4 of the 15 were paranoid, overreaching monologues...the rest were joeuser subscribers...this was for a couple of short paragraphs i typed out in 3 minutes...yeah, i'm pleased that there was ANY response. when people have reduced themselves to insulting me personally with nothing at all to contribute to the discussion except those insults,,,they have nothing and it is obvious.

keep up the name calling, trolling and the nonsense charles...it's transparent.

again, i have no idea who this col. you speak of is,,,i can't remember him responding to anything i have written over the past 2 1/2 years since coming on here off and on...nor do i remember reading any of his articles, tho i could have and perhaps forgotten on either count. but he certainly has ruffled your feathers, lmao.

why don't you go work out your differences with them instead of trying to bring others into your discontented world?

I'm afraid you got it all wrong in your very first sentence, Sean. That is a liberal-talking-point myth, a conceipt that the media love to trot out as a melodramatic predicate to some trashing of Bush or the administration they are about to commit, just as you did in this article.

Fact is, America was no more "popular" on 9/11 than it was on 9/10, rendering the rest of your lament moot. We had the temporary sympathy of most of the civilized world for the horrible loss of life on that day, to be sure, but to suggest that we somehow squandered a popularity we never had in the first place is a straw-man argument of the first order. Cold, hard self-interest dictated how the world viewed the US before 9/11, and that cold, hard self-interest quickly reasserted itself once the condolence cards were in the mail. Furthermore, I've yet to hear of any recipients sending back their foreign aid checks. I guess we're unpopular, but not that unpopular.

This pretense that the world was America's oyster and that all would now be right with it had Bush just not screwed up & invaded Iraq is, for lack of a better word, garbage, although to be kind, one could call it wishful thinking, I suppose. Your article, if anything, suggests the terrorist's propaganda campaign is finding its mark. If you truly believe one American's choice to join Al Qaeda (or a few dozen so choosing, for that matter) is meaningful and indicative of anything but that American's foolishness &/or insanity, then I have little optimism that this reply will have much influence on your thinking.

Fact is, America was no more "popular" on 9/11 than it was on 9/10, rendering the rest of your lament moot. We had the temporary sympathy of most of the civilized world for the horrible loss of life on that day, to be sure, but to suggest that we somehow squandered a popularity we never had in the first place is a straw-man argument of the first order.


i disgree with that 100%. and don't use those cliche "liiberal talking point " crap here...using conservative talk show host lines, lmao...i'm not a liberal or conservative, not a democrat and not a republican. i did hold office as a republican a while back in the interest of full disclosure. also, many members of my family have held or ran for office as republicans, staffed for republicans, ran election campaigns for republicans and so on. your assumptions hold no water and exposes your bias,,,not mine.


the fact is that we were more popular on 911 than 9/10...and we were more popular on 9/10 than we are today. when we asked the world to help us catch osama, they did and still are. by the time we got to iraq, we had squandered that goodwill to a point where americans can't even admit being american when traveling anymore...something they would flaunt on 9/10 and every day before that.

yes, there have always been america haters, but before this president and his cronies policies DID wreck all that, they were much fewer and farther between. this administration's policies and actions have literally emboldened the enemy. not the europeans, not the "wacko left" in this counry, not hollywood and not the american people. this administration did...period.

spout off your Kool-aid infused lines all ya want. doesn't change this president's disasterous record which are the results of their "all hat, no cattle" cowboy ways.

the FACT that al qaeda is actively recruiting AMERICANS using an AMERICAN SPOKESPERSON is a tragedy. i am not telling anyone to convert to being a liberal, or anything you seem to think i am motivated by. i am motivated by doing the right thing. and the right thing here is holding this administration accountable for it's wreckless and go it alone ways in running this war.

Sean -

The fact that it's a liberal-talking-point myth doesn't mean you are or are not a liberal - one has nothing to do with the other & I didn't "accuse" you of being anything, other than wrong. I simply disagree with you that on 9/11 we suddenly had some bottomless well of international goodwill that would continue to this day had we just not invaded Iraq, not in the sense that anything meaningful would come of it. I don't for a moment believe that the rest of the world would have solved the problem for us, or with us. It was the rest of the world that was perpetrating the fraud that was the Oil for Food program. It was the rest of the world that was selling arms to terrorists, and still is. When Spain suffered a terrorist attack, what did it do? Rally 'round America?

Aside from that, this notion that we must remain in the good graces of other nations who's self-interest does not dovetail with ours is not very tenable to me. We haven't "squandered" anything that wasn't ours on 9/10 other than sympathy. The countries that are at odds with us now are pretty much the countries that were at odds with us before 9/11. Some which were at odds with us before are actually more sympathetic to the evolution of democratic regimes in the middle east now than before. So it's a mixed bag at worst. It is easy to claim something has been "lost" when it's an abstraction in the first place and there is no way to verify or prove it ever really existed. What's gone is the "feel-good" moment when we believed the world was with us.

Anti-Americanism is alive and well in certain areas to be sure, but the French are still quite happy to accept our tourist dollars, for example, despite our political differences - acquaintances of mine who've traveled to Europe during the past year encountered no overt anti-American behavior. They've reported being treated as cordially as ever, in fact.

Finally, thanks for the offer of Kool-Aid, but I'll pass. There was nothing even close to a personal attack in my reply, so it seems I struck a nerve in some other way.

1) i never referred to anything as a "bottomless well of goodwill". but i have said we sqandered the goodwill we got. we did not use the world's resources effectively, just as we have not used our own resources effectively to fight these guys. i don't buy these "they either solve all our problems vs. we need not consider them at all" when it comes to our allies and other nations and the other false arguments you make here. which is a major issue i have taken for years on this subject. the fact that people are SOOOO f#$@in partisan and want their party to be in control that no one can have an honest debate on this issue. then it's back to name calling and hyperbole. and there was some fraud in the oil for food program, so that justified us unilaterally invading Iraq? what nonsense!

when spain was attacked, i actually was disappointed in our response. WE should have rallied around THEM instead of sitting back and watching them pull out on us the next week. when london's subways were bombed, same thing...our response and support was weak as a nation, weak from our administration and just weak overall. we expect the other nations of the world to follow us around like a puppy dog, and it's a shame.

i have never thought we had a "bottomless pit" of goodwill as you state, but the way it acted and continues to act, i think the administration foolishly thought that.

and if you don't think we have pissed off ALOT more people than before 9/11 than you are just a foolish conclusion. 10 years ago, an american could travel just about anywhere in the world wearing a flag on their head. today, an american can't even admit being an american in many of those same places.

and i never offered ya any kool-aid, i'm about 6 years too late for that it seems.

That nerve is still raw, apparently. I was neither partisan nor personal. I believe we did extend our support to both Spain & England in the aftermath of those attacks and, I'm sure in the case of England at least, in ways not public. You have chosen to characterize this exchange as partisan & gotten your knickers all in a wad, Sean, calling someone who disagrees with you a fool.

So, I'll leave your blog to you.

Adios.

get over your mastery of cocktail party psychology daiwa,,,and stop flattering yourself or ya may break your arm trying to pat yourself on the back....in other words...go troll elsewhere.

as the old saying goes,,,me thinks thou doth protest too much....and i think the raw nerves are in your gut,,,cause i can tell ya they ain't here. if ya wanna comment on anything , feel free,,,but the "hacklike" presumptions you make are quite funny, but little else.