Originally Posted by Yoda
This strikes me as pretty meaningless. Both candidates can say "gee, if everything goes well, American troops can come home." That's not new information, nor is it exclusive to either candidate.
Sure. The desire to reduce troop numbers has been expressed by both. (the difference is that Kerry has proposed a strategy whereby they could actually do so without making the country even less stable
. Bush has only cited moving troops from european countries etc as a way of taking up the slack - which i understand is considered insufficient to resolve the problems with troop numbers/quality etc)
Originally Posted by Yoda
I also find it interesting that Kerry knows more than enough to criticize the decisions being made, and more than enough to know he'd do things differently, but not enough to judge exactly what he ought to do differently when asked directly. Which is it? Are there crucial things he doesn't know and therefore can't commit to, or does he know enough to declare the administration incompetent?
I think he's stated his case clearly enough conceerning what he'd do differently from Bush (i.e.the contract sharing and return to multilateral 'realpolitik', as mentioned in the post above
).
I'm sure there are things he doesn't know - such as exactly what the Bush admin offered potential allies (and/or opponents
) in terms of power-and-responsability sharing in Iraq (he obviously suspects, as i do, that the Bushies wanted a US-controlled affair, and so wouldn't have offered much). He also can't know with any certainty how the stand-offish countries like Russia etc will react to any future offer of significant power-and-responsability share.
Kerry mentioned a defence department memo to the NATO meeting in the 2nd debate (the one outlining a policy of refusing aid from any country not from the original coalition) which was interesting. It seemed to back up the idea that the Bush-admin has certainly closed the door on getting meaningful international support in, if it hadn't already at the outset
Originally Posted by Yoda
I'm reserving judgement, personally. There was much talk about Afghanistan devolving into chaos as well, and 2 and a half years later, as Cheney mentioned (finally!), it's shown tremendous progress.
Hmm, yes, a country with a fully involved NATO contingent.
Notice the difference with Iraq?
(i don't think you'd argue with the assertion that the current forces in Iraq are failing to deal with both reconstruction and security issues simultaneously, and that this is jeapordising Iraq's potential to become a safe place for its residents, and its neighbours)