Romney: Arab Spring Could've Been Avoided By Bush's 'Freedom Agenda' - Polidicks

"Freedom Agenda" is one of the greatest, most unabashedly devious names I have seen.

[QUOTE=Jetblack357;36968679]But that literally rapes everything our country is [B]supposed[/B] to stand for in the ass. Why would you say something like that?[/QUOTE] Since the beginning of the Cold War the federal government has equated America's global influence with everything it's supposed to stand for. It's the price we paid for abandoning our older isolationist policy. Now that we're concerned with the presence of democracy in the rest of the world, we're concerned with other things we shouldn't be as well.

[QUOTE=Aredbomb;36971139]Since the beginning of the Cold War the federal government has equated America's global influence with everything it's supposed to stand for. It's the price we paid for abandoning our older isolationist policy. Now that we're concerned with the presence of democracy in the rest of the world, we're concerned with other things we shouldn't be as well.[/QUOTE] The reason we got worried about what other people are doing is because, at the start of the Cold War, we had just won another war with oppressive, fascist states that cost millions of lives. Our isolationist policy made things a fuck of a lot worse prior to Pearl Harbor. Not saying I agree with it, but that's why we give a shit what everyone else is up to. What we ignore today has a way of biting us in our asses tomorrow.

of course romney's got a point in that the arab spring hasn't quite gone as could be hoped - revolutions have a certain tendency to be hijacked (a la Iran 1979), leading me to agree that a peaceful transition to democracy would be generally better than violent upheavals which simply put other authoritarian types in power. however, i can't agree with his placing the blame on obama - i'd say there's no guarantee that bush's "freedom plan" was actually making any progress, not to mention that the arab spring took everyone by surprise and really couldn't have been anticipated by the obama administration.

[QUOTE=Lankist;36971233]The reason we got worried about what other people are doing is because, at the start of the Cold War, we had just won another war with oppressive, fascist states that cost millions of lives. Our isolationist policy made things a fuck of a lot worse prior to Pearl Harbor. Not saying I agree with it, but that's why we give a shit what everyone else is up to. What we ignore today has a way of biting us in our asses tomorrow.[/QUOTE] Oh I agree. Isolationism was something we needed to part with. But the thing is we don't usually intervene in foreign affairs now for the same reasons we did in the Cold War. Security can be a concern, but there's usually more to it than that. And the other things usually aren't quite as noble. And even in the Cold War the things we did to maintain security were hardly ethical. Necessary perhaps, but not ethical.

I think by taking a passive-supportive role of the various Arabic states like Saudi Arabia and giving money to Egypt, bush in a way contributed to the cause of the Arab spring