bubbadog said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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bubbadog said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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bubbadog said:

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To recap the consensus of this board:

Three days ago, Biden was soft on Iran, an appeaser who was willing to sell out our "friends," the Saudis, for the sake of reviving the nuclear deal with Tehran.

Now, by striking Iranian proxies in Syria (an action that also has the effect of supporting our Israeli and Kurdish allies), Biden is a dangerous neo-con warmonger.

Makes perfect sense.

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First, that's your spin bubba, not the 'consensus'. I don't really see a consensus on this issue.

Second, maybe you should pay attention to what people actually post, not write in your spin to claim they say something other than what is really there. We have CNN if we want fiction for news.

Third, I'd like to hear how Biden reached the decision. Did he have something like this ready to go and wanted to take a measured action at the right time and place, or was he just doing what his aides said was necessary? That's important for understanding his Middle East doctrine, which historically has always been tricky for Presidents, of both parties.

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Did I miss the part where you disagreed with those who said Biden is soft on Iran and that he is a warmonger?

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You missed the part where a lot of us think for ourselves, and don't buy prepackaged opinions.

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I never doubted it for one moment. So I ask for your free-thinking opinion: Do you disagree with those who said Biden is soft on Iran and that he is a neo-con warmonger?

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First, show me where someone here said that. No reason to get into what someone said, if that person is not even in our group or a high-ranking official

nein51 said:

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PartyBear said:

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nein51 said:

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PartyBear said:

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His avg approval is about 55. A few have him at about 62. His COVID relief bill has bipartisan support everywhere except Capitol Hill with about a 70% approval rating.

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Might shock you but GHW Bush had a much higher average approval rating than Reagan

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Yes when he started Desert Storm. I was talking more of a sustained type of approval coming from the state of affairs domestically rather than a quick temporary spike from a major military attack.

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No. On average over the course of his tenure in office he had higher approval ratings than Reagan by about 4-5%

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I think a closer look would suggest that is based on a skewed sample (1 term vs 2, the Gulf War, etc)

But tell yourself whatever convinces you Reagan was not a huge deal to Americans

Oldbear83 said:

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nein51 said:

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PartyBear said:

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nein51 said:

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PartyBear said:

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His avg approval is about 55. A few have him at about 62. His COVID relief bill has bipartisan support everywhere except Capitol Hill with about a 70% approval rating.

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Might shock you but GHW Bush had a much higher average approval rating than Reagan

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Yes when he started Desert Storm. I was talking more of a sustained type of approval coming from the state of affairs domestically rather than a quick temporary spike from a major military attack.

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No. On average over the course of his tenure in office he had higher approval ratings than Reagan by about 4-5%

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I think a closer look would suggest that is based on a skewed sample (1 term vs 2, the Gulf War, etc)

But tell yourself whatever convinces you Reagan was not a huge deal to Americans

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Reagan was a huge deal but he became a much bigger deal out of office. I never said he wasn't a huge deal btw.

To suggest Biden has done anything comparable to Reagan in terms of drawing people to him is crazy talk.

Florda_mike said:

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False flag attack then a military conflict to divert attention from something else that was about to happen to Deep State

Never ending cycle

I predicted this a week ago to a friend

Deep State is fixing to be exposed

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Lol. Y'all Trumpers were all about the Army

" I never said he wasn't a huge deal btw."

It's certainly implied when saying his former Veep had better approval numbers

Oldbear83 said:

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" I never said he wasn't a huge deal btw."

It's certainly implied when saying his former Veep had better approval numbers

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I didn't make that up. It was an attempt to show that approval ratings don't mean much...and that using them to compare Biden to Reagan is crazy talk. Carter's approval ratings reached almost 80% early on and most everyone would agree he goes on the list of worst Presidents.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/116677/presidential-approval-ratings-gallup-historical-statistics-trends.aspx

nein51 said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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" I never said he wasn't a huge deal btw."

It's certainly implied when saying his former Veep had better approval numbers

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I didn't make that up. It was an attempt to show that approval ratings don't mean much...and that using them to compare Biden to Reagan is crazy talk. Carter's approval ratings reached almost 80% early on and most everyone would agree he goes on the list of worst Presidents.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/116677/presidential-approval-ratings-gallup-historical-statistics-trends.aspx

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Nice backtrack

Not sure what the **** you're talking about. It's literally what I have said in like 5 posts. It's on you how you interpreted it.

nein51 said:

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Better the thug you know than the one you don't. We were also definitely responsible for the rise of Saddam Hussein to power in Iraq. Foreign policy is a gamble, sometimes you guess right...sometimes you don't. I prefer not to guess at all but I recognize that's not a real option in some instances.

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I'd say it depends. Tito was a thug, but he held Yugoslavia together. After his death, the country fell apart.

Saddam was not only a thug but a danger to his neighbors. Yet the chaos created by his removal was arguably worse than the situation when he hemmed him in with no-fly zones and tough sanctions after the first Gulf War.

What our foreign policy during the Cold War often missed was that brutal undemocratic regimes -- like those we supported in Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Cuba in the 1950s -- tend to bring about the radical revolutions we despise and fight against. JFK was channeling the father of conservatism, Edmund Burke, when he said, "Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."

Oldbear83 said:

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bubbadog said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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bubbadog said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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bubbadog said:

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To recap the consensus of this board:

Three days ago, Biden was soft on Iran, an appeaser who was willing to sell out our "friends," the Saudis, for the sake of reviving the nuclear deal with Tehran.

Now, by striking Iranian proxies in Syria (an action that also has the effect of supporting our Israeli and Kurdish allies), Biden is a dangerous neo-con warmonger.

Makes perfect sense.

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First, that's your spin bubba, not the 'consensus'. I don't really see a consensus on this issue.

Second, maybe you should pay attention to what people actually post, not write in your spin to claim they say something other than what is really there. We have CNN if we want fiction for news.

Third, I'd like to hear how Biden reached the decision. Did he have something like this ready to go and wanted to take a measured action at the right time and place, or was he just doing what his aides said was necessary? That's important for understanding his Middle East doctrine, which historically has always been tricky for Presidents, of both parties.

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Did I miss the part where you disagreed with those who said Biden is soft on Iran and that he is a warmonger?

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You missed the part where a lot of us think for ourselves, and don't buy prepackaged opinions.

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I never doubted it for one moment. So I ask for your free-thinking opinion: Do you disagree with those who said Biden is soft on Iran and that he is a neo-con warmonger?

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First, show me where someone here said that. No reason to get into what someone said, if that person is not even in our group or a high-ranking official

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As an independent thinker, you ought to be able to express your own opinion. Is Biden soft on Iran? A neo-con warmonger?

bubbadog said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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bubbadog said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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bubbadog said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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bubbadog said:

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To recap the consensus of this board:

Three days ago, Biden was soft on Iran, an appeaser who was willing to sell out our "friends," the Saudis, for the sake of reviving the nuclear deal with Tehran.

Now, by striking Iranian proxies in Syria (an action that also has the effect of supporting our Israeli and Kurdish allies), Biden is a dangerous neo-con warmonger.

Makes perfect sense.

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First, that's your spin bubba, not the 'consensus'. I don't really see a consensus on this issue.

Second, maybe you should pay attention to what people actually post, not write in your spin to claim they say something other than what is really there. We have CNN if we want fiction for news.

Third, I'd like to hear how Biden reached the decision. Did he have something like this ready to go and wanted to take a measured action at the right time and place, or was he just doing what his aides said was necessary? That's important for understanding his Middle East doctrine, which historically has always been tricky for Presidents, of both parties.

---

Did I miss the part where you disagreed with those who said Biden is soft on Iran and that he is a warmonger?

---

You missed the part where a lot of us think for ourselves, and don't buy prepackaged opinions.

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I never doubted it for one moment. So I ask for your free-thinking opinion: Do you disagree with those who said Biden is soft on Iran and that he is a neo-con warmonger?

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First, show me where someone here said that. No reason to get into what someone said, if that person is not even in our group or a high-ranking official

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As an independent thinker, you ought to be able to express your own opinion. Is Biden soft on Iran? A neo-con warmonger?

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So you are just selling crap again.

Good for future reference.

Biden has no real foreign policy record, having done so much to avoid any kind of responsibility for decades.

As for this stunt, I will wait to see if this was Biden's idea or he let someone else sell him the idea.

Important but as yet undetermined points.

Oldbear83 said:

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bubbadog said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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bubbadog said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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bubbadog said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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bubbadog said:

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To recap the consensus of this board:

Three days ago, Biden was soft on Iran, an appeaser who was willing to sell out our "friends," the Saudis, for the sake of reviving the nuclear deal with Tehran.

Now, by striking Iranian proxies in Syria (an action that also has the effect of supporting our Israeli and Kurdish allies), Biden is a dangerous neo-con warmonger.

Makes perfect sense.

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First, that's your spin bubba, not the 'consensus'. I don't really see a consensus on this issue.

Second, maybe you should pay attention to what people actually post, not write in your spin to claim they say something other than what is really there. We have CNN if we want fiction for news.

Third, I'd like to hear how Biden reached the decision. Did he have something like this ready to go and wanted to take a measured action at the right time and place, or was he just doing what his aides said was necessary? That's important for understanding his Middle East doctrine, which historically has always been tricky for Presidents, of both parties.

---

Did I miss the part where you disagreed with those who said Biden is soft on Iran and that he is a warmonger?

---

You missed the part where a lot of us think for ourselves, and don't buy prepackaged opinions.

---

I never doubted it for one moment. So I ask for your free-thinking opinion: Do you disagree with those who said Biden is soft on Iran and that he is a neo-con warmonger?

---

First, show me where someone here said that. No reason to get into what someone said, if that person is not even in our group or a high-ranking official

---

As an independent thinker, you ought to be able to express your own opinion. Is Biden soft on Iran? A neo-con warmonger?

---

So you are just selling crap again.

Good for future reference.

Biden has no real foreign policy record, having done so much to avoid any kind of responsibility for decades.

As for this stunt, I will wait to see if this was Biden's idea or he let someone else sell him the idea.

Important but as yet undetermined points.

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Seemed like a pretty simple question to have elicited such prlckly and evasive responses.

First two lines, you decided to go with insults.
Third line, you made a wild statement that's utterly unsupportable. No real foreign policy record? The guy was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for years -- chaired it twice. As a senator, he had to vote on a lot of foreign policy issues, including the First Gulf War and the Iraq war of 2003. He has exactly the opposite of no foreign policy record.
Fourth line: Stunt? That's a bit of a tip-off, considering that a retaliatory strike against someone who struck at us has been a standard response for US presidents, including Trump. I can recall at least three retaliatory strikes ordered by Pres. Trump in Syria, Iraq and Iran. I would hardly call any of them stunts. They were well within the mainstream of actions taken by US presidents.
Line five: Finally, a semblance of an answer.

You have no standing to whine about the quality of my answers, when you provide no substance yourself.

bubbadog said:

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Mothra said:

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bubbadog said:

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Mothra said:

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Osodecentx said:

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I like striking against Iranian surrogates.

I supported it when Obama did it, when Trump did it and when O'Biden does it

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I prefer the traditional Republican principle of not involving ourselves in foreign conflicts that have little if any benefit for our security or national interests.

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Someday I'd like to meet the Republican Party that traditionally held this as a principle. They must have died out before the Cold War. Maybe they can be revived through DNA sequencing, like woolly mammoths.

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See Reagan. When the neo-cons took over with Bush I and II, indeed it died out. Trump reviving it was one of the good things he did while in office.

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I remember Reagan well. Got to meet him a couple of times when I was doing communications work for the RNC during the 80s. As warm and gracious in person as he came across on TV.

I also remember that Reagan ordered interventions in

El Salvador
Nicaragua
Grenada
Lebanon (where 250 Marines had no clear mission, became sitting ducks and got blown up -- imagine if Jimmy Carter had let that happen)
Proxy war in Angola, where we backed Jonas Savimbi, one of the most murderous thugs on the entire African continent (he was one of Paul Manafort's clients)
Support for Guatemalan military that conducted a brutal genocide campaign against indigenous Mayans

I'm probably leaving out some, but you get the picture. Reagan didn't commit tens of thousands of US troops to quagmires, but he definitely involved us in foreign conflicts that realistically had "little benefit for our security or national interests."

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Your last paragraph hits on the distinction I was making. I'd prefer not to put a number of troops in harms way for pointless wars. See Iraq during Bush II.

As for Biden, I'm not sure what his foreign policy is. It's inconsistent at best. He greatly criticized Trump for extending olive branches to NK, when we were on the precipice of armed conflict with them at the end of the obama admin. Yet he extends olive branches to Iran, an equally despotic regime responsible for many American deaths in the ME, which is rejected. He liked the tough talk with Russia and greatly criticized Trump for not being mean to Putin - as is that would help stabilize the world. And of course he was against the operation to kill Bin Laden - if reports are true.

bubbadog said:

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To recap the consensus of this board:

Three days ago, Biden was soft on Iran, an appeaser who was willing to sell out our "friends," the Saudis, for the sake of reviving the nuclear deal with Tehran.

Now, by striking Iranian proxies in Syria (an action that also has the effect of supporting our Israeli and Kurdish allies), Biden is a dangerous neo-con warmonger.

Makes perfect sense.

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