What has Obama done well?

[Slingin Sammy 33]

Originally Posted by Trample the Elderly

From what I get, you're not advocating the principles, just the outcomes. It's alright if we do this progressive thing or that, it saves lives and money. But when the Republican party got Iraqi egg on their face the public turned on them. From Wilson, to LBJ, to GWB, America has to be the protector of Democracy. BS!

I appreciate your viewpoint, but I'm a realist and in the real world, real choices need to be made based on human life, costs, benefits, future benefits etc. Sometimes strict adherence to a principle or set of principles may not lead one to make the best decision.

- On education, read the entire link it gives a good explanation of how the states use the Federal guidlines. The final decisions are up to the states. And at the end of the day a state can refuse funding. Again the percentage is only about 8.3%, not something that couldn't be overcome if the people of a particular state were willing to adhere to their priniciples on this.

- On abortion, the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act is law passed by Congress and signed by the President

- On the Africa/AIDS comments, there are a ton of things that individual taxpayers I'm sure don't want funded. I don't want abortions funded, I'm sure folks on the left don't want CIA waterboarding funded, etc., etc. But, the only recourse we have is to vote out the folks approving the funding for things we don't want. As I said on the Africa AIDS funding you are far into the minority in your view on the approval of this funding.

- On NATO, for a prior servicemember I would think you'd have a better viewpoint of Europe's strategic value to the U.S. in a potential war with the Soviets or a Middle Eastern power. Where did we stage our troops? Where do the wounded receive primary treatment after they're stabilized and lifted out of the hot areas? You can be damn sure the West Germans and Italians would've fought with us against the Soviets. (The French would've surrendered first, then waited for us to liberate them LOL)

- I honestly do not know about the Oakland case, if you can provide some sort of link or ref I would like to read about it (I'm serious, not being sarcastic on this).

- On Homeland Security, not practical to try to integrate Border Patrol, Customs, ICE, USCG, Secret Service, FEMA, etc. into CIA. Two totally different missions for these agencies vs. CIA. CIA is mostly focused on O-CONUS intelligence gathering. The agencies of DHS are primarily defensive in nature. No way the cultures would effectively mesh.

-Lemay Doctrine - The LeMay Doctrine stated that if a country decides to go to war, it must use all of its resources to win -- quickly and decisively. Other options only prolong the bloodshed and, ultimately, put more lives at risk. I'm sure his philosophy was influenced by Sun Tzu which I am a fan of also. In hindsight dealing with Iraq qould've been done more effectively with Special Ops and CIA (ala Reagan). Once the decision was made to go, I was more of an advocate of not fighting a politically correct war against the insurgents, (not nuke 'em, but there would've been curfews, guns would've been confiscated, any insurgents would've been killed not negotiated with like Al Sadr)unfortuantely Bush was not willing to approach Iraq in this way. However in Bush's defense, the decision to go was based on bad intel. After Clinton had gutted our HUMINT capabilities throughout the 90s, it shouldn't have been a huge surprise we had bad intel on Iraq.

I'm was also tired of these liberal fools saying things like, "Right Wing Nazis" or "Right Wing Fascist". That is a lie.

We agree on this point