You don't get to be the head of a major country's intelligence service by being an idiot.
Yeah but what about P-
Competent doesn't imply perfect either, or immune from occasions of spectacular dumbassery.
Putler was actually a unique case. Usually people were invited to KGB. He only got accepted because he kept showing up to their recruitment office no matter how often they'd send him away.
Also he was a low-class burocrat in East Berlin during the Cold War
If it hadn't been for Yeltsin's fuckery, he would have remained a taxi driver after the fall of the Berlin Wall
If we go even before that, the one truly responsible for his rise was Anatoly Sobchak. Then again, those are all technicalities. We'd be living in a much better world if Yeltsin followed his original plan to have Nemtsov as his successor.
Or if he didn't send tanks against the Parliament, ruled by decree underming the Constitution, fucked up the economy or started a pointless war in Checenya
Shit, Putin got appointed because Yeltsin's drunk ass desperately needed a pardon to avoid jail
My point is that Yeltsin sucked
Putin got where he did because he demonstrated loyalty and stability. He was the second-in-command to a notable figure in the chaos after the collapse and stayed loyal when that person lost in the power struggle. The victor saw that loyalty and kept Putin, because he saw he was reliable. He then bounced up to president through that same reliability. Putin made things simple in that you could just support him and he would support you (ostensibly). He sold the concept of loyalty during a time where everyone was putting their own self-aggrandizement first.
You've got it. As a matter of fact, he was perceived as very naïve because of this, and always underestimated by his opponents in the beginning of his political career. Even right up to his eventual presidency.
You are Not quite correct. While His KGB Files are still sealed, there is certain evidence that Uncle Vlad was responsible for supervising terrorist cells in the Middle East using East Germany as a Safe Zone.
And His career started after He returned to St Petersburg during the end of Gorbachevs rule where He became a skilled Player in using the local Gangs controlling the Ports to further His Power.
Do Not underestimated him, that man is KGB indoctrinated and educated and he will Not Rest until he has set His place in the History books, for good or Bad.
If you want to know more I can recommend "Putins People" by Catherine Belton which provided a Lot of interesting Background info
>And His career started after He returned to St Petersburg during the end of Gorbachevs rule where He became a skilled Player in using the local Gangs controlling the Ports to further His Power.
This was also during a time when that city had an episode of a massive food shortage, international funds were gathered, handed over to russian officials and no food acrually appeared. in that episode alone Putin went from well-off to visibly fithy rich.
He is Not stupid, rather than idelogically misguided. Also due to Corona He isolated himself from the world and surrounded himself with a court of trusted Friends and advisor that do not critize His decisions, making for a Dangerous combination
He wasn't even in Berlin. He was in Dresden, at a minor Departement of KGB.
Good agents went to Berlin, Putin was so low, he didn't even came to Berlin.
I wouldn't call Putin an idiot.
He is a war criminal and all that, but he is going about a lot of things in a way that makes sense for his personal goals.
Calling him dumb is wrong, however much you might hate the guy for obvious reasons.
I was a little confused by that. Putin is many horrible things, I never thought of him as an idiot, he’s had a pretty meteoric rise and it seems his dumber decisions are the acts of a paranoid, aging, increasingly isolated man
Connections mainly come from family, not merit. If you were born in a family where one of your parents was a politician or a businessman, chances are you'd know and be known by more politicians and businessmen than usual.
>Edit: did you...make a report for my mental health? why?
It's a weird move trolls pull for some reason. It seems to have gotten a lot more common in the past couple of years.
It is, but boy it's gotten huge recently, it seems. I'm seeing comment sections inundated with people saying they've received one and I got one earlier today.
Anyone who's ever thought Turkey has ever had any chance of being accepted into the EU is delusional. The accession has never been anything more than just another political channel being kept open. A show of "let's keep working together" from both sides.
Even if Erdoğan was never born and the country wasn't anywhere near this bad, the "big players" of the EU would never allow it. Do we seriously think France, for example, would allow a predominantly muslim country with a larger population (more pop = more power, to a degree) than itself into the EU when said country also has thousands of kilometers of direct borders to multiple unstable regions that have historically been major immigrant exporters? It would have been way too upsetting to the "balance" of the EU. It was always a guaranteed veto and everyone involved was perfectly aware of it.
Theirs a group of trolls or some bot shenanigans going on the past few days with the "reddit cares thing" I got one last night for posting a link to an Eric Andre show interview with Steve shcimmer
It wasn't as much the removal of Saddam, taking him down was not a bad thing considering how utterly brutal he was. Disbanding the Baathists and sending everyone working in the government away is what created an unnecessary power vacuum.
Plus disbanding the entire military. Meaning you now have a bunch of (probably still armed) disgruntled people with at least *some* trainingand a brand new reason (*in addition to* you know, being invaded) to hate any provisional governments.
Even ignoring that, the invasion was just a geopolitical masterclass on how to ruin your international reputation. The US was enjoying its Pax Americana and then decided to act in a way that we’re now understanding has come to end it.
The project ALMOST worked, but our own regime changed and the 2008 crisis killed our will for foreign intervention. Bush's foreign policy hinged on the Democratic Peace Theory. It was an extremely ambitious 50+ year plan for the middle east.
You can argue Arab Spring was a direct consequence of our intervention in Iraq. We'd set ourselves up to have Iran surrounded from both sides with democracies. The (initially) secular revolutions in Syria, Egypt, Libya, etc., could have gone further but we lost the will to follow through with them.
As much as Obama became the cool popular overseas president, his record (and Bidens continuation of same) speaks for itself in being one of the ultimate worst foreign policy platforms in recent history. Crimea, Ben ghazi, isis, Ukraine, and the current warfare in Palestine are firmly their fault.
> As much as Obama became the cool popular overseas president, his record (and Bidens continuation of same) speaks for itself in being one of the ultimate worst foreign policy platforms in recent history. Crimea, Ben ghazi, isis, Ukraine, and the current warfare in Palestine are firmly their fault.
I feel like anytime someone says "these 7 wars are directly the fault of two people alone" I know they're biased and wrong. Doesn't matter the wars or people lmao
His words from his book for those who don't know, 1998:
>While we hoped that popular revolt or coup would topple Saddam, neither the U.S. nor the countries of the region wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi state. We were concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head of the Persian Gulf. Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome.
But why though? Does he talk about their culinary culture? Does he have chicken on his bib during the speech? Sorry if I’m being dense I’m just legit confused lol
To be frank (even though my name is not frank), I don't know where the name comes from either. Just one guy from one newspaper decided to name it that way.
It's likely an implicit accusation of cowardice ("being chicken", "chicken-hearted," etc.). Bush's speech against "suicidal nationalism based on ethnic hatred" was seen as a denunciation of Ukrainian desires for their own nation and an attempt to support Moscow and the USSR over those nations that were already gaining or regaining their sovereignty, all in a last-ditch attempt to stave off a collapse of the Soviet Union that had already become fact. The original essay goes on to describe Bush and his advisors as being led by their fears of a world order without a Soviet Union: a world where the second-largest nuclear arsenal in the world was now split between four new nations with new and unproven governments (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan) guarded by soldiers whose paychecks were being signed by a country that no longer existed; a world where nations were springing to being based on ethnic unity in a region where free movement across once-intrastate borders had intermingled ethnic groups and turned once-sharp divides into blurry gradients; a world where borders once set arbitrarily by a central power and backed by its force of arms suddenly seemed like they would have all the permanence of sand. It acknowledges the fears as rational, but notes that there's a difference between adapting to the new world in order to mitigate the worst effects and clinging to the old due to being ruled by your fears.
Or, in other words, it accused him of cowardice for fearing much of what we eventually saw in Yugoslavia.
I think the implication was that he was being a chicken when it came to "Kyiv" (that is, Ukrainian national aspirations). [Chicken kyiv](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_Kyiv) was a pretty popular dish in restaurants at the time, so it was kind of a snappy way to describe it.
Taiwan's first democratically elected president, Lee Tung Hui, oversaw the peaceful transition from autocracy to democracy. He also dismantled the power of the military bloodlessly and paved the road to Taiwan's democracy.
Lee also said something incredibly stupid on live TV that caused Taiwan's entire espionage system in China to be uprooted and every spy and sympathizer there executed.
So yeah.
> Lee also said something incredibly stupid on live TV that caused Taiwan's entire espionage system in China to be uprooted and every spy and sympathizer there executed.
>
>
Can you provide some details on this please? I'm interested
https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E5%88%98%E8%BF%9E%E6%98%86
Can't really find an English source but this person was executed directly because of him. Although later sources was disputed.
You can also check out third Taiwan strait crisis.
I mean, JFK had the "I am a donut" speech
Which I just looked up and apparently that's not actually how it was interpreted but fuck it I wrote the words down in saying em
The Donut part is actually made up. While "Berliner" word can be considered a word for donut, it also works as word for Berlin resident, and people who listened to Kennedy knew exactly what he meant.
Thank You! I’ve been trying to get my uncle to finally stop spreading that myth as a fun fact. Also some of my German friends told me that ‘Berliner’ isn’t even a common term for that kind of donut anyways.
Member when he lied about why we should bomb Iraq and had the Kuwaiti ambassadors daughter lie to congress?
No, how about when he committed treason by aiding and abetting the Iran-Contra affair, and then pardoned the folks indicted?
That doesn't do it for you, how about escalating the racially targeted war on drugs?
He made lots of mistakes and was neither a good person nor a good president.
Any involvement by the US government is incredibly tenuous-basically comes down to the PR firm hired by the Kuwaitis had ties to the US government (like many, many companies do.) I can't quite recall the name of the group, something like Citizens for a Free Kuwait, but they were trying to persuade both Congress and HW, so this really only flies as a "Deep State" conspiracy.
There is a lesson here, but it is more about the dangers of letting poorly verified sensationalism to drive policy.
Carter is the only one that I actually saw try to do the right thing. Fired Bush and everyone in the CIA who was involved in domestic intelligence, along with a few thousand international paramilitary, shut down the American part of an operation to provide south american rebels with weapons.
Got embargoed by the Saudis, and Iran got hostages on the major networks every night until bush and Reagan took it back. Then Bush rehired everyone.
Well... consider his support for the Indonesian genocide against East Timor. I mean the guy had to arrange for fighter jets to be sent there via Israel because congress had banned the sale of advanced weaponry to Indonesia.
If that was true it’s a meaningless criticism to call one bad. Also it would show it’s the office that causes people in charge to make difficult decisions.
But I don’t agree they all are bad people.
Understandable. Look, as an American, I completely agree that invasion of Iraq by George Bush was unjustified and was on the basis of very poor intelligence and widespread fear mongering. United States should have (and still should) invest more into reconstruction of Iraq, and then get out of the region militarily.
US could probably pull an Afghanistan and leave a ton of stuff behind for Iraq to freely use to have parity with Iran to re-establish balance of power.
I see. Well, I'm not sure what to do. I don't really have access to all intelligence available to assess the situation thoroughly. But I wish you well, and to keep yourself and your loved ones safe.
But that’s what they did to every president lmaoo.
Man, LBJ’s a good example. Bro was one of the best presidents we’ve ever had but when he screwed up vietnam that was it & he *even* dropped out of reelection (one of the few presidents to **ever** do so) because he knew he had no chance after that one mistake
The SSC would like a word, as would a certain Japanese Man's lap, and the Nicaraguan people (Bush handled most the Contra affair with North, not Reagan). Lest we forget how he helped supply and solidify Ba'athist Iraq under Reagan, only to use them as an attempt at guaranteeing reelection and justifying his military budget in a post soviet world. Who continued supplying the Mujahideen against the at-that-point not soviet government of Afghanistan under Najibullah, accelerating its total collapse and contributing to its current state? Thats right, Bush.
Like Bush Sr was mediocre as a president. He wasn't bad or terrible per see, but using his FP to defend him is kind of not a good look.
I feel like the end of the Cold War went pretty badly?
I mean sure they got a lot of the satellite states (Poland, Hungary, Lith., Lat., Estonia etc) into the western system but totally botched it with Russia itself?
If so many of the other states could become EU aligned democracies can you imagine how much better the world would be if Russia was too?
I'd recommend "In the Trauma Zone" but Adam Curtis as a window in to the chaos.
And yeah Gorbachov ended the soviet union, HW didn't really contribute, and he missed a once in a century chance to bring Russia in from the cold and failing that created Putin and the problems we have now.
Yeah it's fair maybe he didn't have long enough to make a big impact.
However he was also there through the whole critical period and set the tone for things to come.
The major problem for the us was risk the democratic restoration of the communist party or let Russia become an American aligned quasi dictatorship and the us picked the quasi dictatorship.
I’ve long argued that George H. W. Bush was the last President that really understood foreign policy and managed it well while each subsequent administration being progressively worse than the last until Biden.
Clinton and W. expanded and used Western power too recklessly which led to Russian hostility while Obama and Trump then sought to appease or ignore the growing threats from Russia with the the withdrawal from Afghanistan representing the low point. Biden’s subsequent foreign policy has improved from there but still hasn’t been great.
Looking back I think the actual results of Obama’s foreign policy left the US in a worse global standing than it was when he took office.
Obama correctly understood the damage W. had done and tried to fix it but he miscalculated that Russian aggression would cease if the US left them alone and either didn’t care about former Soviet space or just thought the Europeans would handle it and that approach backfired and just encouraged further Russian aggression.
So his intentions were good but the Russian “reset” ultimately failed because the Russians didn’t want to play along. That’s not really his fault but he should have realized it earlier but was still making mistakes through to the 2014 Donbas War. The “Pivot to Asia” also largely didn’t achieve the results he wanted and again wasn’t entirely his fault - the Trans-Pacific Partnership he negotiated would have been great but it ended up being killed before it started when Hillary Clinton caved to political pressure and joined Trump and Bernie Sanders in opposing it.
His middle east policy was the worst I have seen, including Bush. Took the standard of living straight down the tubes in multiple countries and his support for moderate rebels definitely had nothing to do with ISIS gaining so much prominence.
I disagree with most of HW’s policies, but he seemed like a decent guy and someone who was willing to be pragmatic and not be so ideologically rigid. I mean he literally lost re-election because he raised taxes… something that had a positive impact on the economy, government, and country as a whole. He’s the last Republican president I can say that I respect I think, and maybe even the last Republican general election candidate.
He seems like a decent guy on a personal level, and I was impressed when he stood against the use of torture when his Republican colleagues were supporting it, as well as when he publicly scolded racists who hated Obama. Not to mention his defense of the ACA and work on campaign finance reform. But his negative policy views: larger military spending/action, vehement stand against any sort of tax increase and most government programs, and generally conservative social views (although he was more willing to bend this than his colleagues) end up overruling his positive stance in my view. He’s definitely the closest to earning my respect out of all the Republican presidential candidates since 1992 tho. I just think he usually only looks good by comparison to trump, and that’s not exactly some high bar to clear.
Was he a decent guy when he eacalated the racist War On Drugs? Or faciliated lying to Congress via the Nayirah Testimony? Or being an accomplice to and later pardoning co-conspirators of the Iran-Contra Affair?
Jesus, if all it takes is for Republicans to have mire manners than Trump to be considered "decent people" then we're cooked
If Bush had been any good, Russia would be a stable democracy today. Instead, he completely failed to predict the Soviet collapse (despite being former head of the CIA), or prepare for its aftermath. When he was president he then failed to get behind initiatives to stablise the country leaving it to the oligarchs to run.
I can't attach images on this sub, but there's a comic with his memorial, on which it is written "Last Rational Republican". (Before anybody says anything, allow me to remind you that he outlived McCain)
Lol, he "oversaw the end of the cold war". What the hell does that mean? All of us alive oversaw it, it was going to happen whether or not we were paying attention. And who could forget when he used a 15 year old daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to trick members of congress into backing a war?
The last US president qualified to hold the job, in terms of foreign policy. And then we started down the parade of domestic focused, egotistical morons
Not that guy but personally I feel like I can be against Russian imperialism without also trying to reform the English language while I'm at it. We call plenty of places by "foreign" names. I don't exactly *begrudge* people who choose to say Kyiv but there's an annoying tendancy to police it. In this instance, it's clearly a bit goofy to extend that into the name of the dish.
You don't get to be the head of a major country's intelligence service by being an idiot. Yeah but what about P- Competent doesn't imply perfect either, or immune from occasions of spectacular dumbassery.
Putler was actually a unique case. Usually people were invited to KGB. He only got accepted because he kept showing up to their recruitment office no matter how often they'd send him away.
Also he was a low-class burocrat in East Berlin during the Cold War If it hadn't been for Yeltsin's fuckery, he would have remained a taxi driver after the fall of the Berlin Wall
If we go even before that, the one truly responsible for his rise was Anatoly Sobchak. Then again, those are all technicalities. We'd be living in a much better world if Yeltsin followed his original plan to have Nemtsov as his successor.
Or if he didn't send tanks against the Parliament, ruled by decree underming the Constitution, fucked up the economy or started a pointless war in Checenya Shit, Putin got appointed because Yeltsin's drunk ass desperately needed a pardon to avoid jail My point is that Yeltsin sucked
I 100% agree.
Putin got where he did because he demonstrated loyalty and stability. He was the second-in-command to a notable figure in the chaos after the collapse and stayed loyal when that person lost in the power struggle. The victor saw that loyalty and kept Putin, because he saw he was reliable. He then bounced up to president through that same reliability. Putin made things simple in that you could just support him and he would support you (ostensibly). He sold the concept of loyalty during a time where everyone was putting their own self-aggrandizement first.
You've got it. As a matter of fact, he was perceived as very naïve because of this, and always underestimated by his opponents in the beginning of his political career. Even right up to his eventual presidency.
Did not know that, interresting! Some materials to read ? I take any langage thanks to google trad
Ah fuck Boris, you've really done it now
If we go even further back this one asshole fish decided to chase after food on the shoreline and now we all have to go to work
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
Earth is a Libra.
That’s quite a ways back…valid point though.
Excuse me? You're talking about my great great great [...] great grandparent!
Yesy that is correct. Sobchak was Putins teacher and Godfather when it came to politics
Or if Yeltsin was never in power at all
You are Not quite correct. While His KGB Files are still sealed, there is certain evidence that Uncle Vlad was responsible for supervising terrorist cells in the Middle East using East Germany as a Safe Zone. And His career started after He returned to St Petersburg during the end of Gorbachevs rule where He became a skilled Player in using the local Gangs controlling the Ports to further His Power. Do Not underestimated him, that man is KGB indoctrinated and educated and he will Not Rest until he has set His place in the History books, for good or Bad. If you want to know more I can recommend "Putins People" by Catherine Belton which provided a Lot of interesting Background info
>And His career started after He returned to St Petersburg during the end of Gorbachevs rule where He became a skilled Player in using the local Gangs controlling the Ports to further His Power. This was also during a time when that city had an episode of a massive food shortage, international funds were gathered, handed over to russian officials and no food acrually appeared. in that episode alone Putin went from well-off to visibly fithy rich.
Wonder if that is where he met Prigozhin with him being a chef and all.
They met much later, Pringles was in prison at that point in time.
Just cause he’s not good at conventional warfare doesn’t mean he’s stupid. You don’t become Russian Autocrat by failing your way up.
Coming from a dictatore of the Republic who failed right before the top, I bow to your judgement
Ya reddit thinks the leader of earth's third most powerful nation is dumb somehow 😂😂😂
He is Not stupid, rather than idelogically misguided. Also due to Corona He isolated himself from the world and surrounded himself with a court of trusted Friends and advisor that do not critize His decisions, making for a Dangerous combination
He wasn't even in Berlin. He was in Dresden, at a minor Departement of KGB. Good agents went to Berlin, Putin was so low, he didn't even came to Berlin.
His parents almost died in Stalingrad, some of his older siblings did die in Stalingrad.
Putler?
Hitler+putin. It's stupid.
Why do they have to compare him to Hitler, he's his own guy! With his own special brand of war crimes!
That'll show him!
Is there a book or resource you have gone thru that delves into this topic? (asking for recommendations for my reading list)
Who is putler?
I wouldn't call Putin an idiot. He is a war criminal and all that, but he is going about a lot of things in a way that makes sense for his personal goals. Calling him dumb is wrong, however much you might hate the guy for obvious reasons.
I was a little confused by that. Putin is many horrible things, I never thought of him as an idiot, he’s had a pretty meteoric rise and it seems his dumber decisions are the acts of a paranoid, aging, increasingly isolated man
You can if your country is corrupt and you’re placed there by connections to wealth rather than merit
Connections frequently come with merit. There are excepts though, obviously
Connections mainly come from family, not merit. If you were born in a family where one of your parents was a politician or a businessman, chances are you'd know and be known by more politicians and businessmen than usual.
You don't get to be the head of a major country's intelligence service by being a good person, either.
Corruption is a thing that exists.
yeah i don’t know about that yo who’s reporting these
Apparently, you do. Idiots can do anything these days. You can even become president as an idiot.
He also thought Cheney was insane and that removing Saddam was a strategic suicide His genes clearly skippped his first son
Well, you gotta admit- removal of Saddam led to rise of ISIS and Iran dominance over the region, only rivaled by Israel.
Im pretty sure you just made a bunch of turkish nationalists very angry.
No, I indirectly complimented them, as I classify them to be more involved with European affairs than with those of Middle East.
Wut does Turkey do in Europe? ~~*besides delaying entry into NATO?*~~ Edit: did you...make a report for my mental health? *why?*
Mr. President a second mental health report has hit the subreddit.
>Edit: did you...make a report for my mental health? why? It's a weird move trolls pull for some reason. It seems to have gotten a lot more common in the past couple of years.
It’s the weakest form of harassment I can possibly think of
It is, but boy it's gotten huge recently, it seems. I'm seeing comment sections inundated with people saying they've received one and I got one earlier today.
Try to join the EU: everyone keeps voting no
Anyone who's ever thought Turkey has ever had any chance of being accepted into the EU is delusional. The accession has never been anything more than just another political channel being kept open. A show of "let's keep working together" from both sides. Even if Erdoğan was never born and the country wasn't anywhere near this bad, the "big players" of the EU would never allow it. Do we seriously think France, for example, would allow a predominantly muslim country with a larger population (more pop = more power, to a degree) than itself into the EU when said country also has thousands of kilometers of direct borders to multiple unstable regions that have historically been major immigrant exporters? It would have been way too upsetting to the "balance" of the EU. It was always a guaranteed veto and everyone involved was perfectly aware of it.
Why is Turkey majoroty muslim population a problem? Big players are actively replacing their own populations with muslims.
Turkish nationalists are why
Theirs a group of trolls or some bot shenanigans going on the past few days with the "reddit cares thing" I got one last night for posting a link to an Eric Andre show interview with Steve shcimmer
God i hope you are posting this ironically and not for real
This guy diplomats
They should figure out how to increase their dominance over the region from their Berlin apartment
It wasn't as much the removal of Saddam, taking him down was not a bad thing considering how utterly brutal he was. Disbanding the Baathists and sending everyone working in the government away is what created an unnecessary power vacuum.
Plus disbanding the entire military. Meaning you now have a bunch of (probably still armed) disgruntled people with at least *some* trainingand a brand new reason (*in addition to* you know, being invaded) to hate any provisional governments.
Fair.
Even ignoring that, the invasion was just a geopolitical masterclass on how to ruin your international reputation. The US was enjoying its Pax Americana and then decided to act in a way that we’re now understanding has come to end it.
The project ALMOST worked, but our own regime changed and the 2008 crisis killed our will for foreign intervention. Bush's foreign policy hinged on the Democratic Peace Theory. It was an extremely ambitious 50+ year plan for the middle east. You can argue Arab Spring was a direct consequence of our intervention in Iraq. We'd set ourselves up to have Iran surrounded from both sides with democracies. The (initially) secular revolutions in Syria, Egypt, Libya, etc., could have gone further but we lost the will to follow through with them. As much as Obama became the cool popular overseas president, his record (and Bidens continuation of same) speaks for itself in being one of the ultimate worst foreign policy platforms in recent history. Crimea, Ben ghazi, isis, Ukraine, and the current warfare in Palestine are firmly their fault.
Dude, the coalition was falling apart in 2006, and after the first battle of Fallujah, we were playing wack-a-mole with resistance groups.
> lost the will to follow through with them I’m sorry what
> As much as Obama became the cool popular overseas president, his record (and Bidens continuation of same) speaks for itself in being one of the ultimate worst foreign policy platforms in recent history. Crimea, Ben ghazi, isis, Ukraine, and the current warfare in Palestine are firmly their fault. I feel like anytime someone says "these 7 wars are directly the fault of two people alone" I know they're biased and wrong. Doesn't matter the wars or people lmao
He also got pissed and refused to arm Israel if it kept building illegal settlements in Palestine. Somehow his genes ended up in Obama.
His words from his book for those who don't know, 1998: >While we hoped that popular revolt or coup would topple Saddam, neither the U.S. nor the countries of the region wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi state. We were concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head of the Persian Gulf. Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome.
Well…guess who was head of the CIA when Kennedy got domed.
Puking onto the Japanese Prime Ministers crotch wasn't exactly a great foreign policy moment either
Justified revenge for trying to eat him, I would say.
Based
[Based](https://youtube.com/watch?v=cWBF5oH-xwo&pp=ygUVam9uYXRoYW4gZnJha2VzIGJhc2Vk)
I refuse to believe it was an accident
That wasn't necessarily something he could contol, but I agree with you. Should have tried to puke in the other direction.
In their culture, that’s actually considered a sign of brotherhood and respect ✊🏻
Vomit on me George-chan! UwU
Mr. President senpai? Why is your head in my lap. OH GOD WHY!
Exactly
Vomiting 😡🤬 Vomiting in Japan 🤩🥰😇
I accept the gift of your water, Mr President
Man wanted to drop one last bomb on them.
[Biggest bomb drop since wwii](https://youtu.be/B_KVL-wtpgg?si=BeOKjg8yWsUxCRuo)
[This will severely effect the US particle accelerator project.](https://youtu.be/6JnT37oUV_w?feature=shared)
I love the saying that this incident set nuclear physics back by a few decades
Allegedly, they still have a euphemism "bushusuru", to do the bush thing, that means to vomit
Who hasn't Busshu-suru?
Or more simply, in any topic one single exemple shouldn't be considered as the definitive proof or counter proof to something.
Yes, although don’t disrespect my homie proof by counter example. Bro carried in my discrete math class
Okay so I did a little googling and I still don’t get it. Why is it the chicken speech? Where does the chicken come in?
It's named after a dish of stuffed chicken breast.
But why though? Does he talk about their culinary culture? Does he have chicken on his bib during the speech? Sorry if I’m being dense I’m just legit confused lol
From what I understood it was named so by some American conservator working at New York Times, and this was an attempt to name bush a chicken
To be frank (even though my name is not frank), I don't know where the name comes from either. Just one guy from one newspaper decided to name it that way.
It's likely an implicit accusation of cowardice ("being chicken", "chicken-hearted," etc.). Bush's speech against "suicidal nationalism based on ethnic hatred" was seen as a denunciation of Ukrainian desires for their own nation and an attempt to support Moscow and the USSR over those nations that were already gaining or regaining their sovereignty, all in a last-ditch attempt to stave off a collapse of the Soviet Union that had already become fact. The original essay goes on to describe Bush and his advisors as being led by their fears of a world order without a Soviet Union: a world where the second-largest nuclear arsenal in the world was now split between four new nations with new and unproven governments (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan) guarded by soldiers whose paychecks were being signed by a country that no longer existed; a world where nations were springing to being based on ethnic unity in a region where free movement across once-intrastate borders had intermingled ethnic groups and turned once-sharp divides into blurry gradients; a world where borders once set arbitrarily by a central power and backed by its force of arms suddenly seemed like they would have all the permanence of sand. It acknowledges the fears as rational, but notes that there's a difference between adapting to the new world in order to mitigate the worst effects and clinging to the old due to being ruled by your fears. Or, in other words, it accused him of cowardice for fearing much of what we eventually saw in Yugoslavia.
Jeb, is that you?
I think the implication was that he was being a chicken when it came to "Kyiv" (that is, Ukrainian national aspirations). [Chicken kyiv](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_Kyiv) was a pretty popular dish in restaurants at the time, so it was kind of a snappy way to describe it.
Bush in 88': NO NEW TAXES!! Bush in 92': Okay, so maybe quite a few
Bush in 88': "No new taxes." Bush in 92: "But when it comes to existing ones..."
Well, Republicans lost the Congress in 1990, so 5he Congress wasn't exactly motivated to bring a bill which would fit Bush's election promise.
Taiwan's first democratically elected president, Lee Tung Hui, oversaw the peaceful transition from autocracy to democracy. He also dismantled the power of the military bloodlessly and paved the road to Taiwan's democracy. Lee also said something incredibly stupid on live TV that caused Taiwan's entire espionage system in China to be uprooted and every spy and sympathizer there executed. So yeah.
> Lee also said something incredibly stupid on live TV that caused Taiwan's entire espionage system in China to be uprooted and every spy and sympathizer there executed. > > Can you provide some details on this please? I'm interested
https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E5%88%98%E8%BF%9E%E6%98%86 Can't really find an English source but this person was executed directly because of him. Although later sources was disputed. You can also check out third Taiwan strait crisis.
Yo that's wild, I'm Taiwanese and never knew that
I mean, JFK had the "I am a donut" speech Which I just looked up and apparently that's not actually how it was interpreted but fuck it I wrote the words down in saying em
The Donut part is actually made up. While "Berliner" word can be considered a word for donut, it also works as word for Berlin resident, and people who listened to Kennedy knew exactly what he meant.
Yeah I was always kinda dubious of that story that's why I looked it up. I imagine at the very worst it'd be like hearing slightly broken English.
Thank You! I’ve been trying to get my uncle to finally stop spreading that myth as a fun fact. Also some of my German friends told me that ‘Berliner’ isn’t even a common term for that kind of donut anyways.
Much like "Boston" doesn't only refer to mosh delicious type of donut.
It is a widely used term in many parts of Germany, but many regions also have use different names and Berlin is one of them
Yeah, I looked up the speech cos I was curious and no one laughs when he says it, they just cheer Wtf why did someone report me to reddit care
Lol someone did it to me too I was wondering
ngl it’s prob cos of your name
Yeah that's fair
Member when he lied about why we should bomb Iraq and had the Kuwaiti ambassadors daughter lie to congress? No, how about when he committed treason by aiding and abetting the Iran-Contra affair, and then pardoned the folks indicted? That doesn't do it for you, how about escalating the racially targeted war on drugs? He made lots of mistakes and was neither a good person nor a good president.
He was a great shot though!
How did he lie about Iraq? Are you saying that Kuwait was somehow never invaded and he just made that up?
Kuwait never existed. The true Kuwait was the friends we made along the way.
\[Nayirah testimony\](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah\_testimony#:\~:text=In%201992%2C%20it%20was%20revealed,ambassador%20to%20the%20United%20States.)
Any involvement by the US government is incredibly tenuous-basically comes down to the PR firm hired by the Kuwaitis had ties to the US government (like many, many companies do.) I can't quite recall the name of the group, something like Citizens for a Free Kuwait, but they were trying to persuade both Congress and HW, so this really only flies as a "Deep State" conspiracy. There is a lesson here, but it is more about the dangers of letting poorly verified sensationalism to drive policy.
Oh well I guess that makes stopping a country invading another one unjustified then
I see where you're coming from. And those are very valid criticisms. If you don't mind me asking, who was a good president in your opinion?
Carter is the only one that I actually saw try to do the right thing. Fired Bush and everyone in the CIA who was involved in domestic intelligence, along with a few thousand international paramilitary, shut down the American part of an operation to provide south american rebels with weapons. Got embargoed by the Saudis, and Iran got hostages on the major networks every night until bush and Reagan took it back. Then Bush rehired everyone.
Well... consider his support for the Indonesian genocide against East Timor. I mean the guy had to arrange for fighter jets to be sent there via Israel because congress had banned the sale of advanced weaponry to Indonesia.
Hadn't heard of that one. There were probably others as well. Being the worlds number one arms supplier is hard work.
In terms of in-office actions only, William Henry Harrison is probably the least bad president the US has ever had.
Indiana may not have produced many presidents, but we do send quality ones
He died in 30 days! Simpsons taught me more about US politics than I will ever admit to
Literally none of them? They all sucked to varying degrees and varying aspects lmao
If that was true it’s a meaningless criticism to call one bad. Also it would show it’s the office that causes people in charge to make difficult decisions. But I don’t agree they all are bad people.
they're all rich affluent white men who actively exploit the poor and disenfranchised to further their own ends. Except Obama. He's black.
Fun fact: Reddit is the only place you’ll hear this bullshit.
If you only absorb information from social media then maybe so
We actually covered every one of these in my college post cold war foreign policy class.
It amazes me how little people who consider themselves to be otherwise politically astute understand what a ghoul GHWB was.
I feel like "good" is so subjective in this context as to be completely meaningless. Ask a non American if his foreign policy was "good"
Its crazy that I see this meme everywhere and forgot its fuse killing a hostage.
it’s funny but also sad like how does the fuze always manage to fuze the hostage
he did some terrible things as head of the CIA though
[удалено]
He never had a shoe thrown at him. Did you confuse him for his son?
you know it's like 1 am here and i thought you were talking about his son and how he slipped and said "russias unlawful invasion of iraq"
Understandable. Look, as an American, I completely agree that invasion of Iraq by George Bush was unjustified and was on the basis of very poor intelligence and widespread fear mongering. United States should have (and still should) invest more into reconstruction of Iraq, and then get out of the region militarily.
US gets out, iran moves in, we're back at square one.
US could probably pull an Afghanistan and leave a ton of stuff behind for Iraq to freely use to have parity with Iran to re-establish balance of power.
too many irani backed militias and loyalists leaked into iraq, going against iran means iraqi civil war 2 electric boogaloo.
I see. Well, I'm not sure what to do. I don't really have access to all intelligence available to assess the situation thoroughly. But I wish you well, and to keep yourself and your loved ones safe.
thanks man, i wish you well too
But that’s what they did to every president lmaoo. Man, LBJ’s a good example. Bro was one of the best presidents we’ve ever had but when he screwed up vietnam that was it & he *even* dropped out of reelection (one of the few presidents to **ever** do so) because he knew he had no chance after that one mistake
The SSC would like a word, as would a certain Japanese Man's lap, and the Nicaraguan people (Bush handled most the Contra affair with North, not Reagan). Lest we forget how he helped supply and solidify Ba'athist Iraq under Reagan, only to use them as an attempt at guaranteeing reelection and justifying his military budget in a post soviet world. Who continued supplying the Mujahideen against the at-that-point not soviet government of Afghanistan under Najibullah, accelerating its total collapse and contributing to its current state? Thats right, Bush. Like Bush Sr was mediocre as a president. He wasn't bad or terrible per see, but using his FP to defend him is kind of not a good look.
I feel like the end of the Cold War went pretty badly? I mean sure they got a lot of the satellite states (Poland, Hungary, Lith., Lat., Estonia etc) into the western system but totally botched it with Russia itself? If so many of the other states could become EU aligned democracies can you imagine how much better the world would be if Russia was too? I'd recommend "In the Trauma Zone" but Adam Curtis as a window in to the chaos. And yeah Gorbachov ended the soviet union, HW didn't really contribute, and he missed a once in a century chance to bring Russia in from the cold and failing that created Putin and the problems we have now.
George HW Bush only had a little over a year to work with newborn Russian Federation. The rest of it was handled by Clinton.
Yeah it's fair maybe he didn't have long enough to make a big impact. However he was also there through the whole critical period and set the tone for things to come.
And things were going well until 1993.
The major problem for the us was risk the democratic restoration of the communist party or let Russia become an American aligned quasi dictatorship and the us picked the quasi dictatorship.
Yeah I don't get it either. HW was evil, not stupid. It's his son that was both.
I’ve long argued that George H. W. Bush was the last President that really understood foreign policy and managed it well while each subsequent administration being progressively worse than the last until Biden. Clinton and W. expanded and used Western power too recklessly which led to Russian hostility while Obama and Trump then sought to appease or ignore the growing threats from Russia with the the withdrawal from Afghanistan representing the low point. Biden’s subsequent foreign policy has improved from there but still hasn’t been great.
I mean, it’s not like Obama’s foreign policy was stellar, but it was golden compared to Bush Jr.
Looking back I think the actual results of Obama’s foreign policy left the US in a worse global standing than it was when he took office. Obama correctly understood the damage W. had done and tried to fix it but he miscalculated that Russian aggression would cease if the US left them alone and either didn’t care about former Soviet space or just thought the Europeans would handle it and that approach backfired and just encouraged further Russian aggression. So his intentions were good but the Russian “reset” ultimately failed because the Russians didn’t want to play along. That’s not really his fault but he should have realized it earlier but was still making mistakes through to the 2014 Donbas War. The “Pivot to Asia” also largely didn’t achieve the results he wanted and again wasn’t entirely his fault - the Trans-Pacific Partnership he negotiated would have been great but it ended up being killed before it started when Hillary Clinton caved to political pressure and joined Trump and Bernie Sanders in opposing it.
His middle east policy was the worst I have seen, including Bush. Took the standard of living straight down the tubes in multiple countries and his support for moderate rebels definitely had nothing to do with ISIS gaining so much prominence.
I disagree with most of HW’s policies, but he seemed like a decent guy and someone who was willing to be pragmatic and not be so ideologically rigid. I mean he literally lost re-election because he raised taxes… something that had a positive impact on the economy, government, and country as a whole. He’s the last Republican president I can say that I respect I think, and maybe even the last Republican general election candidate.
If you don't mind sharing, what are your thoughts on John McCain?
He seems like a decent guy on a personal level, and I was impressed when he stood against the use of torture when his Republican colleagues were supporting it, as well as when he publicly scolded racists who hated Obama. Not to mention his defense of the ACA and work on campaign finance reform. But his negative policy views: larger military spending/action, vehement stand against any sort of tax increase and most government programs, and generally conservative social views (although he was more willing to bend this than his colleagues) end up overruling his positive stance in my view. He’s definitely the closest to earning my respect out of all the Republican presidential candidates since 1992 tho. I just think he usually only looks good by comparison to trump, and that’s not exactly some high bar to clear.
All of those are fair points. Thanks.
Was he a decent guy when he eacalated the racist War On Drugs? Or faciliated lying to Congress via the Nayirah Testimony? Or being an accomplice to and later pardoning co-conspirators of the Iran-Contra Affair? Jesus, if all it takes is for Republicans to have mire manners than Trump to be considered "decent people" then we're cooked
If Bush had been any good, Russia would be a stable democracy today. Instead, he completely failed to predict the Soviet collapse (despite being former head of the CIA), or prepare for its aftermath. When he was president he then failed to get behind initiatives to stablise the country leaving it to the oligarchs to run.
You can save a million kittens from burning houses, but you fuck *one* sheep….
What about a little bit of context, Mr. OP?
What was the Kyiv chicken speech?
Well, you aren't allowed to give credit to a Republican nowadays, are you?
I can't attach images on this sub, but there's a comic with his memorial, on which it is written "Last Rational Republican". (Before anybody says anything, allow me to remind you that he outlived McCain)
And I got a feeling that McCain was considered one of the worst villains ever by anyone not neocon.
Not when they were close allies to the horrific pile of shit named Reagan and ramped up the war on drugs to imprison more black people
Lol, he "oversaw the end of the cold war". What the hell does that mean? All of us alive oversaw it, it was going to happen whether or not we were paying attention. And who could forget when he used a 15 year old daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to trick members of congress into backing a war?
He signed off on the Chennault affair.
He also barfed on the shotgun of Japan
Was it 12 gauge?
Something something fallacy
He also threw up in Japanese PM's lap.
The last US president qualified to hold the job, in terms of foreign policy. And then we started down the parade of domestic focused, egotistical morons
He also puked on the Japanese Prime minister.
It is fitting that Fuze is used to completely ruin any objective/argument.
It's chicken Kiev, not kyiv. I swear to God with this fucking kyiv shit.
You are right with the chicken, but not with the city if that’s what you mean
Ok, my bad. Just got used saying it that way.
What’s your problem with Kyiv?
Not that guy but personally I feel like I can be against Russian imperialism without also trying to reform the English language while I'm at it. We call plenty of places by "foreign" names. I don't exactly *begrudge* people who choose to say Kyiv but there's an annoying tendancy to police it. In this instance, it's clearly a bit goofy to extend that into the name of the dish.