Democrat Presidents and Foreign Policy

PC

How have Democratic policies towards Egypt differed from Republican policies?
 
PC

How have Democratic policies towards Egypt differed from Republican policies?

The question I have for you, Wingy, is your reaction to this administration abruptly throwing the Mubarak government under the bus.

I see you didn't answer my question....but out of courtesy, I will answer yours

The revolutions in Cuba and Iran showed us that you can't force an unpopular dictator on the people just because he supports your policies. Ultimately, the people win out and what could have been a minor transition of power becomes a full scale revolution.
In Cuba, that revolution gave us a Communist government. In Iran it gave us an Islamic fundamentalist government. Neither is desireable in Egypt

Mubarak's position is untennable. Obama knows this and is trying to encourage Mubarak to peacefully transition power
 
PC

How have Democratic policies towards Egypt differed from Republican policies?

The question I have for you, Wingy, is your reaction to this administration abruptly throwing the Mubarak government under the bus.

Maybe this is why the right keeps trying to sully the word democracy?

Do you remember ANYTHING about why the US used to be beloved world wide?

Because we stood for freedom and democracy.

Backing a dictator who fakes elections and crushes the spirit of freedom in his people is not good long term foriegn policy if you believe in democracy.

You and the people who side with you on this issue seem to not love democracy as much as you love your failed ideals who should rule over who.


You have failed the test of being a freedom loving AMERICAN who loves the idea of democracy our founders left us.


Think a while and take the test again when you have reflected on what a commitment to freedom and democracy really requires of you.

You can always redeem yourself.
 
3. Yet no problem of American foreign policy is more urgent than that of formulating a morally and strategically acceptable, and politically realistic, program for dealing with non-democratic governments who are threatened by ...subversion.

Oh Jeane, playing apologist to repressive authoritarian regimes as usual - well, "our" repressive authoritarian regimes, anyway. Sadly for her, there is no morally acceptable way of dealing with brutal dictatorships - as her time with Reagan demonstrated, they went for "strategically" acceptable ways, ie. selling weapons to the here-much-maligned Iranian regime and engaging in a brutal war of terror against Nicaragua, in her two examples.

In either which case, I'm glad Reagan had her as an adviser, he absolutely needed her strong moral compass to determine just how much more moral it was to financially and politically support the overwhelmingly benign Saddam Hussein against those evil Ayatollahs! I mean, anyone else would've thought "Hey, this guy is brutally murdering the opposition and committing a genocide against a minority" - but FUCK, Jeane could at least see that unlike those evil Ayatollahs he didn't have such an unruly beard - and at least he didn't depose our benign, benevolent, bleeding-heart friend the Shah, who, I mean, c'mon, he may have had private armies that swore loyalty to him over the nation and he may have suspended democracy indefinitely, and he may have used police forces that were too harsh and brutal, but hey, he sent his kids over here! That's gotta count for something. We'll convince him to democratize eventually - right?

If only, just if only the Iranian people had waited a little longer, I'm sure Ms. Kirkpatrick would've convinced the Shah to bring democracy to Iran, because, really, he wasn't so bad. Just like she would've definitely done with her good friend (literally) her good friend General Leopoldo Galtieri, Butcher of Buenos Air- oh, I'm sorry, benign autocrat of Argentina, who started a pointless war against Great Britain so that his constituency would forget about the fact that he "disappeared" thousands of people for thinking the wrong way. But hey, we all make mistakes, and nobody's perfect.

Anyway, I dunno about you PoliticalChic, but people can only take it up the ass by brutal dictatorships for so long before shit hits the fan. Obama is not "losing" Egypt. Egypt is fighting for its freedom from a brutal 30-year dictatorship that your President's timid statements almost implicitly support. You're suggesting he should do more? You're suggesting that the US government should go ahead and send some emergency stealth planes to save the sclerotic, corrupt regime of an 82-year old autocrat?

And then you'll wonder "Why do they hate us?"

You guys just don't get it, do you.

Another populous, pivotal nation falling away from the Western sphere...another piece of the jigsaw puzzle of the Middle East...

You don't see the effects on terrorism, how this will guarantee attacks on our nation. "By the age of 14, Ayman al-Zawahiri had joined the Muslim Brotherhood....often described as a "lieutenant" to Osama bin Laden,..."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayman_al-Zawahiri


Some of you fellas never studied contemporary history...some, and this is worse, are wilfully blind because you can see the fingerprints of the left on this fiasco.

You mean like THIS history PC?

Reagan's Osama Connection

How he turned a jihadist into a terrorist kingpin.

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rumsfeld_saddam.jpg


Gorbachev took the helm as the reform-minded general-secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1985. Within months, he had decided privately to pull Soviet troops out of Afghanistan.

At a Politburo meeting of Nov. 13, 1986, Gorbachev laid his position on the table: The war wasn't working; it had to be stopped:

People ask: "What are we doing there?" Will we be there endlessly? Or should we end this war? ... The strategic objective is to finish the war in one, maximum two years, and withdraw the troops. We have set a clear goal: Help speed up the process, so we have a friendly neutral country, and get out of there.

In early December, Gorbachev summoned President Najibullah, the puppet leader of Afghanistan, to give him the news: The Soviet troops would be leaving within 18 months; after that, he was on his own.

Two months later, on Feb. 23, 1987, Gorbachev assured the Politburo that the troops wouldn't leave right away. He first had to foster a stable environment for the reigning government and to maintain a credible image with India, the Soviet Union's main ally in the region. The exit strategy, he said, would be a negotiated deal with Washington: The Soviets pull out troops; the Americans stop their arms shipments to the rebels.

However, within days, Gorbachev learned to his surprise that Reagan had no interest in such a deal. In a conversation on Feb. 27 with Italy's foreign minister, Giulio Andreotti, Gorbachev said, "We have information from very reliable sources … that the United States has set itself the goal of obstructing a settlement by any means," in order "to present the Soviet Union in a bad light." If this information is true, Gorbachev continued, the matter of a withdrawal "takes on a different light."

Without U.S. cooperation, Gorbachev couldn't proceed with his plans to withdraw. Instead, he allowed his military commanders to escalate the conflict. In April, Soviet troops, supported by bombers and helicopters, attacked a new compound of Islamic fighters along the mountain passes of Jaji, near the Pakistani border. The leader of those fighters, many of them Arab volunteers, was Osama Bin Laden.

However, Reagan—and those around him—can be blamed for ignoring the rise of Islamic militancy in Afghanistan and for failing to see Gorbachev's offer to withdraw as an opportunity to clamp the danger. Certainly, the danger was, or should have been, clear. Only a few years had passed since the Ayatollah Khomeini rose to power in Iran—the shah toppled, the U.S. Embassy employees held hostage, the country turned over to the mullahs, the region suddenly destabilized. Reagan beat Jimmy Carter so decisively in the 1980 election in part because of the hostage crisis.

Gorbachev had accepted that Afghanistan would become an Islamic country. But he assumed that Reagan, of all people, would have an interest in keeping it from becoming militantly, hostilely, Islamist.

After the last Soviet troops departed, Afghanistan fell off the American radar screen. Over the next few years, Shevardnadze's worst nightmares came true. The Taliban rose to power and in 1996 gave refuge to the—by then—much-hunted Bin Laden.

Ten years earlier, had Reagan taken Gorbachev's deal, Afghanistan probably still wouldn't have emerged as the "friendly, neutral country" of Gorby's dreams. Yet it might have been a neutral enough country to preclude a Taliban takeover. And if the Russian-Afghan war had ended earlier—if Reagan had embraced Gorbachev on the withdrawal, as he did that same autumn on the massive cutback of nuclear weapons—Osama Bin Laden today might not even be a footnote in history.

More...
 
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PC

How have Democratic policies towards Egypt differed from Republican policies?

The question I have for you, Wingy, is your reaction to this administration abruptly throwing the Mubarak government under the bus.

Maybe this is why the right keeps trying to sully the word democracy?

Do you remember ANYTHING about why the US used to be beloved world wide?

Because we stood for freedom and democracy.

Backing a dictator who fakes elections and crushes the spirit of freedom in his people is not good long term foriegn policy if you believe in democracy.

You and the people who side with you on this issue seem to not love democracy as much as you love your failed ideals who should rule over who.


You have failed the test of being a freedom loving AMERICAN who loves the idea of democracy our founders left us.


Think a while and take the test again when you have reflected on what a commitment to freedom and democracy really requires of you.

You can always redeem yourself.


This is an interesting post, primarily due to its guileless nature.
It supposes that the word 'democracy' has a universal definition...

sadly it does not.

To put it another way, the word democracy would apply in the way we mean it today in America if, and only if, the Egypian people had the same background, diversity, experiences and upbringing of the American people today.

I commend to you both a study of the history of various Middle East nations, and the poetry of Alexander Pope:

"A Little Learning Is a Dangerous Thing, Drink Deep, or Taste Not the Pierian Spring..."
 
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Words have definitions even if you dont know them

I always look forward to your posts, but sometimes they are so easy to deconstruct, I'm almost embarrassed to do so....

but I will, anyway:

"One shouldn’t cherry-pick facts to fit an agenda. The study does say that radicals “believe in democracy even more than many of the mainstream moderates do.” But does anyone really think we’re operating with a consistent definition of democracy here? The Muslim Brotherhood, for example, makes claims to be democratic, yet its leaders-for-life are not elected, the organization boasts a doctrine of female subordination, and it calls for the death of apostates. Kind of a big-government democracy, I suppose.

Dalia Mogahed, Esposito’s co-author, says, “A billion Muslims should be the ones that we look to, to understand what they believe, rather than a vocal minority.” How right she is. We need to find out from one billion rational human beings why they largely refuse to stand up for humanity and dignity instead of cowering in the face of fascist thugs. They’re the only Westerners this study challenges.
Commentary Blog Archive Muslim Survey “Challenges” West


Get the point?
 
The question I have for you, Wingy, is your reaction to this administration abruptly throwing the Mubarak government under the bus.

Maybe this is why the right keeps trying to sully the word democracy?

Do you remember ANYTHING about why the US used to be beloved world wide?

Because we stood for freedom and democracy.

Backing a dictator who fakes elections and crushes the spirit of freedom in his people is not good long term foriegn policy if you believe in democracy.

You and the people who side with you on this issue seem to not love democracy as much as you love your failed ideals who should rule over who.


You have failed the test of being a freedom loving AMERICAN who loves the idea of democracy our founders left us.


Think a while and take the test again when you have reflected on what a commitment to freedom and democracy really requires of you.

You can always redeem yourself.


This is an interesting post, primarily due to its guileless nature.
It supposes that the word 'democracy' has a universal definiton...

sadly it does not.

To put it another way, the word democracy would apply in the way we mean it today in America if, and only if, the Egypian people had the same background, diversity, experiences and upbringing of the American people today.

I commend to you both a study of the history of various Middle East nations, and the poetry of Alexander Pope:

"A Little Learning Is a Dangerous Thing, Drink Deep, or Taste Not the Pierian Spring..."

Hey PC, ask Alexander Pope what to do about the history you constantly ignore...

1983

beirut_barracks.jpg


The Beirut barracks bombing (October 23, 1983 in Beirut, Lebanon) occurred during the Lebanese Civil War, when two truck bombs struck separate buildings housing United States and French military forces—members of the Multinational Force in Lebanon—killing 299 American and French servicemen. The organization Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bombing, but that organization is thought to have been a nom de guerre for Hezbollah—or a group that would later become part of Hezbollah—receiving help from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Death toll
In the attack on the American barracks, the death toll was 241 American servicemen: 220 Marines, 18 Navy Sailors, and three Army Soldiers. Sixty Americans were injured.

This was the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima of World War II (2,500 in one day) and the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States military since the 243 killed on January 31, 1968, the first day of the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. The attack remains the deadliest single attack on Americans overseas since World War II.

Response
U.S. President Ronald Reagan called the attack a "despicable act" and pledged to keep a military force in Lebanon.

In retaliation for the attacks, France launched an airstrike in the Beqaa Valley against alleged Islamic Revolutionary Guards positions.

President Reagan assembled his national security team and planned to target the Sheik Abdullah barracks in Baalbek, Lebanon, which housed Iranian Revolutionary Guards believed to be training Hezbollah militants. A joint American-French air assault on the camp where the bombing was planned was also approved by Reagan and Mitterrand.

In fact, there was no serious retaliation for the Beirut bombing from the Americans, besides a few shellings.

The Marines were moved offshore where they could not be targeted. On February 7, 1984, President Reagan ordered the Marines to begin withdrawal from Lebanon.
 
You guys just don't get it, do you.

Another populous, pivotal nation falling away from the Western sphere...another piece of the jigsaw puzzle of the Middle East...

You don't see the effects on terrorism, how this will guarantee attacks on our nation. "By the age of 14, Ayman al-Zawahiri had joined the Muslim Brotherhood....often described as a "lieutenant" to Osama bin Laden,..."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayman_al-Zawahiri

You don't see the results for the price of oil....there is no alternative; green energy is a fraud.

Well, I don't know who is "you guys," but what's pretty clear is that it is YOU who don't seem to "get" that supporting brutal dictatorships does not in any way, shape, or form "guarantee" your safety OR your oil - it NEVER has, it NEVER will, and in fact, it does quite the opposite. That line of reasoning is akin to a space-age version of what your own countryman Ben Franklin warned about, except it's OTHER peoples' liberty YOU and YOUR kind of people, like Jeane Kirkpatrick, will trade at the drop of a hat for a temporary sense of security, something that would've been lauded by the Commissars of the Soviet Union while they themselves preached the horrors and "security concerns" about the people of Eastern Europe deciding for themselves what they wanted, but which is equally horrifying to anyone with any sense of morality.

You haven't learned what the results of turning over Iran to the radicals by Carter I.
So, did you see an increase in 'democracy' in this Iran over Palavi's Iran?

Uh, technically speaking yes, actually. Even the Islamic Republic's faux-democracy, with it's political parties, [rigged] elections, and [virtually illegitimate] parliament IS an increase in democracy over the total autocracy of the Shah - in any case post-1953, which, as any supposed history enthusiast like you would know, was the year in which YOUR government and Great Britain connived to shut down Iranian parliament in another show of the great magnanimity and support for democratic ideals of freedom that your country espouses. And of course this little example of your celebrated "repression-for-oil" strategy had wonderful results - I believe in your version of the story the Shah of Iran managed to oppress Iranians eternally and lived happily everafter, and American and British consumers enjoyed free Iranian oil until the end of time because of COURSE that strategy works!

Back in the real world, the difference is almost irrelevant - obviously Iran's present political system is nearly as rotten, corrupt and violent as that of the Shah, but luckily for Iranians there is no great superpower to blindly support their Leadership this time around, and consequently it will fall sooner rather than later BECAUSE, as the protests against that regime in 2009 amply demonstrate, people, not just in Iran but everywhere, refuse to live like dogs under an illegitimate and undemocratic regime regardless of who is in charge.

Does some esoteric description of 'democracy' include the massacre of the Copts? The Jews?

What massacres of Copts or Jews have occurred during these protests? I do know of the discrimination against Copts committed by the Mubarak regime and his successors, a fact often forgotten by the Authoritarian Regime fanclub. Conflict in Egypt between Muslims and Copts or more generally between Arabs and Jews in the region have been going on for a while, everybody knows that - what's baffling is your suggestions that the only way to solve it is by forcing the entire country to go through an abusive dictatorship to prevent it. It's like saying that if the British felt concerned about the discrimination of blacks in America (use your imagination) they would have been perfectly justified in imposing and supporting some strong-armed dictator who represses the country for an indefinite amount of time. Nobody would accept that as legitimate, anywhere, and it would not have worked. Ethnic conflicts don't get resolved in dictatorships, they get resolved in democracies, for chrissakes, you can even ask the Soviet Commissars all about that.

Now Egypt submitted to the radicals by Obama (Carter II). Another weak leftist ignorant of human nature, or the existence of evil. Another excuse for moral relativism.

Ooo!! The evil!! Revelations!! The Apocalypse!! Who will save us from the bearded darkies?!

You know what I do, personally, to combat the existence of evil? I refrain from engaging in it or supporting it. And I get your argument, that my position is naive and doesn't make sense because people are inherently evil and will do bad things and hence "we" have to ensure our security - my argument is that your strategy of utilizing repression is not only an abject failure but that it ultimately makes you less safe.

Did you- or Carter II see it coming? Know why?

See what coming?

Some of you fellas never studied contemporary history...some, and this is worse, are wilfully blind because you can see the fingerprints of the left on this fiasco.

I think it's YOU who needs to review your history and take off the partisan goggles. I'm sure if this was 2009 Iran we were talking about? Remember Obama's pathetically timid response to those protests? Oh but there, of course, support the democratic people of Iran in their search for freedom against the tyrannical reign of Khomeni!! How can Obama be such a pansy?! Oh, but oh when it's a the people of Egypt protesting against their tyrannical emperor, OH NO. HOW DARE HE NOT FULLY SUPPORT OUR BENEVOLENT DICTATOR IN EGYPT?! I mean, is it really not enough? Is it really not enough that all the tear gas canisters that Egyptian police were using against its people (and even more widely so in Tunisia) have "MADE IN U.S.A" splattered all over it? I posit the question again - what do YOU suggest? Stealth planes? Tanks? Bombs? For how long do you intend to keep up support for a Mubarak-style dictatorship? Is it an indefinite frame of time - sometime in that far future, when the Generals one day decide to flush in an orgy of democracy out of the blue? Sounds kinda ignorant of "human nature", to me anyway.
 
Amazing how fast this thread degenerated into name calling, and people wonder why I refuse to embrace civility as a cause.

The problem with American foreign policy is it is formulated by politicians, and enacted by bureaucrats. Presidents on both sides have been hand fed information that was catered to do one thing, promote American interest in stable regimes that were facially friendly to business interests, and ignore the real human costs of these regimes.

The gripe I have against Obama's policy is that he prefers to sit on the sidelines and watch in the hope that no one will end up blaming him for anything. This led him to watch as the demonstrators in Iran were ruthlessly put down because he did not want to be seen as interfering in another country's internal disputes.

The gripe I have with Bush is that he invaded Iraq to depose a dictator, yet allied himself with another dictator that had no problems doing the same thing to his people simply because stability in the region, and American business interests, counted more than human rights.

I am willing to give Obama a pass on Tunisia because that was so fast that we really had no time to do anything other than react instinctively, and reacting instinctively is rarely a good idea in international politics, even if I actually admire those who are willing to chance being wrong. Egypt, on the other hand, gave Obama plenty of time to do something other than sit on the sidelines in the hope that things would work out. He preferred, like Bush, to go with a dictator rather than risk alienating a nation that we see as vital to our interests in the region. The result is that he has succeeded in alienating the people of Egypt who refused to go away simply because no one was listening to them.

This does not mean that we have lost Egypt as an ally, or that we will end up less safe as a result, but we did loose a chance to step in and make a difference for the things we believe in. We should always support democracy over tyranny.

Before some idiot steps in and starts accusing me of being a warmonger, supporting empire building and invading foreign countries to convert them to our political viewpoint, we can support people without fighting, and without sending money to prop up governments. Would it really have hurt us to step up from the beginning and say that we always support the right of any group to speak up against their government, and that we believe that government comes from the consent of the governed? I am sure that Obama, with his superior intelligence, and all the great speech writers he has working for him, could have found a way to say that without causing WWIII.
 

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