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mrmitchell
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quote:
I think it's pretty damn close in war time. |
Makes Bush's 51%-49% a goddamn miracle, doesn't it?
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GePap
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of the Big Apple
Nov 2001
time: 23:21
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quote:
Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
I threw in a few cheap shots I'll be the first to admit but there is an underlying point here.
OBL says in the end the US will give in and he's looking at history when he says it. |
Sorry, but I dare you to name a single war since WW2 were the Uk or France have deployed 100,000 plus troops for more than a few years which lead to no serious accrimony?
The only war I can think of that the French sent that many men to have been Indochina, which the French lost, and Algeria, which the French also lost, and which caused immense political upheavals in France.
Since 1945 i don;t think the UK has deployed 100,000 men anywhere for combat. Certainly the Uk fought some LONG anti-insurgency campaigns, but they were relatively small ones, like Malayia, or seevral long actions in Africa.
So comparing the Anglo-French experience since 1945 to the US one does not really compute.
As for what Osama says- his people could NEVER even take out one of the current repressive regimes in the ME, so claiming they can beat the US really means nothing.The Us has been in Afghanistan for close to 4 years now, probably for several more, and you hear very little about it because the Us can certainly afford without much thought having 10,000 men in a mission for half a decade or more.
Iraq was only ever tangentially related to the war on terror, and the fact is that the notion of a war to 'spread dmeocracy" is a pretty damn well contientious one to begin with, so of course the admin. will face political pressure, specially given how badly they have done in the first place.
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Imran Siddiqui
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The Potterverse
Jan 1970
time: 00:21
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quote:
Originally posted by DanS
Roosevelt had 17, 24, and 10 point spreads in '32, '36, and '40, respectively. A 7 point spread is '44 is miniscule in comparison. |
So, since he kicked ass less in '44, that means it was a 'close' race?
It's like when two NFL teams get together and one team beats the other by 50, 32, and 24 points, and then the fourth time wins by 17, and someone calls it a close game! 
Once again, was G.H.W. Bush's victory of Dukakis 'close'?
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shawnmmcc
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The problem is that we are a Republic, a bastard cross between a parliamentary democracy and an oligarchy. When the public has been prepared for the war, as in WW2 and even WW1, there tends to be a fair degree of staying power. However, when the war is started without public support, or under false pretenses that get revealed it if last long enough, then there is trouble.
The people can vote in a Republic, and even though the accountability cycle can take up to six years, eventually politicians who pushed for a war without real public support (versus manufactured), can loose their office. The same occurs, as in Gulf 2, if the war/occupation lasts long enough, as any false pretenses sooner or later get revealed. If the war is still in progress when they are revealed, it can land the involved party in a boatload of trouble.
Gulf 1 for example had no false pretenses, it was sold as a very precisely limited operation, and it stayed exactly that. It did not loose Bush Sr. the election, IMHO. In fact he had very high approval numbers at it's conclusion, and if the election had been run then, he probably would have won.
In most Parliamentary Democracies, no one party controls the government, and so you often have a coalition in charge. They also can be forced into immediate elections via various Parliamentary outcomes, as in the (in)famous "Vote of No Confidence". So unless they have a very firm position, like Tony Blair, many Parliamentary Democracies are going to be very cautious about going to war without strong public support, as they can be booted out very rapidly. This accounts for many of the observed differences.
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Lancer
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Oregon Coast, USA! or Bohol, Philippines!
Apr 1999
time: 05:21
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When I was a kid I had to walk miles to school through all sorts of weather. My grandfather had to fell trees in Switzerland with an ax and drag them out of the forest with a team of horses to feed his mill. A hundred and 50 years ago 91.3% of all Americans lived on a farm and worked their asses off. The farther back you go, until you reach a certain point a couple of hundred years ago, the stronger and more self reliant, hard headed and obstinate people become. That's why you can have a 'hundred years war'. Those people didn't know how to quit. Also, I don't agree that it's just the US, but pretty much everywhere to some extent.
'91.3%' I plucked this outa my buttocks btw.
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27-06-2005 09:58
You're a funny guy, Dan.
) and they want to fight wars they can win (e.g., Gulf War I but not Vietnam). As I said above, I think the increasing disenchantment with Iraq is that it was sold as both of these things -- a war worth fighting and a war we can win -- but both these premises are now very open to question, and the administration has done very little to counteact this because they never admit to any errors in judgment, ever.
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