Let's see, it was almost exactly 8 years ago, on April 3, 2001, that an American Spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter plane over Chinese territory and was forced to make an emergency landing in China. The pilot of the Chinese fighter was killed.
The American airmen were taken prisoner and George Bush Jr. was faced with his first international crisis.
As the crisis dragged on, with American statements of beligerance clouding the murky reality of Chinese/American relations, did we hear anything like the constant drone of criticism and outright projections of failure that Barack Obama has faced during the Somoli Pirate incident?
Did the opposition wish for his failure?
At the same time, as The Bush administration tried to project a strong offensive image to the Chinese, they were conducting negotiations with China with the World Trade Organization.
The mixture of beligerant demands for the immediate release of the airmen only hardened the Chinese stance in the trade talks and their resolve to only turn over the airmen after an apology.
Let's face it, no matter how many Americans felt about Bush at the time, he had the support of the nation.
The resolution of the crisis resulted in the release of the airmen only after a formal apology for the invasion of Chinese sovereign airspace and restitution.
If Bush had been subjected to the same standard that Obama is being subjected to now and his actions were judged the way the conservative press is judging Obama, the out cry of treason would have been ringing loudly from every television tuned to FOX!
For that matter, the problem of the Somoli Pirates has been escalating for the last few years and as the incidents occurred, we had only statements from the Bush administration about the delicacy of the situation and since their attention was elsewhere, it festered and grew into the erupting problem we are dealing with today.
So, 8 years later, Barack Obama was handed his first foreign policy "crisis". He seemed to ignore all of the criticism and acted cooly and got results. He efficiently interacted with the military and the orders which enabled the navy to take action with the pirates had already been in effect since February.
He passed his first foreign policy "crisis" test to the chagrin of all of the conservative pundits, who are still second guessing the action.
As far as I can see, George Bush Jr. flubbed his first test and really screwed up the second by ignoring the intelligence which led to a certain terrorist attact in New York City a few months later.
3 comments:
The thing about this whole piracy issue is why aren't we doing the obvious - Contacting the ninjas!!!???
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_versus_Ninjas
Microdot said,
“He efficiently interacted with the military and the orders which enabled the navy to take action with the pirates had already been in effect since February.”
From Engineer of Knowledge,
Hello Microdot,
As an old Navy guy who ended up with MIUW 604 (Mobile Inshore Underwater Warfare) myself, I took great pride on my President’s decisive action and the Navy personal responsible for carrying those orders. All were very professional. As we said in the Navy, “Bravo Zulu!” which means, “Job Well Done.”
Microdot went on to said,
“He passed his first foreign policy "crisis" test to the chagrin of all of the conservative pundits, who are still second guessing the action.
As far as I can see, George Bush Jr. flubbed his first test and really screwed up the second by ignoring the intelligence which led to a certain terrorist attack in New York City a few months later.”
Engineer of Knowledge’s addition to the above statement;
All one has to do to collaborate Microdot’s statement is to look up Condoleezza Rice’s own statements under oath at the 9/11 hearings; where she admitted that George Tenet, head of the CIA, and Richard Clarke, the anti-terrorism czar, had been trying to warn the new W. Bush administration month after month for eight months total; that the Trade Towers were going to be attacked by Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda group, but the Bush administration shelved the reports and refused to even schedule a meeting to discuss their warnings with Tenet and Clarke. As Condoleezza’s statement under oath, and under penalty of law testified, “Because they did not think that the warnings should be assigned any higher priority.”
Yes, the old infrastructure workings of the intelligent community performed very well identifying and passing on the warnings. But because the W. Bush administration failed miserably to take heed of the warnings and protect this country, their reaction was to find a way to divert the true blame from themselves. Yes the conclusion they were able to present to the U.S. population was that citizens of the U.S. had too many civil liberties so the “Patriot Act” was passed. They removed those rights that the icons of our founding fathers, like Franklin and Jefferson whom made sure there were the first 10 amendments to our constitution, because obviously they were wrong. I am sure our founding fathers would be outraged at what the last Republican Administration, enabled by the Republican majority Congress, and Senate that passed the anti-American values legislation called the “Patriot Act.” This group of incompetents that voted to overturn the values that this country was founded and based upon, will go down in history as the most corrupt, worst of the worst. This is why the Republican’s lost the last two national elections. Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and you can fool some of the people all of the time. But you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”
So in conclusion, when the blowhards like Dick Cheney, Savage, Hannity, Limbaugh, Fox (Ha Ha) News, etc. want to tell citizens of the U.S. on how Obama is putting this country in danger, they should just look at their own recent past history of failures and keep their mouths shut. But on the other hand, these conservative, talking heads need to keep putting forth their disinformation just to keep their mindless followers nodding their empty bobble heads.
Truth is I feel very sorry for these stupid, ignorant, souls that can be so easily led down these conservative viewpoint paths of lies.
Mr. Engineer!
It is so good to hear from you!
I hope Blogger gets its act together and stops screwing with this blog.
I have to send you a longer email!
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