along the way when they realized there were no weapons of mass destruction, when they realized this was a complete quagmire, the thing they said it would never be, what they actually said was toent worry about it because we ve got another rationale here. we re going to spread democracy. remember? freedom on the march? this is a language they don t understand. culture they don t understand. where having a large foreign invasion has a long and sad track record of failure. now, that s not to say it cannot be done. you know, look at the different kind of model that this administration took when it came to libya. right? we can actually help people on the ground and do so in a way that does not jeopardize american lives and can respect the culture. if you re going to push democracy it needs to come from people on the ground. so i don t think and we haven t even talked about the amount of lives of the iraqi people that were lost. right. so there are other ways that america has to stay e
country on earth from a region the vacuum will be filled. what we are seeing now is the salafists, the islamists, they see the ide of america receding from the region and they are going to fill the gap. jonah goldberg, how are you, good morning to you. hey, bill, good to be here. you want to take a stab at disagreeing with krout haupler.? i take under advisement that nobody should should ever disagree with charles. i agree with him entirely about the vacuum we are creating in the middle east, about withdrawal that a sense that obama has created that we are not going to immediate he will in middle eastern affairs when there s freedom on the march and that kind of thing. i agree with all of that. at the same time it s very difficult not to acknowledge
position is no different from president bush, that he will not tolerate iran having a nuclear weapon. but look at the sanctions regime. rick santorum went out there and said this president opposed sanctions. this is the toughest sanctions regime ever in iran s history, and it is hurting iran and we re seeing them taking all sorts of retaliatory action against our european allies. so europe s allies are standing with america against iran and its plans on nuclear weapons. we didn t see that through the bush years. this is something this administration has been fully behind, has been leading. so i don t see how any of this stacks up. richard, what did you think of the monday morning quarterbacking about how the president is handling the serious situation? i mean, it was almost as if we need to invade them right now to straighten this out and make sure there s freedom on the march. what do you think? this was obviously an extremely distressing situation. you heard from u.n. ambassador
i mean, it was almost as if we need to invade them right now to straighten this out and make sure there s freedom on the march. what do you think? this was obviously an extremely distressing situation. you heard from u.n. ambassador susan rice in the strongest terms about how outrageous this is. but part of the problem america faces is what happened in libya is successful. russia and china are determined not to let that happen anywhere else again. even with arab league support, it is extremely difficult for america, nato to do what it did in syria. there has to be some kind of principles. we re not used to republicans saying that america has to intervene in any humanitarian situation. is it just because it s syria? is it all humanitarian situations? i didn t hear a credible, coherent approach from these republican candidates about when had it s right and wrong to intervene. and they always try to out-tax cut on one another. here s santorum on romney s tax plan. take a look. gover
though what the policy of the administration has been is to hope for gadhafi s departure but not be prepared to do enough to make sure it hatches. don t you love how we save all this stuff? president obama was more than up to the task. but republicans, they just can t give him any credit at all. now so let s just imagine for a moment that president bush would have delivered the death of osama bin laden and end end gadhafi s reign of terror. i don t think we would have ever heard the end of it. this is freedom on the march. gadhafi was a bad guy. and this is the end of an evil-doer. and i think that president bush and the conservatives would have jumped in frontst cameras and said, we smoked out a tyrant. i mean you can bet we would have seen another mission accomplished banner. you know, do you remember the days when some questioned and criticized the war after the capture of saddam hussein. i remember the howard dean story. he came out and said he wasn t sure this made the country