How would you classify handling the American economy during the worst banking crisis, killing OBL, pulling US out of Iraq, etc, etc? Pretending or Doing?
I don't know why killing OBL is considered a big win, it's not in my opinion. It took so over 10 years, many human lives, run down the US economy from a surplus, American citizens are giving up on some basic freedoms, people are paranoid with fear, got the ugly side out in form of G-bay, torture etc and more over recently, US is loosing credibility e.g. I saw a cloud services website recently being discussed on HN and they mentioned ...We are serious about security, we do not have servers in US... on their website (paraphrasing), it's bad if not being associated with US is one of your business's selling point. I don't know why killing OBL is considered an achievement, but people don't seem to notice at what cost it came. And, the worst part, it was one attack, and the rest US did to themselves. I wish US was a little more resilient.
Regarding the banking crisis, they way I see it they did well to maintain status quo and in my opinion they only setup themselves for the next big fall because the same people are responsible for the same banks are probably doing the same thing again.
Pulling out of Iraq, it's probably debatable again, because I was for pulling out of Iraq but the current state of Iraq, July being the bloodiest month ever of more than 1000 people killed in July alone, I wouldn't use this as something exemplary for someone's achievements.
Pulling out of Iraq? I suspect that
Iraq will pour blood into the Persian
Gulf and then return to a strong man
thug, Saddam II. Maybe not. I hope
not. There are various people and
factions there eager for blood, and
when they get killed off maybe there
will be peace there again.
For OBL, you are looking at the bigger
picture, starting with 9/11, and not
just with the Navy Seals and their
raid, and your view is fully appropriate:
OBL and a few guys with airline
tickets and box cutters got the US to
do a lot of harm to itself as you
listed. We were sucker punched.
We've done it to ourselves.
And
apparently OBL was not completely
nuts but understood well enough
to say that his objective was not
to defeat the US but just to watch
it bankrupt itself! We need to wise up.
What we do to ourselves if there
was a really serious threat and attack?
If you paid attention, all of Obama's "deadlines" for pulling the US out of Iraq were the same deadlines as Bush. The only time they were different was before the first election.
Economy: Spend a lot of money via
TARP I and TARP II and otherwise let
Bernanke handle it.
There is one view that the US went from
The Great Depression to a hot economy,
with 2-3 jobs for everyone who could work,
in just 90 days after people started
shooting at us. We spent huge bucks,
and nearly everything that the bucks
bought was junk on a battlefield in
a few weeks or sold for war surplus.
Still, the spending, even on stuff that
was just junk, got us out of The Great
Depression.
My view is that mostly the extra spending
was just wasted, but, as for the WWII
example, have to believe that even wasted
such spending can get us out of a great
depression. So, I'm not totally against
the spending. But the waste was still
a black mark. We didn't have just to
waste so much of the money.
OBL? Fine. But bringing in Hollywood
to make a movie and letting out
secret information on Navy Seal tactics
was not good. I credit the Navy
Seals and the DoD. Even if a president
doesn't do anything, there still is the
rest of the government, and sometimes
it does things. So, can credit Obama
for not messing up a good effort
across the Potomac River in that five
sided funny farm.
US out of Iraq? Another post in this
thread says that that was just the
schedule anyway.
I can't claim that Obama never does
anything. Still, I see a difference:
It appears to me that he has the strategy
I tried to describe, on a lot of headline
issues, pass out a lot of
platitudes but actually do something
on only a small fraction of those.
Otherwise do relatively little and, thus,
don't get blamed for failures.
It's all on a continuum and not
0 or 1. It just looks to me like
he talks the talk without walking the
walk, or some such, more than other
presidents since, say, FDR.
Maybe it's good pragmatic leadership,
and if so most of the blame is on the
mainstream media and the voters. US
voters are awash in power, can shake DC
just by pulling some levers behind a
curtain, and with the Internet are awash
in information. If Obama gets away with
what the OP described, then the voters
get what they deserve.
>Still, the spending, even on stuff that was just junk, got us out of The Great Depression.
The U.S. was the only major country with cities and factories left standing, that weren't hit by wave after wave of bombers, so rebuilding your country necessitated buying U.S. goods.
The U.S. also suffered relatively fewer casualties than the other major players. The Nazi scientists didn't hurt either.
You are correct in that spending money on otherwise useless military items / people, is indeed useless[0], though those receiving military contracts argue the opposite, called "Military Keynesianism".
No, voters in general are not "awash in power". The vote has been heavily rigged, to the point that House Republicns, who command a majority of ~20 seats, were abor to secure this margin even as Dem candidates garnered 1.4 million more votes.
Some voters are (relatively speaking) "awash in power". But these tend to be while, male, older, and rural.
