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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (112627)	8/24/2003 11:26:20 PM
From: KonKilo	Respond to of 281500

Please point me to a post of yours, or any of the other critics who routinely post here, where they spoke approvingly of Bush after 9/11 and during our fight in Afghanistan? Actually, by 'here' I meant the US (I did not begin following FADG until about January 2003) and yes, I recall support for Bush following 9-11 and going into Afghanistan as being from a rather robust majority. I know I was a supporter until it became clear what Bush proposed to do to Iraq. Many of those who are still bitter about the election results, are fixated on anti-Bush posts. Bringing up the election the way you did, only serves to highlight that. I would hope that the electorate NEVER "gets over" the 2000 presidential election. It was more like something from a banana republic than from the leading democracy on the globe, and only by remembering it, do we guard against ever repeating it. You seem to be especially troubled by anti-Bush posts. Do you not believe in opposition? Personally, I think that opposition is the life blood of democracy.

To: greenspirit who wrote (112627)	8/25/2003 6:11:19 AM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I flew out of New York the day before 9/11. A day before that I was in Mexico city. On the morning of 9/11 I was on my way to Taiwan flying out of Honolulu. I was dealing with people from a dozen countries throughout Asia -- including countries with large Muslim populations such as Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines as well as other countries such as China, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Thailand, Vietnam, etc.. If you told me that we could have squandered the good will we were shown after 9/11 in a few short years I would have told you that was impossible -- what I did not foresee was the extent to which the White House would adopt a policy framework that was completely certain to alienate and antagonize almost the entire world. It was almost beyond belief and it was driven by ideology rather than a desire to improve our national security. I watched the towers fall in disbelief. Via phone and via email, expressions of the deepest sympathy poured into my home from that day forward. I could not believe the depth of the outpouring of feeling -- the support for the US took my breath away. I was truly amazed at the extent of support for the US in the wake of 9/11. Perhaps your problem is you just do not have any real contact with the world beyond the borders of the US -- I get that feeling with most people on this thread. I spend a lot of time outside the US -- I travel about 150,000 miles a year. All of that feeling of support is gone now -- all of it. It is a tragic. It is scandalous. The support did not disappear because of the passage of time, but because of the policy stance we ourselves chose to adopt. There is nothing that could possibly have been more effective in driving people in other counties away from us more that the policy choice we made and announced to the world -- unilateralism. We rolled out this policy under various names -- regime change was the first iteration -- a trial run at unilateralism. It became enshrined in the Bush Doctrine that now guides our every move. As a result of our unilateralist policies, we are isolated, stretched thin around the world and facing the world without support from key allies. This self-inflicted damage is shocking. It has substantially damaged our national security and crippled our leadership capacity. It is the reason why I waste my time talking to you on this thread.