Red what is this right wing BS? What am I when I criticize W and the R's as I often do? Am I left wing then???? Your voracious defense of everything he does qualifies as the more partisan view. As to your points above. Yes Kerry works for him but did you see Reagan or GHW Bush or Clinton take a backseat in a crisis. The president should be taking the main line of conversation. Kerry et all are there to back him up and support him but not be the pronouncers of policy. Of course he is in the news...he is the president and he is in the news when he farts. What he isn't doing is giving a consistent line of policy for the country and the west to follow. That is what Reagan, GHW Bush & Clinton did. BTW W let Cheney, Rummy et al take the lead and see what good that did. I'm sorry but 5 fighters to the Baltic states a few to Poland, 300 army personnel on already scheduled exercises, and a frigate to the Black Sea (also previously scheduled) isn't much of a projection of power sport. As to his comments about the US not taking the lead in world affairs; he has stated so many time before in Cairo in 2009 when he was supposed to reset US position in the ME, in Libya when he specifically stated that the US would support but NOT lead among other times. Look them up for yourself. Finally no one is fooled by you and that if the president said it was dark at noon on a cloudless day you would shout out that he was not only right but it was a brilliant move on his part to do so. That my friend is blind partisanship.
BTW as the president dithers there are now 30,000 Russian troops in the Crimea and that number keeps growing. A Russian group took over a Ukrainian recruiting office tore down the Ukrainian flag and painted a Russia flag on the gate. The Russians won't let OSCE inspectors into Crimea, they blockade the Ukrainian navy in port and are arranging a "referendum" on Crimea joining Russia in direct violation of a treaty they signed in 1994. ohhhhh Putin is sweating and quaking in his boots.
You are the most partisan Obama critic in FSA and your rare criticism of Bush does not ameliorate this. Are you trying to tell me that the Secretaries of State did not do their jobs under previous Presidents? Get real! Madelyn Albright took a major role in the conflicts on Bosnia and Kosovo, as was proper and her job. Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice were all over Bush's Wars. Most importantly Alexander Haig and George Shultz took the principal roles in the ongoing nuclear disarmament talks with the Soviets in the 80's under Reagan. Obama is doing anything but taking a back seat just because he got his Secretary of State in the Region and taking diplomatic action. It's what secreataries of state do. Give me an example of this. Be specific. It's all that is appropriate at this stage. Ukraine isn't a member of NATO and we aren;t going to war over them. What exactly are you suggesting we do that hasn't been done. Be specific. I knew you couldn't cite one. Context is important. There are many times when it is simply not in the United States best interests to take charge. Take the Somali pirates for instance. Some of our allies wanted us to just take over the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden with our air and naval power (at our expense) and solve their problem. But . . . less than 5% of the shipping through the area is on US flagged vessels! We join with other nations to patrol the area and we damn sure protect the few US vessels that use the waters, but we had to force the others to step up to the plate because we smartly knew that is was more of their problem than ours. The Somalis were no threat to the naval forces we use in the area, yet the countries that are making the profits from shipping declined to pay for the solution and take the political and military risks until they HAD to. Sometimes leadership involves making lazy allies step up to the plate and do their own work. Don't try to speak for me, I speak very clearly. I will dispute anything that I think is wrong, just like you do. Only I back it up with facts instead of political rhetoric.
And yes I have been a persistent critic of the president. I don't like his policies or the method of "leadership" he has employed both foreign & domestic. Nothing he has done has changed my mind. Yes he faced hard times but so did W..who took office in a recession, had 9/11 happen and was thrown into a world that was changing rapidly. That didn't excuse his poor performance any more than what our current president is and has faced excuses his. As to being partisan it may be a good thing I wasn't a member of the board during the second W term. Though I agreed with many of his stated beliefs I was more disappointed in his performance and critical of the job (or lack thereof) he did as president than I could be with President Obama. To hear what I was saying after 2004 or so when he totally screwed the pooch on Afghanistan, Iraq and Katrina you would have thought I was a D. You seem to conveniently forget my praise of Clinton as president and discount the above criticism of W, how I have branded congress both R & D for failure. Rather than partisan I believe I am demanding and willing to call anyone on it R or D. Don't accuse me of tearing down America but try to understand I do hold our elected leaders to a very high standard. One I think befits us as a great nation and the hope of the world. We deserve better than we have been handed what will be the last 16 years. We are the hope of the world and if we don't find leaders who put nation above self & party then we will fail and the world will be a darker place.
I know what he was trying to say, but he completely missed the point. You made a statement that you were not right wing and I commented that your rhetoric is very right wing despite your occasional criticism of Bush. It should be clear to you both that whatever my rhetoric consists of, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that your rhetoric is extremely conservative.
Sit down and take your heart medicine for I have no objection to any of this. My politics are all over the place depending on the issue and I have voted for as many Republicans as Democrats historically. But I am labeled a liberal just because I'm one of the few willing to shoot holes in conservative rhetoric around here which is sliding further and further to the right. Your willingness to criticize Obama's every move will get you labeled as well. We must accept this.
