Do you want to relive the 1990s we are asked about Hillary and Jeb? Well, yes. Who wouldn't. They didn't start out all that well, but certainly gathered steam and had the greatest stock market ever with 5 yrs of 20% or more gains (Yes, a bubble, but it went on for years.). The Federal budget had positive cash flow for four straight years, once even without "borrowing" from Social Security. There was lots of job creation. We were even worried about paying off the Federal debt too fast! Remember that?
It had the only war won by air power alone without "boots on the ground" (Kosvo, remember that?).
The 90s had the only president (Bill Clinton) who didn't have a recession. In fact, the only president who didn't have a recession in his first term, but added the second term for good measure.
There was only a low-level war in Iraq called "drive by shootings" where our aircraft would take out radar installations. It began with president George H.W. Bush (Bush-41) kicking Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, but who was smart enough not to overthrow the Iraq government in the process. We only had a silly impeachment proceeding and the usual silly attacks on a president (e.g. the travel office, Whitewater, commodity futures), but, granted, these sorts of attacks have seemed to get worse with time.
It was the only period when I felt prosperous. My wife was yet to have a stroke, and we did a lot of travel. Even my being fired by the government in Al Gore's Reinventing America crusade ended up being more of a blessing in that I was no longer involved in being a Civil Servant "political football." Yes, I would take the 90s in a heartbeat.
Showing posts with label Kuwait. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kuwait. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Friday, February 27, 2015
THE FOUR POLITICAL DISASTERS
As I look back over my long life, I notice four major disastrous actions since WW-II.
The first happened under President Eisenhower when the CIA helped overthrew a duly elected democratic government in Iran* and our relations with Iran have gone downhill ever since. At the behest of the forerunner of BP (Anglo-Persian Oil Company), the British government requested that the U.S. overthrow the government of Mohammod Mosaddegh Defenders of Eisenhower say that the CIA went rogue in doing so and Eisenhower didn't know about it.
The second was when President Reagan failed to react militarily to the embassy attacks in Lebanon and Kuwait plus the Beirut Marine base bombing.** Instead he cut and ran which emboldened terrorists who concluded that the U.S. wouldn't react to their machinations which eventually led to the U.S. getting involved militarily in the quagmire of the Middle Eastern politics.
The third involved President George W. Bush (Bush-43) who got us involved militarily in the middle eastern quagmire in Iraq.*** I think that it was appropriate for the U.S. to get involved militarily in Afghanistan after the World Trade Center airplane attacks killing nearly 3,000 people.
The fourth also involved President Bush (Bush-43). His opposition to regulation of the financial industry**** resulted in a financial collapse of the economy from which we are still digging out although the stock markets and corporate profits have been very good
You might ask what about Vietnam and President Johnson? At the time of the Vietnam war, I would have included it as a major disaster and in terms of lives lost it is. Today, however, we have friendly relations with Vietnam, and they are an important trading partner with which we have diplomatic ties. President Bush (Bush-43) went to Vietnam twice and wanted to sign a trade agreement with them, but the Senate disagreed. We may have to wait for my generation to die out before full economic relations are achieved with them. Korea was another major problem at the time, but, since the Korean War, South Korea has developed into an economic power, and, in spite of the hostile nature of North Korea, the area seems stable with South Korea being an ally of ours. President Eisenhower did us a favor by ending the Korean War. In contrast, I don't see the Middle East countries becoming important U.S. allies within say the next 30 yrs, but I won't be around to see if I am right.
Even WW-II resulted in Japan and Germany curiously becoming important allies of the U.S. and major economic powers. Because of problems involving religions and former colonization, I don't see that happening with the Middle East.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'état
** http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/19/1147106/-Breaking-Ronald-Reagan-refuses-to-call-embassy-attack-an-act-of-terror; http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/176699.pdf
*** http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/870845/Iraq-War
****http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007–08; http://www.umsl.edu/~dibooglus/personal/financial%20crisis_revised.pdf
The first happened under President Eisenhower when the CIA helped overthrew a duly elected democratic government in Iran* and our relations with Iran have gone downhill ever since. At the behest of the forerunner of BP (Anglo-Persian Oil Company), the British government requested that the U.S. overthrow the government of Mohammod Mosaddegh Defenders of Eisenhower say that the CIA went rogue in doing so and Eisenhower didn't know about it.
The second was when President Reagan failed to react militarily to the embassy attacks in Lebanon and Kuwait plus the Beirut Marine base bombing.** Instead he cut and ran which emboldened terrorists who concluded that the U.S. wouldn't react to their machinations which eventually led to the U.S. getting involved militarily in the quagmire of the Middle Eastern politics.
The third involved President George W. Bush (Bush-43) who got us involved militarily in the middle eastern quagmire in Iraq.*** I think that it was appropriate for the U.S. to get involved militarily in Afghanistan after the World Trade Center airplane attacks killing nearly 3,000 people.
The fourth also involved President Bush (Bush-43). His opposition to regulation of the financial industry**** resulted in a financial collapse of the economy from which we are still digging out although the stock markets and corporate profits have been very good
You might ask what about Vietnam and President Johnson? At the time of the Vietnam war, I would have included it as a major disaster and in terms of lives lost it is. Today, however, we have friendly relations with Vietnam, and they are an important trading partner with which we have diplomatic ties. President Bush (Bush-43) went to Vietnam twice and wanted to sign a trade agreement with them, but the Senate disagreed. We may have to wait for my generation to die out before full economic relations are achieved with them. Korea was another major problem at the time, but, since the Korean War, South Korea has developed into an economic power, and, in spite of the hostile nature of North Korea, the area seems stable with South Korea being an ally of ours. President Eisenhower did us a favor by ending the Korean War. In contrast, I don't see the Middle East countries becoming important U.S. allies within say the next 30 yrs, but I won't be around to see if I am right.
Even WW-II resulted in Japan and Germany curiously becoming important allies of the U.S. and major economic powers. Because of problems involving religions and former colonization, I don't see that happening with the Middle East.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'état
** http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/19/1147106/-Breaking-Ronald-Reagan-refuses-to-call-embassy-attack-an-act-of-terror; http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/176699.pdf
*** http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/870845/Iraq-War
****http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007–08; http://www.umsl.edu/~dibooglus/personal/financial%20crisis_revised.pdf
Saturday, November 17, 2012
I ALREADY MISS THE GOOD OLD DAYS
I already miss those good old days, not that long ago actually, when all we had to worry about was important things, people like Paula Broadwell, Jill Kelley, a couple of middle aged 4-star generals and a topless FBI agent (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/11/laffaire-petraeus-today.html). Don't you?
Now it is ugly as an "over-the-hill" Senator, who once was a rational force in the Senate but now is after one last hurrah, pursues something known as Benghazi that everyone has lost interest in except for him and a few of his colleagues. You know, that violent demonstration/terrorist attack in which an ambassador was killed along with three of his "troops" in some backwater consulate in Lybia where violent acts in the vicinity are almost an every day occurrence (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/09/you-can-rationalize-anything.html). Senator Feinstein has commented, "My biggest concern is, there are literally hundreds of threat warnings in the material that has been accumulated," Feinstein said. "There were five attacks during the year, one prior attack on the consulate itself. The question I have is ... why wasn't something done about it?" But this doesn't seem to be the serious question which our dear "over-the-hill" Senator says is why did our ambassador to the U./N. - Susan Rice - say, five days after the event, that the violence was a demonstration that got out of hand?
Personally, I never thought this issue could last until the late-elections, but some - including the news media - want to keep it going and are demanding a "Whitewater" type investigation. And apparently Susan Rice was only parroting the declassified information on the topic. This misinformation, if it matters, was seemingly done because the FBI or someone thought they were hot on the trail of the organizing perpetrators and didn't want them to know. Instead what they did was what is known as "hanging Susan Rice out to dry."
So far as I am concerned, if the American Benghazi Consulate attack was the best Al Qaeda could do to "celebrate" 9/11, they are weak indeed, hardly even a shadow of the real 9/11. It was even far away from the embassy in Tripoli. Somehow, forgotten in all this is that an estimated 30,000 Libyans demonstrated against the attack and the militias involved in the attack (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/11/laffaire-petraeus-today.html).
The fuss being made over Benghazi is interesting when one considers that the diefied Ronald Reagan had BOTH a couple of embassy attacks, including the big one in Beirut, Lebanon, where 17 Americans died (among 63 total) on April 18, 1983 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_United_States_embassy_bombing) plus another in Kuwait where five people were killed on December 12, 1983 (which by-the-way Reagan refused to call an act of terror) (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/19/1147106/-Breaking-Ronald-Reagan-refuses-to-call-embassy-attack-an-act-of-terror) AND the marine barracks attack where 241 of our troops died on October 23, 1983. For good measure there was the Korean airliner 007 shot down by the Soviets September 1, 1983 where 269 passengers were killed including a U.S. congressman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007). Somehow Reagan's admirers forgave him for all of this. Furthermore, Democrats did not make political hay out of any of this. But today, everything seems to be on the table for political gain.
Now it is ugly as an "over-the-hill" Senator, who once was a rational force in the Senate but now is after one last hurrah, pursues something known as Benghazi that everyone has lost interest in except for him and a few of his colleagues. You know, that violent demonstration/terrorist attack in which an ambassador was killed along with three of his "troops" in some backwater consulate in Lybia where violent acts in the vicinity are almost an every day occurrence (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/09/you-can-rationalize-anything.html). Senator Feinstein has commented, "My biggest concern is, there are literally hundreds of threat warnings in the material that has been accumulated," Feinstein said. "There were five attacks during the year, one prior attack on the consulate itself. The question I have is ... why wasn't something done about it?" But this doesn't seem to be the serious question which our dear "over-the-hill" Senator says is why did our ambassador to the U./N. - Susan Rice - say, five days after the event, that the violence was a demonstration that got out of hand?
Personally, I never thought this issue could last until the late-elections, but some - including the news media - want to keep it going and are demanding a "Whitewater" type investigation. And apparently Susan Rice was only parroting the declassified information on the topic. This misinformation, if it matters, was seemingly done because the FBI or someone thought they were hot on the trail of the organizing perpetrators and didn't want them to know. Instead what they did was what is known as "hanging Susan Rice out to dry."
So far as I am concerned, if the American Benghazi Consulate attack was the best Al Qaeda could do to "celebrate" 9/11, they are weak indeed, hardly even a shadow of the real 9/11. It was even far away from the embassy in Tripoli. Somehow, forgotten in all this is that an estimated 30,000 Libyans demonstrated against the attack and the militias involved in the attack (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/11/laffaire-petraeus-today.html).
The fuss being made over Benghazi is interesting when one considers that the diefied Ronald Reagan had BOTH a couple of embassy attacks, including the big one in Beirut, Lebanon, where 17 Americans died (among 63 total) on April 18, 1983 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_United_States_embassy_bombing) plus another in Kuwait where five people were killed on December 12, 1983 (which by-the-way Reagan refused to call an act of terror) (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/19/1147106/-Breaking-Ronald-Reagan-refuses-to-call-embassy-attack-an-act-of-terror) AND the marine barracks attack where 241 of our troops died on October 23, 1983. For good measure there was the Korean airliner 007 shot down by the Soviets September 1, 1983 where 269 passengers were killed including a U.S. congressman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007). Somehow Reagan's admirers forgave him for all of this. Furthermore, Democrats did not make political hay out of any of this. But today, everything seems to be on the table for political gain.
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