Any comments on Bush's UN speech?
 

I guess I'm curious, because it looks like some nations may be willing to commit troops even though Bush got a very cold reception at the UN.
Any comments? Did the speech get much coverage in the US?

I actualy hope that Bush is either left to clean this mess up himself or leaves complete control over to the UN(not likely). I don't wish bad things upon the Iraqi people but with the pre-war disrespect against the UN it just feels wrong that they should pay for what they where against in the first place. Right now it feels as Bush gets more goodwill than he deserves from many countries.

The UN will be crippled while any sort of veto power exists.

The UN doesn't even want to be involved, so what's the point? Since their headquarters was bombed they have lost most interest in increasing their representation there.

What makes anyone think the UN would be successful in taking on the whole project themselves (or even a significant portion of it)? Where would they get the troops to provide the security? Where would they get the money? Even in situations where they were 100% in favor of taking action, the implementation of plans was shoddy at best.

Knowing that the UN was already pulling back from Iraq, why would Bush come with a reconciliatory speech when he wouldn't get anything out of it?

I'm surprised the UN didn't cringe at his speech. It was terribly spoken. I guess they don't have to listen to him since they have translators, but still. Gawd..

Please remember that it's not Bush alone (or indeed at all, really) who has to clean up this mess, foot the bill, or face the music. American soldiers have to die to clean up the mess, American taxpayers have to foot the bill, and we all get dirty looks when we travel abroad. Is Sweden open to my moving there?

The UN is pulling out because their security has been left up to "the coallition of the willing"... If the UN had their own forces in place (i.e. French, German, Canadian, etc.) troops they would more likely be willing to stick it out...

As it stands, the US and their handful of allies, haven't made a stable enough platform from which to work.

I'm not sure what the point of his speach was, if he was trying to convince people and gain more allies then it was a disaster. If he was trying to say to the rest of the world - I don't need you and I can do what I want so get stuffed - then it was a success.

I dont see why any countries are going to donate troops to this mission. I dont think any President/PM (Except Bush & Blair) like to see young men/women from their country die every single day for peacekeeping. I hear everyday of some kind of bombing or some other cause of American death and it's going to continue for as long as we are there.

We shouldnt have been there in the first place or we should secured a peacekeeping team after the conflict was over.

Kofi Annan totally upstaged Bush. It was like watching Sidney Poitier and Ben Affleck in the same movie.

It really sucks for the Iraqi people that the UN is pulling out even more in Iraq. They're going to be even more upset. For the people in Iraq that hated the US for this, the UN was the only thing that gave them some hope. The US is going to clean up this mess at a great expense. Personally I think its worth it to not have Hussein destroying Iraq from the inside. The Iraqi people deserve better than Saddam. I just wish the rest of the world would be behind helping out in rebuilding.

Very very true.

The other leaders basically all hate bush's guts and they are sticking it to HIM at the EXPENSE of the Iraqi people.

Bush's speach was hardly conciliatory (spelling) and the other leaders have basically said, "fuck you"

It's always the innocent guy who suffers in all of this.

Fucking get serious, this is the biggest crock shit I have ever seen on this website...

You Liberals call yourselves stewards of the unprotected and unfortuante, where is your compassion for the Iraqi's that have been to hell and back under that maniac Saddam? Saddam was responsible for the deaths of nearly 2 million people, the world is a better place with him gone. Further more everyone should be thankful that the death rate of American/ British soldiers has been this low.

Here here Mojo_PeiPei, I couldn't agree more.

Now, now. Calm down.

A lot of people (liberals) do not object to saving the Iraqis from the tyranny of Hussein (good riddance, IMHO), but rather object to the way this war was launched. It was launched pre-emptively, under false pretenses (or at the very least with sketchy justification), and with little realistic planning for the rebuilding of the country or any kind of exit strategy. And while I AM thankful that the death rate has been this low, I object to our troops being sent over there with no real plan for how to keep them safe and bring them home. Conservatives on this forum are always saying "it's easy to be compassionate with other peoples' money." Well, it's easy to be heroic with other peoples' lives on the line. If this was really such a humanitarian crisis (as it's being painted now, since we can't find the supposed WMDs), why aren't we intervening in other totalitarian regimes worse than this one? (Saudi Arabia, any of half-a-dozen African nations, etc.) You can't just go rushing in on a white horse, knock over a few statues and kick out the ruling dictator without then taking responsibility for making things right. And you shouldn't thumb your nose at potential allies when their assistance could mean the difference between suffering of the Iraqi people and our American troops, and a quick and much less painful transition to home rule. Not even when it means sharing power and giving up some control over how things are done.

Yeah I know that it's a lot of other people who has to pay up but it's also up to them to change the direction that american politics are heading by changing to a president with a foreign policy that is sustainable for over six months. I think you'd be welcome here, most people are :)

This is meant to promote serious political discussion?


I see, so it's about saving the poor Iraqis now? I thought it was about finding "Weapons of Mass Destruction" because Saddam Hussein posed real and imminent danger to the United States and our interests?

I don't know what's more disturbing to me: the fact that our reasons for going to war in the first place were a sham, or that so many people are willing to pull wool over their own eyes to convince themselves that what we did was justified.

I don't think that Saddam Hussein was a good man. I don't, however, think we -- nor the Iraqis -- are currently any better off than a few months ago. The invasion was premature, unbelievably expensive, and motivated by goals that are entirely contrary than that which was stated. President Bush has been riding the wave of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) since the tragedy of 9/11 to further his own agenda. His stated reason for starting this war is clearly another facet of that.

This pandering to the fears of the general public is what I object to. The state of Iraq right now (very bad) is what I object to. The state of our economy and the record budget deficit is what I object to.

Don't try to tell me that it's about helping the poor Iraqi's. Because that's not what it was about then. If any good comes out of this in the end, I will be happy for that. But so far the price has been steep and the rewards negligible. I feel very strongly that we have been misled in the worst kind of way.

I think I've just seen a bigger one:

We call ourselves stewards of the unprotected and unfortunate because we are. While you conservatives are happily passing tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the top 1%, while you're gleefully destroying the environment because it's good for business, while you're aggressively and callously throwing American military power and American military lives away in a meaningless war in the middle of a desert, we liberals are busy trying our damnedest to stop you conservatives from destroying the entire freaking world and pocketing whatever profits you can make from the process.

Speaking of that maniac Saddam, wasn't that Don Rumsfeld I saw grinning and shaking hands with him back in the 80's? Weren't we the ones propping him up in his insane war for dominance in the region against Iran? Wasn't it two Republican presidents (The preternaturally incompetent Bush I and the astoundingly reckless Reagan) who turned a blind eye to his accumulation and use of weapons of mass destruction against the Iranians and Kurds? Speaking of that witless fool Reagan, wasn't it his administration that was arming Iran (our likely next target in the War on Terra) to secure the release of hostages?

I don't pretend that liberal hands are clean. I don't pretend to be perfect. But I can state categorically with examples of the fact - not an opinion, Mojo, a cold, hard fact that the balance of evils here comes down hard on the shoulders of the Republican Party and its Tory Democrat supporters. Sure, Saddam's gone. Great, woohoo. Problem is that Colin Powell, in Feb. 2001, was running around the Middle East saying that Saddam didn't have WMD, he was effectively contained. This is documented, btw. So you've got an archconservative Republican administration that baldfacedly lied the nation into an aggressive war. You've got thousands and thousands dead, a great many of them civilians, all to depose one bad guy who really wasn't able to bother anyone because we'd sat on his head. And while we deposed him, we can't even *find* him. Nor, for that matter, can we find those hundreds of tons of WMDs we were all warned about.

Frankly, if this is how conservatives choose to do things, I'll happily stick with liberals, warts and all. At least if a liberal makes a mistake, it's not going to leave the entire world pissed off at us.

Bush gets more goodwill than he deserves from many Americans.

Thank you all for commenting. And although it's not a competition, I declare Lurkette to be the winner.

Ctembreull you neglect the fact that at the time when Donny was cozing up with Saddam Iran had just gone through a violent revolution where a radical theocratic regime took power and held 60 American hostages. We never pushed Saddam to attack Iran either by the way. He is a Sunni, Iran was Shiite ran, and as we all known Saddam is a paranoid nut. He was afraid of a Shiite revolution happenening in Iraq (which in thought definently sounds plausible due to the Shiite majority) just like happened in Iran, thats why he attacked. Furthermore Reagen may have been reckless but he was a good president and he did tons of good for world security by bankrupting the Soviet Union. Besides when it comes to cattering to Idiot foreign leaders Liberal/Dem's haven't done much better, you have Carter and Clinton both all up on Arafat's nuts and Clinton bending over to hook up Kim Jong II.
Last but not least you are really naive if you think the world suddenly just turned against us, the only thing this whole fiasco did was give forum for the world's Anti-American sentiment.

see now Mojo PeiPei?, when you calm down you can make a fairly decent argument ;).

The other liberals basically covered any of the points i'd have covered, so i won't comment on that,

However, i do have to disagree with you on the point of Reagan, the soviets acknowleged later that Reagan only sped up the inevitable, they probably would have collapsed within a matter of a couple years anyway. It was like him taking the credit for shooting a guy with terminal cancer.

So what you are saying is its ok to tolerate bad guys as long as they benefit American foreign policy objectives...how on earth does that justify their support of him given the way they currently portray his regieme? Also, this is just one of many examples of brutal regiemes the US government has propped up/approved of/worked with...under both parties...liberal or conservative. Indonesia, various African or South American regiemes - too many to name - have had dictators that they have worked with. I'll beleive that it might be a case of its better than the alternative, but then that brings in the problem of inconsistency with how they respond thanks to what's happened in Iraq. Why were Saddam's crimes worse than so many others? Because it became convenient to make them a problem...a horrific thing. If it hadn't fit other policy objectives - part of global oil strategy (containing China and such), desire to reshape the middle east in a manner beneficial to allies and objectives in region (a peace favourable to Israel but tolerated by a submissive Palestinian regieme that can police its population for them, strategic pivot against Iran, move away from Saudi Arabia etc..) and so on - there wouldn't have been a war. The problem is just the hypocricy of claiming that anyone would care about the Iraqis if it wasn't convenient.

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Furthermore Reagen may have been reckless but he was a good president and he did tons of good for world security by bankrupting the Soviet Union. Besides when it comes to cattering to Idiot foreign leaders Liberal/Dem's haven't done much better, you have Carter and Clinton both all up on Arafat's nuts and Clinton bending over to hook up Kim Jong II. Last but not least you are really naive if you think the world suddenly just turned against us, the only thing this whole fiasco did was give forum for the world's Anti-American sentiment.

Carter and Clinton were did those things...and Republicans did others. Its not a matter of simple ideology making one side a bunch of saints...everyone seems to want to try and portray themselves as some kind of idealist/good person in international relations, yet they all act in basic national interest.

Also, there is definately alot of anti-americanism out there...but this war certainly didn't help discourage it.