RE: http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,149441,00.html

quote:

Originally posted by OFANDFORTHETROOPS:
RE: http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,149441,00.html

We bloggers own military.com the courtesies of reading this article and posting our views, in a respectful manner. I’m not saying to agree – just be respectful.

Here is the article.

President Reaches Out to a Friendly Circle in New Media

By Michael Abramowitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 16, 2007

The day after his prime-time speech on Iraq, President Bush sat down for a round-table interview not with traditional White House reporters but with bloggers who focus on military issues, including two participating by video link from Baghdad.

Judging from some of the accounts of the Friday meeting, the president offered up little news. Here is what one of the 10 bloggers, Ward Carroll of Military.com, described from his notes as some of Bush's most notable comments:

• "This strategy is my strategy."

• "I'm defining a horizon of peace."

• "I don't mind people attacking me. . . . That's politics . . . but I do mind people impugning the integrity of our generals."

Still, the hour-long meeting in the Roosevelt Room offered Bush another opportunity to break through what he sees as the filter of the traditional news media, while also reaching out to the providers of a new source of information for soldiers, their families and others who follow the conflict in Iraq closely.

"More and more we are engaging in the new-media world, and these are influential people who have a big following," said Kevin F. Sullivan, the White House communications chief.

Bush told the group that, to his knowledge, it was the first time a president had met with bloggers for a chat at the White House, one of the participants wrote. The blogs represented at the meeting are generally pro-Bush and pro-military, and the ensuing reports were highly sympathetic to the president.

"At this meeting President Bush came off as more comfortable with the message than I've seen him appear on TV or in speeches," wrote Carroll, a journalist and former Navy pilot. "No deer-in-the-headlights stuff here. Truly unwavering and passionate. Facts on the ground notwithstanding, he believes the United States can win the Iraq War. And to be honest, being around him made me believe it at that moment too."

Matthew Burden, a former Army officer who blogs under the name Blackfive, raved about how Bush slapped his hand and called him "brutha."

"The President was very intelligent, razor sharp, warm, focused, emotional (especially about his dad), and genuine," Blackfive wrote. "Even more so than this cynical Chicago Boy expected. I was overwhelmed by the sincerity -- it wasn't staged."

Bill Ardolino, who participated from Baghdad, wrote on indcjournal.com that he asked Bush about progress in Anbar province and Fallujah and that Bush's answer "honestly surprised me in its length, level of detail and grasp of events on the ground."

Bush told Ardolino: "The military can only do so much. There has to be follow-up with jobs and hope. We recognize that the man on the street needs to feel like his government cares about him."

Bush talked about the difficulty of setting up workable bureaucratic processes in Iraq, according to Ardolino's post, and the growing pains "that this society needs to go through" to achieve stability. "We shouldn't expect instant results with a society that was brutalized by Saddam Hussein," Bush told the group.

When it was all over, the bloggers seemed wowed. "All in all, it was an amazing day for Military.com and one I'll never forget," Carroll wrote. "In fact, I'd rank the event a close second to the time I sat in with Cheap Trick. It was that good."

At least that’s the way this old soldier and proud Coast Guard dad sees it!

Washington Post 17 Sep 2007

Four years ago, during a speech in Manila, President Bush drew an analogy between the history of the Philippines and the history he was rewriting in Iraq.

"Democracy always has skeptics," Bush said. "Some say the culture of the Middle East will not sustain the institutions of democracy. The same doubts were proved wrong nearly six decades ago, when the Republic of the Philippines became the first democratic nation in Asia."Since 2003, Bush has rarely mentioned the Philippines. But as the nation debates Gen. David H. Petraeus's recent report on the state of the Iraq war, a new study by political scientists Andrew Enterline and J. Michael Greig shows that the president ought to revisit his analogy.

Bush got some of his historical facts wrong, but his analogy turns out to be unintentionally accurate -- the Philippines is an excellent example of the risks, stakes and odds of imposing democracy on another country. By contrast, the oft-cited success stories of Japan and Germany turn out to be outliers.

Enterline and Greig's as yet unpublished study is a detailed examination of 41 cases over about 200 years where one nation has tried to impose democracy on another. As Washington debates the success of the recent U.S. "surge" in Iraq, the study offers a sobering glimpse of the big picture -- not the odds that the Iraqi insurgency will go up or down, but the odds that a stable democracy will emerge in the country.

A third of all democracies imposed by one nation on another fail within the first 10 years of their establishment, Enterline and Greig found. Strong democracies, such as the ones set up in Germany and Japan, that last beyond 20 to 30 years seem to survive indefinitely.

But 75 percent of weak democracies, where elections are held but the civic institutions that shore up a democracy are weak or missing, die within the first 30 years. According to the definitions used by the political scientists, the democracy in Iraq, like others established by European colonial powers in Africa and Asia, is extremely weak.

"Their trajectory of failure deepens so that 90 percent have failed by their 60th year, and most have failed well before that," said Greig, who teaches with Enterline at the University of North Texas.

Contrary to what Bush suggested in Manila, American involvement in the Philippines began at the turn of the 20th century. It was only after running the Philippines as a colony for decades, losing it to Japan during World War II and then wresting it back, that the United States established a weak democracy -- and it proved short-lived. Strongman Ferdinand Marcos was in power for two of the six decades Bush hailed, and the country suffered severe repression. An indigenous democracy movement sprouted in the late 1980s but remains precarious.

"President Bush mentioned the Philippines early on, but he stopped because the implication was it could take 50 years to get a very weak democracy," Enterline said. But "that might be a better analogue than West Germany and Japan."

Those two success stories had all four of the ingredients that Enterline and Greig found make for successful impositions of democracy: large occupation forces early on to stamp out nascent insurgencies; a clear message that occupation forces were willing to spend years to make democracy work; an ethnically homogenous population, where politics was less likely to splinter along sectarian lines; and finally, the good fortune to have neighbors that also were democratically minded, or at least neighbors who could be kept from interfering.

Iraq, unfortunately, has none of the four ingredients.

"Trying to create a democracy in an ethnically diverse society is very dicey and historically very difficult, so to expect the opposite in Iraq runs counter to what has happened historically," Enterline said. "The initial plan was democracy in Iraq would radiate outward and democratize the Middle East, but if you place a democracy in the middle of authoritarian regimes, what we found is the democracy oftentimes fails and becomes like its neighbors."

Enterline and Greig said there is one large exception to their finding: India, with its myriad internal divisions, but which still has become a strong democracy. Civic culture and a strong desire for representative government undoubtedly play a role in whether stable democracies emerge, Greig said -- meaning that Iraq might yet defy the odds.

But should the U.S. effort to impose democracy on Iraq fail, Enterline and Greig's historical data show that the chance of reestablishing democracy there will be even dimmer than it was before the war. Imposed democracies that fail seem to undermine subsequent attempts at democracy.

"We have to get it right now, or it would be much more difficult to do in the future," Greig said. When an imposed democracy fails, "citizens learn that democratic institutions are not effective in dealing with the problems in their societies, so the society becomes less likely to push for democracy in the future."


Comment:
I found this interesting, especially when juxtaposed with the Presidents optimism about the situation in Iraq.

We've been out of the Philippines ever since World War II. They've been fighting ever since.

As to the exception of India, the British had had a couple of hundred years to establish a viable civil service before they left in the 40s. They also partitioned the country into India and Pakistan because of religious differences.

With both Turkey and Iran having an interest in seeing that Iraq not not be partitioned, at least not the Kurds, I don't see this movie having a happy ending.

"The blogs represented at the meeting are generally pro-Bush and pro-military, and ensuing reports were highly sympathetic to the president."

As opposed to the "main stream media" who is anti-Bush, anti-military with ensuing reporting that is sympathetic to the enemies of America.

There have been anti-President and pro-president groups around for years and up until now all have taken it in stride, they know it comes with the job. This President do lean toward groups that pretty much thinks like he does, you can't do that as President of the U.S or any other Country if you wan't to get a fill of what everybody thinks of you. It's called "criticism", it's nothing new. You can't hide from the truth, you can deny it but it will always come back, thats a fact of life. I don't think anybody really hates this President, although a majority of Americans are displeased with the way he is running the affairs of the country and thats normal, as President you just have to accept it and move on. Listening to just one speaker of a quad system, you are only getting some of the music.

ITS A GOOD OMEN.

No one know about this but us. The main stream dose not care!

This comes from an individual who will not allow access to his name or profile. If I would be willing to hide my identity, I probably make some obscene gestures also. But, my mother told me; “If you wouldn’t put your name on it don’t make it.”

BTW, I would feel the same way if the post was about Hillary.

At least that’s the way this old soldier and proud Coast Guard dad sees it!

quote:

Originally posted by AkH8r:

you really like this picture huh?

quote:

Originally posted by AkH8r:

Being posted on every thread.Not right.

quote:

Originally posted by OldArmyWOPA:
This comes from an individual who will not allow access to his name or profile. If I would be willing to hide my identity, I probably make some obscene gestures also. But, my mother told me; “If you wouldn’t put your name on it don’t make it.”

BTW, I would feel the same way if the post was about Hillary.

At least that’s the way this old soldier and proud Coast Guard dad sees it!

quote:

Originally posted by AkH8r:

the post of AKH8r not old dad,sorry

Hate Bush or like Bush, somebody was going to have to do the job. God knows the U.N. was not going to do it. What happened to NATO? As far as my limited understanding went, an attack on one member was an attack on the rest. (yes, I am talking about 11SEP01) But where was the support? France? Germany? The rest of Europe? Last time I checked we were footing the majority of the bill.

I am going to leave it at that.

Regards,

USCG Ret.

I hope mil.com representatives gave the President my personal regards ...

quote:

Originally posted by leekujawa:
I hope mil.com representatives gave the President my personal regards ...

I doubt if they use that kind of language (your regards), at least in public.

At least that’s the way this old soldier and proud Coast Guard dad sees it!

This is really nice. Jorge isn't too smart and we could really use more dumbasses.

My daily chuckle.I love Mil.com

quote:

Originally posted by GroovyLady:
you really like this picture huh?

quote:

Originally posted by AkH8r:

Americans are a friendly, generous, forgiving people. They have stuck by their president, in decreasing numbers, for five years of war. We are at the point where respect has turned to disrespect because of his job performance and his demonstrated lack of judgement and lack of respect for others.

It is my opinion that George W. Bush is a flawed individual in an inappropriate job. He deserves pity, but he no longer deserves respect because of his job performance as the President of the United States of America. He will be tolerated until January 2009 as a poor lame duck but that is much different than being "respected".

May God help George W. Bush.

MAY GOD BLESS AMERICA !

quote:

Originally posted by helez:
Americans are a friendly, generous, forgiving people. They have stuck by their president, in decreasing numbers, for five years of war. We are at the point where respect has turned to disrespect because of his job performance and his demonstrated lack of judgement and lack of respect for others.

It is my opinion that George W. Bush is a flawed individual in an inappropriate job. He deserves pity, but he no longer deserves respect because of his job performance as the President of the United States of America. He will be tolerated until January 2009 as a poor lame duck but that is much different than being "respected".

May God help George W. Bush.

MAY GOD BLESS AMERICA !

You said: "It is my opinion that George W. Bush is a flawed individual in an inappropriate job. He deserves pity, but he no longer deserves respect"

Sir, I think you have stepped over the line in your remarks concerning the CinC. I hope the mod takes appropriate action. I know that I asked him to.

At least that’s the way this old soldier and proud Coast Guard dad sees it!

quote:

Originally posted by OldArmyWOPA:

quote:

Originally posted by helez:
Americans are a friendly, generous, forgiving people. They have stuck by their president, in decreasing numbers, for five years of war. We are at the point where respect has turned to disrespect because of his job performance and his demonstrated lack of judgement and lack of respect for others.

It is my opinion that George W. Bush is a flawed individual in an inappropriate job. He deserves pity, but he no longer deserves respect because of his job performance as the President of the United States of America. He will be tolerated until January 2009 as a poor lame duck but that is much different than being "respected".

May God help George W. Bush.

MAY GOD BLESS AMERICA !

You said: "It is my opinion that George W. Bush is a flawed individual in an inappropriate job. He deserves pity, but he no longer deserves respect"

Sir, I think you have stepped over the line in your remarks concerning the CinC. I hope the mod takes appropriate action. I know that I asked him to.

At least that’s the way this old soldier and proud Coast Guard dad sees it!

Hmmm... Too bad. Those who can't stand being questioned about opinions, policies, or actions shouldn't be in office. Because that is part of what makes America great, and is part of Article 1 of the Constitution (i.e. free speech).

Those who attempt to deny it to any citizen are defaming what our servicemen and women have sworn to defend.

A shame indeed.