La Cucaracha by Lalo Alcaraz for September 13, 2014

True, Obama is damned if he does (whatever) and damned if he doesn’t.Plus people blame him for everything, even the weather!

Why don’t any of our presidents ever take up disc golf? I mean, it’s much less environmentally destructive and encourages more exercise than the sticks-and-balls variety.

Actually, the man is damned if you do, damned if you don’t. He has made some blunders, however. Big ones. (And please don’t ask for chapter and verse, because it is late here and the brain cells are not firing on all cylinders). Look them up for yourself…they’re out there.

Every president is the worst one until the next one comes along. The press of the day considered George Washington the worst president America had ever had—until John Adams was elected, and Washington became the greatest president America had ever had.

When did golf become America ’s pastime?

Since it’s been definitively shown that US intelligence agencies were reporting that there were not WMDs in Iraq; since the Bush administration (especially Cheney et al.) then demanded that the US intelligence community give intel that was more favorable to an invasion narrative; since the Bush administration (and specifically Scooter Libby) purposely outed an active intelligence agent in retaliation for her husband’s reports that there was no yellowcake uranium being sent to Iraq; since since they sent Colin Powell (good soldier, he) to directly lie to the UN in order to get other nations on board; since etc., etc., etc.—yes, Bush & Co. were absolutely to blame for the second invasion of Iraq.

(And think about what you’re implying in saying that WMDs could have been moved to neighboring states. Why then did Bush & Co. not invade those states if the true threat was WMDs? Why did they not bomb, say, Syria, which has had WMDs since the 1970s? Speaking of which, even in the midst of a bitter civil war, the international community has succeeded via diplomacy linked to the threat (not actual use) of force, in removing and destroying Syria’s chemical weapons—though tragically not before some were used during that war.)

I won’t absolve Clinton of sending missiles into Iraq. I won’t absolve any US president of the hubris that is thinking that the world is our back yard to bomb as we see fit. But the second invasion of Iraq sits squarely on the shoulders of George W. Bush and his administration, as does responsibility for the aftermath that we still witness today.

Given the liberal bias of the poster it’s an easy assumption that WMDs are referring to Bush.

Given the fact that Bush et al. lied about WMD’s, it’s an easy assumption that this is referring to him when talking about blunders. And yes, it is doubtful that there were actually WMD’s where Clinton bombed, and we’ve also already established that I don’t think presidents should be bombing willy-nilly based on their own moods at the moment. But the fact remains that the Bush administration engaged in a concerted, long-running push to all-out war in Iraq based on bad intelligence and outright falsehoods. Certain crimes are worse than others, even when it comes to slaughtering people with bombs.

As for WMDs moved out of Iraq – it seems perfectly logical that they could have been spirited away…

Which again begs the question of why then you would engage in an all-out invasion of a country predicated on ridding that country of WMD’s if they are in fact out of that country. The fact is, the invasion really had nothing to do with WMDs and everything to do with a neoconservative desire to project US power at will—and maybe take control of a large amount of oil in the process. This is aside from all the blunders regarding that war, starting with the assumption that it would be quick and easy and Iraqis would celebrate their new US overlords.

And I agree Obama should have some responsibility for what’s going on in Iraq and its surrounds, but it’s the responsibility of a person cleaning up someone else’s giant mess. The fact that Obama’s about to get us re-entangled in military operations in the region is alarming, as is the large-scale media’s drumbeat to renewed war. This does not, however, absolve Bush one iota from responsibility for the continued effects of his invasion of Iraq.

Nixon halted a war inherited from two former Presidents in less time and I don’t recall him whining about what he inherited.

Part of why he didn’t whine about what he inherited is because he was only too happy to continue it. It was actually Congress that ended direct US involvement in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in 1973. And Nixon and his administration opposed an earlier version of the measure and then sought to have the military withdrawal deadline extended. None of which absolves Eisenhower, then Kennedy, then Johnson for progressively ratcheting up the war and death in those countries.

It’s been six years – how long will the blame continue?

As George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” And so the blame will continue forever, if history has anything to say, and if we are to keep ourselves from getting ourselves stuck in yet another quagmire in the future. Actions have consequences, and those consequences can last years, decades, centuries, millennia. Why are you so eager to forget how we got to where we are?

This is the reason I don’t engage in conversation with you.

I asked a quite reasonable question of you. You have a pattern of wanting to just let the past slip on by, and I’m genuinely curious as to why this is the case. Why do you want to absolve Bush of blame just six years on? Why don’t you want Lalo to post comic strips of two-weeks-old news items? Is it simply that you are purely future-focused, figuring the pragmatic thing to do is to just move forward from the situation we’re presented in the here and now?

And let’s assume I didn’t understand something you’ve said. Well, which part was it? And might there have been a better way for you to communicate so that you would be understood?

As for “parsing the bejeebers” out of things, well, if you’re going to make a public argument, you should probably be prepared for someone to try picking it apart. At which point you can strengthen your argument, acknowledge you were wrong, or refute the counter-argument. That’s how knowledge gets made and refined. Or you can take your ball away and go home, which it seems like you’re doing.

By the way, you’re the one who began the ad hominems today, seeking to disqualify my arguments by attributing them to a “liberal bias.”

And let’s parse that “tired platitudes” statement. Are you saying that historical facts are “tired platitudes”? Because as far as today goes, that’s what I “filled” my posts with. But sure, go ahead and toss around your usual complaints and ad hominems—it simply demonstrates that you feel your arguments are weak.

Yes all Pres’s make blunders and I pardon no one. The one large blunder Obama has made is to act in a way that the world perceives as weak. In the world today that is definitely not a wise move, as we are seeing by how far Russia and ISIS are willing to push.