Now you sound like one of those Bush lawyers who forgo logic for the fever...briefly:
[Re: Actually Bush didn't quite "invade" Afghanistan. He gave assistance to one of the local groups] When you bomb a nation you are at war with them. You can call it supporting the opposition all you want. I suppose one can always find someone who is happy to see the overthrow of a government, then all wars are in support of the opposition <vbg> And to top that off, we had a lot of boots on the ground (doesn't matter that they showed up after the bombing. That is standard.) And those boots carried and used guns. So no, Afghanistan was an invasion, no matter the ruse.
[Re: But on the other hand, when Obama pulled the last US troops out he declared that it was a victory and Iraq had been pacified] Politicians always declare victory when they have to back out of something. Are you suggesting that he was stupid to put the best spin on what he had to do? That is just PR. And are you honestly saying that pulling the troops out was dumber than sending them in?! Forget about the ball park, those two are not even on the same planet!
[Re: There's a lot to the word "financial".] Let me break it down for you, and I am trying to be brief. Firstly, it does not matter if we pay for the huge bill that Bush ran up through hard currency or if we devalue the dollar (which is really a huge tax on all USD denominated assets...so much for no taxes!). In the end we have to pay for that huge bill and the bill didn't end with the troop withdrawal, there is the long term obligations to the vets, the interest payments, the loss to the society in terms of blood and the psychologically dysfunctional troops, to say nothing of the lost opportunity cost. So the Bush bill is still on-going. Add that up and then add up your worst estimate of Obama Care and tell me how they compare.
The other point about the financials is this: Obama is a corrupt jackass for not sending anyone from Wall St. to prison. On the other hand, Bush handed them billions of dollars for nothing (and I am not going to argue about could-have/should-have/would-have scenarios that would have allowed Bush to pass the crash on to the next admin). The proper way to do it would have been to tell Wall St. "You guys F#c*d UP with a capital F and I and now I am going to do a F U you. Bankrupt companies are to be auctioned off (with US Government as a bidder) then firm them up and eventually auction them back to the private sector. Now you're going to poke holes into that procedure, and I won't argue about it. But there must have been a way to legally take the companies away (or as much of it as the market would bear) from the incompetent managers in exchange for firming them up.
Anyway, I think I will sign off SI before I get sucked into spending too much time here.
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