Flip- Floppers?

[eye-p]

Here are a few quotes from the Clinton era. Most of them involve Kosovo- and what people had to say about it.

Irony, anyone?

"President Clinton is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be
away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy."

-Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA)

"No goal, no objective, not until we have those things and a compelling case is made, then I say, back out of it, because innocent people are going to die for nothing. That's why I'm against it."

-Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/5/99

"American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy."

-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)

"If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy."

-Karen Hughes, speaking on behalf of presidential candidate George W. Bush


Why did they demoralize our brave men and women in uniform?

"I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning...I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area."

-Senator Trent Lott (R-MS)


"You think Vietnam was bad? Vietnam is nothing next to Kosovo."

-Tony Snow, Fox News 3/24/99


"Well, I just think it's a bad idea. What's going to happen is they're going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years"

-Joe Scarborough (R-FL)


"I'm on the Senate Intelligence Committee, so you can trust me and believe me when I say we're running out of cruise missles. I can't tell you exactly how many we have left, for security reasons, but we're almost out of cruise missles."

-Senator Inhofe (R-OK )

"I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarifiedrules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our overextended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today"

-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)

"I don't know that Milosevic will ever raise a white flag"

-Senator Don Nickles (R-OK)

"Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?"

-Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/6/99


Why didn't they support our president in a time of war?


"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is."

-Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)


"This is President Clinton's war, and when he falls flat on his face, that's his problem."

-Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN)

"The two powers that have ICBMs that can reach the United States are Russia and China. Here we go in. We're taking on not just Milosevic. We can't just say, 'that little guy, we can whip him.' We have these two other powers that have missiles that can reach us, and we have zero defense thanks to this president."

-Senator James Inhofe (R-OK)


"You can support the troops but not the president"

-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)


"My job as majority leader is be supportive of our troops, try to have input as decisions are made and to look at those decisions after they're made ... not to march in lock step with everything the president decides to do."

-Senator Trent Lott (R-MS)


For us to call this a victory and to commend the President of the United States as the Commander in Chief showing great leadership in Operation Allied Force is a farce"
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)


Why did they blame America first?

Bombing a sovereign nation for ill-defined reasons with vague objectives undermines the American stature in the world. The international respect and trust for America has diminished every time we casually let the bombs fly."

-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)


"Once the bombing commenced, I think then Milosevic unleashed his forces, and then that's when the slaughtering and the massive ethnic cleansing really started"

-Senator Don Nickles (R-OK)

"
Clinton's bombing campaign has caused all of these problems to explode"

-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)


"America has no vital interest in whose flag flies over Kosovo's capital, and no right to attack and kill Serb soldiers fighting on their own soil to preserve the territorial integrity of their own country"

-Pat Buchanan (R)


"These international war criminals were led by Gen. Wesley Clark ...who clicked his shiny heels for the commander-in-grief, Bill Clinton."

-Michael Savage


"This has been an unmitigated disaster ... Ask the Chinese embassy. Ask all the people in Belgrade that we've killed. Ask the refugees that we've killed. Ask the people in nursing homes. Ask the people in hospitals."

-Representative Joe Scarborough (R-FL)


"It is a remarkable spectacle to see the Clinton Administration and NATO taking over from the Soviet Union the role of sponsoring "wars of national liberation."

-Representative Helen Chenoweth (R-ID)


"America has no vital interest in whose flag flies over Kosovo's capital, and no right to attack and kill Serb soldiers fighting on their own soil to preserve the territorial integrity of their own country"

-Pat Buchanan (R )


"By the order to launch air strikes against Serbia, NATO and President Clinton have entered uncharted territory in mankind's history. Not even Hitler's grab of the Sudetenland in the 1930s, which eventually led to WW II, ranks as a comparable travesty. For, there are no American interests whatsoever that the NATO bombing will
either help, or protect; only needless risks to which it exposes the American soldiers and assets, not to mention the victims on the ground in Serbia."

-Bob Djurdjevic, founder of Truth in Media

[thesightless]

Re: Flip- Floppers?

if there is one thing we need to learn about gov't its that is always ok for you and never OK for them. find me a politic who isnt like that and ill campaign for him.

[eye-p]

Re: Flip- Floppers?

Howard Dean.

[thesightless]

Re: Flip- Floppers?

dean is good but pissed his pty off a ton by not being the poster boy for every one of their bills. they wont back him over the cunt. she'll get the nod. they realized kerry was a moron, so i think he is out. i dunno. its gonna get interesting. i really cannot belive any politician. they should all have thier own reality channel from the moment they wake up till they sleep. only the guys who are in secret intel meetings should be allowed to have time away from TV. (only if this was feasible) 100 channels of each senator. 2 for pres and VP. then another few for the secretaries.

i still wish they boosted Kuckinich earlier. only democrat who stood up to unions and special interests. too much BS in the party for me. they vote for NAFTA and say they are pro union. talk about back stabbing. the repub arent any better.

[Yao]

Re: Flip- Floppers?

One of the questions I answered today in my test:

3. Russian resolution against Kosovo intervention

Explain why on 25 March 1999 the Russian representative on the Security Council appeared to be annoyed at having been instructed to table a draft resolution alleging that NATO was acting in violation of the United Nations Charter and demanding an immediate cessation of hostilities. What course of action might he have preferred, and what could have been Moscow?s grounds to overrule him?

The NATO delegations? relief at the defeat of the Russian draft resolution soon made way for what is sometimes referred to as the ?Kosovo hangover?. Describe this.

Russia (as well as China and France) has always been an advocate of the multipolar world, with the UN as a central part of it. They have in general always taken the stance of non-intervention. Among other reasons, it has also been to prevent the U.S. from becoming the dominating force in world politics.
This non-intervention stance can easily be defended by taking into account that intervention can also be used as a means to achieve more power in the political playfield. So this move might be explained by the desire from the Russians to counterweight the influence the US had on the Council (in fact, most of Russia?s decisions in the council have been aimed at countering the US political influence).

The Russian envoy in the Council, Chernomyrdin may have been irritated by the resolution he had to propose simply because it was a useless move which could only harm the image of the Russians in the face of the other council members: It didn?t even have the required 9 votes for possible approval, so a veto was unnecessary to counter it: one countervote was enough. Still, by rejecting the resolution, the Council implicitly approved of the NATO actions.

Chermonyrdin wanted the NATO actions ceased in order to make negotiations possible however: having negotiations when military actions were still taking place would?ve been hypocritical to him, but by this implicit approval this had become virtually impossible to achieve.

The Russian government however could use this as a jumping point to move the negotiations to the G8 summit later on, where it relied on the negotiating capacities of Mamedov, who sometimes even made it appear that Chernomyrdin had been speaking without Russian government authority. Russia expected to be more successful in the G8 forum, where the emphasis was more on consensus, a different dymanics, no voting and no vetoes which made negotiations much easier.

Kosovo-hangover:

In this particular case the UNSC has proven incapable of undertaking effective action when it was needed, simply because it was crippled by the divisions in it which could not be overcome: thus the council has been sidelined, not only when it came to military action which finally was undertaken by the NATO, but also by the negotiatons being held at the G8 summit in Cologne rather than in the Council itself, which can basically be seen as a motion of mistrust in it?s capabilities to come to an effective agreement on the course of action to be taken.

This has damaged the face of the UNSC in the world too, and has clearly outlined it?s weaknesses and the possible results (or lack of those) of those. It has underlined the divisions that are still present in today?s post-cold-war politics, and shown that because of those divisions it can in the end also become a barrier for action and intervention and political consensus, but it has also shown the limit of veto right as a barrier to action, pushing the UN even further away from the Council than it already was.

Apart form that this, in combination with the preceding Rwanda debacle, has made clear that when it comes to humanitarian intervention, the world still has a long way to go. There is yet an agreement to be reached and a cadre to be described on the terms on which such an intervention would globally be approved of, and these cases have shown we still are by no means even close to describing those.

The UN failed big time, and it may sound strange, but in fact that action from the Clinton administration pointed out some serious flaws in the way the UNSC works. That is why Billyboi still has a lot of political credit here: he also sidelined the UNSC and went in without a mandate, but this time on a humanitarian mission (which can always count on more support than a preventive or pre-emptive strike).
Most of the vetoes the Russians and China use are simply meant to counterweight the influence of the US, but the problem there is that they are actually willing to sacrifice lives over their own 'face' in world politics.