So I generally check out Bloomberg in the morning for financial news and whatnot, but lately I have been reading a bunch of what I see as slanted political pieces. Currently, the Libyan attack and Romney's statement have been making the rounds. Check this article out:
Romney Criticized for Handling of Libya Protests, Death
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-12/romney-c…
"The attacks that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya became a flashpoint in the American presidential race, as Republican nominee Mitt Romney drew criticism from Democrats and Republicans for chastising President Barack Obama and his administration on their response."
Now I read through the entire article and the "chastising" from Republicans was quoted twice.
1) Richard Armitage, the former deputy Secretary of State
"Romney “will find out that first reports from the battlefield are always incorrect,” said Richard Armitage, the former deputy Secretary of State under Republican President George W. Bush. “This should be his mantra, so he can speak in a deliberate manner, and not have to repent at his leisure later.”"
and
2) Peter King (R) New York
"Representative Peter King, a New York Republican who heads the Homeland Security Committee, questioned the timing of Romney’s statement, not its substance."
Now maybe Republicans criticized Romney, but this article picks piss poor examples of this. Armitage is irrelevant and King barely even criticized Romney. The article comes off as if both sides disapprove of what Romney said when in fact it is largely Obama and other Democrats saying things.
And furthermore, I really don't see how Romney did anything wrong.
1) He waiting until after 9/11
2) He comments on weak foreign policy, which is pretty true. Obama ran on this premise that he was going to rebuild bonds with the world.
Russia is confrontational to us
China has no respect
the ME is no more friendly to us
Israel has been hung out to dry
and now this
So Romney said something. And this is Obama's war. The USA worked to overthrow a legitimate government and now rebels and chaos cost American lives. So much for the "bloodless" coup.
Is it just me or is the media trying to spin this obvious calamity for the Obama administration as something Romney did?
I used to have a lot of respect for the Bloomberg website, but between the magazine, website and TV channel I have seen a blatant tilt. Pretty sad. I am currently restraining my condemnation to only political items, as the financial reporting seems to be fine, but there should be no place for bias on this type of new site. This isn't Fox News or CNN here, this is real news.
Thoughts?
I think Bloomberg still puts out the most solid financial product of all the outlets (CNBC runs a close second). Can't honestly say I read much politics on Bloomberg.
Michael Bloomberg is a huge lefty so it shouldn't surprise you that in an election year the articles are very left-leaning.
I'd hope for better from Bloomberg. Sad that I was wrong.
I agree. I emailed the editor, not that it will do anything.
Here is hit piece number #2 by Bloomberg.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-13/romney-criticized-for-handling…
"Some prominent Republicans shared that view. Romney “will find out that first reports from the battlefield are always incorrect,” Richard Armitage, the former deputy Secretary of State under Republican President George W. Bush, said in an interview yesterday. “This should be his mantra, so he can speak in a deliberate manner, and not have to repent at his leisure later.”
Yeah, Armitage is a "prominent Republican. What a joke.
Whatever ill timing Romney might have displayed is far overshadowed by Obama's little mess.
Specifically: exactly what is the goal? What is the mission? No one's clearly defined that yet. When do we 'win'? When do we 'lose'? I'm annoyed with both Bush and Obama in that neither of them has come out and said "Our reason at this point for being in MENA is "......"". So why pour more into it? It's a black hole, just cut the losses down to maintainance level and find other things to do.
Obama's war? He sent a handful of people to deal with specific issues. This is very much the residual of the last president's war. It's not realistic to just pull everything out, but this president is certainly not fostering the same buildup. 3 Americans died, and those uprisings were done by factions within the countries with very minimal support from the US. I didn't see all this 'righteous indignation' from the right in 2005 when things were far worse, so I find it highly disingenuous now. And I voted against this president in '08, so I'm not even defending him: I'm just calling it like I see it.
I'm personally not a fan of overseas engagements in the first place, but I'm not sure your appraisal of the situation reflects the reality.
As for the news: WSJ took the same turn for the worse, just to the right, so I look at these as outlets for financial information. I can read CFR or some other sources for political information. I'm not sure I fully understand Bloomberg's stance either: what he's saying is unrecognizeable and approaches incoherent. I think more than anything else that he's just becomming a senile old man :/
Romney respected 9/11 and waited until after.
Libya is Obama's war/conflict. You would have thought we learned from Bush (god knows Obama blames him for everything) to not get involved in ME conflicts. Ghaddafi was the leader of Libya and we had no business getting involved with a civil war.
It amazes me how the media is trying to shift blame to Romney for this. He has every right to criticize the President on this issue.
Why does the prospective president wait until after the day of a memorial to say anything? I've never seen that ever with an important issue, and I'm not sure what's driving that. Happy belated birthday, I didn't want to ruin it for you yesterday??
Contrast that with a politicized statement by Romney before he even fully understood what was happening. The 'smile' that he's being criticized for is the same thing that Hillary is being cricized for: their immediate reaction to a tragedy was insight into their own political calculus and not any type of human reaction....to tragedy. Maybe the president had the same reaction in his head, but at the same time, there aren't pictures of it. My take: Romney is an amatuer who let his facade show a pretty major crack. This is Machiavelli 101: Always appear virtuous. FAIL.
As for "not being involved in MENA at all". Ok. I don't like that we're there, and I really think the US should do certain things differently supposing that they are involved. But it's not a war, it was a surgical operation. I certainly think that a decapitation strike...you'll remember that this was the original premise for the Iraq war...to get rid of someone who's been a major pain in our ass for a long time is a good move. Sending in a full invasion force....why? What's that going to accomplish? They're just going to get bled like the Soviets in '79 and every other army in history that's rolled through there and come to the realization: wow, fuck this, this place is totally not worth it. I'm actually in agreeance with both Bush and Obama on one point: we absolutely should fight tyrants and make the world a better place where we can. Doing so is negligence of our responsibility. But whacking some prick in Egypt is quite a bit different than setting up a full scale, decade long, and obscenely costly occupation. Trying to conflate these two things as the same failure and then calling for Romney to be a better alternative is symbolic of that whole line of reasoning: there are pretty substantial and extremely quantifiable differences. To argue otherwise is fraud. Both options are less than savory, and it sucks that Americans were killed, but it's a war zone, this is what's going to happen. Foreign policy is a shark tank, we can't just do business with 'nice people'.
Bombing Libya is an act of war, not "surgery". This isn't a matter of semantics or opinion. It was a sovereign nation when your president decided to bomb it. Anyway. I'm pretty sure the communities that got bombed don't see it as surgery. This is a fact without getting into a discussion on notions of whether or not your president should be deciding the leaders of other countries, the role of religion in politics, etc.. which i don't want to discuss here.
I don't want to divert this thread, but you make some non-reality based statements about the middle east and your country's involvement there.
Back to a topic related to this thread, do you guys think Foreign Policy will become a major issue in the upcoming election and a subject of debate?
It seems to me that there is still quite a large consensus in FP "goals" between the republicans and democrats, but given the article maybe i'm missing some subtleties of how the approaches differ in electoral terms. Is it safe to say that the republicans benefit from taking a more nationalistic posture in their rhetoric?
While I could never vote for Romney, I think his criticism was spot on and I think he just gave voice to what most of us were already thinking anyway. The US shouldn't be apologizing to Islam; humanity should be apologizing for Islam.
Hey McFly, you're a chicken. That's all I see from the GOP camp at this point.
Gross generalization.
+1
What a douchebag. Dont you live abroad? If you're that concerned about what the US does or does not, how about living in the fucking country? Fuck.
Former Marine combat vet, kid, so I'm pretty sure I've paid the freight. Have you?
UFO, did you not see the message on the Cairo Embassy's website after the incident there (before what happened in Libya)?
Sure sounds like an apology to me.
Eddie, I agree with what you're saying. But, this was put out independent of the Obama administration and Obama came out and distanced itself from the statement shortly thereafter.
Meanwhile, Romney at his press conference simultaneously said that "Obama is responsible for what the embassy says" and that Obama was smart to distance himself from what they said.
All Romney had to do was a little fact checking and wait for the dust to settle just a bit before jumping the gun and attacking Obama.
Yeah, you're right, and I realize Obama had nothing to do with the statement. I'm also sympathetic to the Embassy employees who are trying not to get shot. It's the optics that kill me. There's just something about apologizing to a religious nut for offending him that feels like a kick in the junk to me. These people should be mocked roundly on the world stage, not accommodated.
As for apology. There are two lines of thinking driving it: a literal and a more broadly defined extension of ethics. The first is the simple "I'm sorry". If look at the statements holisically and even attach Obama to the embassy's statement [incorrect, but I'll go here], it sums up as "I'm sorry that this movie was designed to offend you. However, I condemn your reaction." Sort of like saying to a child "I'm sorry you dropped your ice cream cone, but throwing a tantrum means I have to spank your behind".
The other part of 'apology' has a longer history. Apologetics, and it does not mean "I'm sorry". I was raised Catholic and there are historical figures that were called Doctors of the Church, and they always fascinated me. The purpose was to reconcile the Church's views with some other group, and derived from "catholic" meaning "all encompassing" .....literally, our views must encompass everyone's, and we'll work yours into ours to achieve this. Then, several councils, run by grumpy old men, hardened and codified the Church's views...and it's been all downhill from there, theologically speaking. Such 'apologist' efforts were actually the order from Rome concerning Martin Luther: the bishop was sent to seek a reconcilliation between the two bodies of thought. Instead, they bishop took the hard line once the meetings began, and a permanent rift developed. Why did he do this? I really don't know, but presenting the olive branch first and reserving the option of throwing arrows if necessary has always been the more effective approach in the big picture. That thinking is why the shield of the USA has the eagle with the symbolism "peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must". If nothing else, taking the ethical high ground before coming to terms with having to pulverize the opposition does make the case "there really wasn't any other way".
If the situation gets completely out of hand, this president had BETTER do something. At this point the leader of the mob has already been identified and will probably be dead before the week is out. As for a larger policy shift, there isn't even a formal decision making body for the US to appeal to, so I'm not sure exactly what more can be done. Conquer them? We could. But for what? They killed a citizen...an important one too...but after the rabble is dealt with, what larger purpose would further action serve?
My personal suggestion is to acknowledge the loss and think about what lies ahead before barreling into the same type of war the last president encouraged. If there's no other option and more killing is warranted, so be it. But use this time to really step back and evaluate the situation and our own goals. There is no need for a war RIGHT NOW, HURRY HURRY GO GO ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIER, so don't fabricate crises to serve the war cause: think, then act. This is how I see it.
2003 saw the beginning of an open ended military comittment, so I'm asking beforehand: exactly what are the objectives beyond a punitive strike? Clearly defined, completely level headed decision making: why would we do more? Why are we going to do it? [this is a literal question, and not in any why rhetorically implying anything] Our system isn't based on honor killings, and encouraging that thinking on a systemic level like the last president did really just ends up undermining things here. War is incredibly corrosive to an overall civilization.
I think respecting 9/11 and not criticizing Obama on that day for a ME issue was spot on. I'd expect everyone to do it. 9/11 is a day for remembering and respect.
Operation WAS surgical. Ain't no mo.
As for this smirk, I watched the video and he isn't smirking on the death, his smirk isn't even a smirk, just a flow of facial movements. When you freeze frame and post the pics online it looks a lot different than in action.
The criticism stems from the fact that Romney got the timeline of events wrong. He blamed Obama himself for apologizing for the video that offended Muslims after the death of the diplomats...when in reality, the Egyptian Embassy (not Obama) apologized for the movie that offended Muslims BEFORE anyone was killed in Libya.
In other words, Romney jumped the gun without getting the facts straight just to score political points. I think it's fair to criticize him on this since he could have just waited an hour or spent five minutes doing some fact checking to get things right. Pretty straightforward.
Also, several other GOP foreign policy heads criticized him off the record to publications like Politico (I hate it, too, don't worry.)
Look, end of the day, Romney is more hawkish than Obama and at no point has he explained what he'd do differently with regards to the Arab spring. He can go on and on about Obama "apologizing for America" and other such non-sense, but he doesn't offer any different ideas for these issues. All he does is make extremely hawkish statements on Iran, Russia(!), and defense spending. The guy wants us to have a bigger defense budget than was even requested by the DoD and wants to build a military that's suited for the Cold War, not the 21st Century as guided by the DoD in their Quadrennial Defense Reviews.
Of course what Romney did was political. He is running against Obama and trying to come out as Presidential. Unfortunately in this game news gets old fast. I can understand criticism of Romney, saying he should have waited, but anyone truly giving Romney crap is being factitious. The game requires speed and that is what is being done.
I personally am a tad shocked how the media is spinning this though. While he should have waited, I think it is fair to criticize Obama. The spin on this is getting tiresome, as if Obama can never be criticized.
This is a classic example of why we need to stay out of the fray. And before anyone chimes in about us helping the Libyan people, we did this because it was strategically beneficial. If we gave a shit we would be bombing Syria right now and helping out another group of people who need our assistance.
Oh wait, Syria isn't in OPEC and Libya is.
Serious question - are you less of a hawk than you previously were? I recall reading stuff you posted way back when where you were pretty hawkish.
...did Ron Paul rub off on ya? Hahaha.
I am either all or nothing. Either we are imperial, kicking ass, taking names or we leave people alone. I mean we spend trillions invading and rebuilding Iraq all for the privileged of paying market prices for the oil in that country. Like we are the shittiest imperial power in history. Could you imagine going back in time and telling Romans that there is a country that invades other countries, uses the invading countries wealth to rebuild the invaded country and then buys the invaded countries products at market prices, going into debt in the process?
They would laugh.
So invading serves no purpose. No one thanks us, no one wants us there. They cry for our help and then condemn us for helping? I remember before Saddam was overthrown how people talked about how uncaring we were. How we allowed a dictator to kill his people. Then we kill the mo fo and are cursed for being imperialistic.
Lose Lose.
So why bother? If we are just going to pay market prices why not just stay home and save the money wasted "invading".
So in conclusion, I am pure Hawk, but since the US wont allow raptor action we might as well be doves since we are naturally pussies.
UFOinsider, my comment on the US bombing Libya not being surgery is a descriptive one, not a normative one.
Whether I agree with it or not is besides the issue (I have not put forward my argument). The reality isn't a lone sniper or a poisoned drink. It was bombs from another country's air forces hitting infrastructure, communities and people. Describing it as surgery is a euphemism which hides the nature of your country's involvement. This is important to acknowledge whether you support the action or not. Otherwise your thinking is not based in reality and thus your understanding suffers. Anyway, I don't want to divert this thread any more than I have done.
Intel op = poison in drink, convince aid to kill leader, etc. Rarely publicly acknowledged Covert op = Bin Laden type strikes. Small, hard to conceal from public, usually leak out Surgical strike = attack on specific installations: C/C, rail, military installations, etc Invasion = Iraq
Option 3. I'm ok with this. Especially if this (1) knocks down a problem and (2) opens up better options...for us AND Egypt. Had those rebels lost, the next generation would have accused us of doing nothing, just like the Kurds in Iraq did in '92. Either way, our policy is going to get fire. If you think that the US's only function should be to sit home and not intevene, well, you're entitled to think that. I'm entitled to argue it.
I don't want to discuss this any more.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/world/africa/scores-of-unintended-cas…
The reason so many republicans aren't supportive of Rom: With polls showing an 85% likelihood that Obama gets re-elected, nobody is going to use their political capital to stick their head out for a political loser.
This was even evident in the GOP convention- ever single political speaker used the opportunity to advertise themselves instead of their party's pres. nominee- knowing that a Romney deafeat enables them to run in 2016 instead of waiting until 2020. Compare that to the democratic support Obama got in his convention.
THAT SAID- this WAS a Romney foreign policy gaffe- one he couldn't afford considering his terrible foreign policy tour earlier this year that consisted of insulting allies and controversial donations from israel.
Every poll I see has Romney and Obama narrowing. Gas keeps going up, labor participation is going down, unemployment isn't moving, fiscal cliff is coming, Obama's ME policy is blowing up in his face, you have Iran and Israel just lingering out there, on and on.
I would say Romney has a better than 15% chance of winning.
And no, Romney called Obama out and the liberal press swarmed. It is pretty sad how much they defend a guy who really hasn't done anything but been a slightly more liberal GW Bush.
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