis’ lives is what has screwed it up.
And when you leave, just as when the other invaders left, things will settle down, and Iraqis will work things out. That will NEVER happen as long as you have your ignorant, self-serving fingers in the pot stirring things up.
The exact opposite is the case. Everyone has been pretty reasonable for the last 1350 years.
Were there any religious currents in the Iraq-Iran War (1980-88)?
No, there were not. At least there was nothing major or widespread. It was by no means and in no way a religious war. Given that the majority of the Iraqi population was Shi`a, so were the majority of the soldiers fighting the war. There was not any significant reluctance to fight because the enemy were Shi`as. I am personally acquainted with a number of Shi`as who were in the military at that time, and sect was not a consideration for them. Not that they were happy to be sent to a war, it just was not about religion.
I have no hard evidence to back this up, but it is my strong sense based on things I have read and heard that there were more and stronger reservations about the invasion of Kuwait, which is of course an overwhelmingly Sunni-populated country. This was not because of religion either, but, as a couple of people told me, they just felt it was wrong, there was no justification for it.
I appreciate your insights – thanks.
Thanks for asking.
I don’t think that he’s losing any sleep over this.
Neither am I
I am thinking about whether his pacemaker works just a little less than Cheney
I’d like to be the first to offer a hearty BT welcome to Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston! Grandma Sarah’s is just as proud as she can be – you betcha!
What is this all about don’t blame W time?
“He became vice president well before George Bush picked him,” Wilkerson said of Cheney. “And he began to manipulate things from that point on, knowing that he was going to be able to convince this guy to pick him, knowing that he was then going to be able to wade into the vacuums that existed around George Bush — personality vacuum, character vacuum, details vacuum, experience vacuum.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081230/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_advisers_speak_out
ya think maybe he would understand “why he is unpopular” with at least one of his hunting buddies ; )
naah….sort of like those pesky WMD’s….who cares…
peace
In my last book-buying spree of the year, I picked up this volume:
A History Of The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Mark Tessler, published in 1994 by Indiana University Press.
Has anyone read it and can give a review?
I have had that book in my library for some time. Have not read it cover to cover – it’s a big book – but my recollection is that it is quite reasonable as an introduction, and comprehensive, though by now it is a bit out of date. There are books that examine specific aspects of the history of the conflict in more detail, but that book seems like a good place to start.
On Tuesday, Morning Joe says he “thanks God that Cheney was vice president for the last eight years” and jumps the shark. MSM can’t figure out whether to skew farther right or try to find real news.
Joe’s a freaking idiot. Thanking God for Dick Cheney?
Maybe he owns a lot of Halliburton stock.
Cheney claims that Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon was vindicated by later history. Not so sure I agree with that. Jerry basically opened up the way to the elder Bush’s pardon of his co-conspirator Casper Weinberger, which made the younger Bush think it was okay to commute Lewis Libby’s sentence. Before Jerry’s pardon of Nixon, I’m not sure anybody would have agreed that a chief executive could have covered up evidence of his own crimes via pardons.