George Bush has a Kindle - WARNING: Politics

[HarryT]

Er, that link that you posted clearly states that one of the meanings of the word is:

"any of the more or less continuous military expeditions in the 11th to 13th centuries when Christian powers of Europe tried to recapture the Holy Land from the Muslims "

and, when one is talking about going to war, that is the meaning that will immediately spring to mind for most people. The Crusades are a very sensitive subject in the Islamic world, and for Mr. Bush to use the word to describe military operations in that part of the world was grossly insensitive to put it mildly.

[Jellby]

How would Bush have taken it if Iran had said they would engage in a "jihad" against "terrorism"? (I don't know, maybe they have already said that, this world is full of idiots.)

[vivaldirules]

Bush has been an avid book reader for years, according to Karl Rove in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Bush read 40 books in 2008, 51 in 2007, and 95 in 2006, for example. I find it interesting to see what others - even presidents - like to read. Here are some titles:

David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter
Rick Atkinson's Day of Battle
Stephen W. Sears's Gettysburg
James M. McPherson's Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief
President Grant's Personal Memoirs
Jon Meacham's American Lion
Jacobo Timerman's Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number
Andrew Roberts’s History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900
Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower
Albert Camus’s The Stranger

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Exactly. He publically stated - in Congress! - that the "war on terror" was a "crusade". A "crusade" is a war on Islam. Is the man so dumb that he did not know that?

That's called (as you know), a rhetorical question.


Don

[Mr. Goodbar]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Er, that link that you posted clearly states that one of the meanings of the word is:

"any of the more or less continuous military expeditions in the 11th to 13th centuries when Christian powers of Europe tried to recapture the Holy Land from the Muslims "

and, when one is talking about going to war, that is the meaning that will immediately spring to mind for most people. The Crusades are a very sensitive subject in the Islamic world, and for Mr. Bush to use the word to describe military operations in that part of the world was grossly insensitive to put it mildly.

Another perspective or definition is:

"any vigorous, aggressive movement for the defense or advancement of an idea, cause, etc.: a crusade against child abuse"

That is one of the definitions of crusade from dictionary.com.

Also, what he said was "crusade against terrorism." Your equating of crusade against terrorism with a crusade against Islam or Muslims is twisting the facts quite substantially.

I'm not a fan of some of Americas tactics during the past few years and I think our Middle East policy needs significant revamping, but I'll also say that this country comes to the aid of just about everyone in the world on a regular basis, but everyone seems to forget those details. Sometimes I think isolationism for awhile would be a good thing and let everyone else fix their own mistakes.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Mr. Goodbar

Also, what he said was "crusade against terrorism." Your equating of crusade against terrorism with a crusade against Islam or Muslims is twisting the facts quite substantially.

I thought it was: "this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take awhile." Giving the wrong quote seems to me to be a very serious twisting of the facts.

This sounds exactly like equating Islam of Muslims with terrorism.

[BenG]

Originally Posted by Mr. Goodbar

Another perspective or definition is:

"any vigorous, aggressive movement for the defense or advancement of an idea, cause, etc.: a crusade against child abuse"

That's in English.
To the Arab world a crusade is still the Christian war against Muslims. I'm sure reasonable Muslims accepted that that wasn't what Bush meant, but still cringed at the use of the word.

Concerning Bush's Kindle, maybe Amazon could publish celebrity Reading Lists much like iTunes' celebrity playlists.

[netseeker]

Originally Posted by Mr. Goodbar

I'm not a fan of some of Americas tactics during the past few years and I think our Middle East policy needs significant revamping, but I'll also say that this country comes to the aid of just about everyone in the world on a regular basis, but everyone seems to forget those details. Sometimes I think isolationism for awhile would be a good thing and let everyone else fix their own mistakes.

Sometime the "aid" of your country is just not welcome. So yes, let countries fix their own mistakes if their customers don't want such aid. There are enough people in the world that really needs help and would welcome *any* helping hand. Offering aid to the helpless is a act of humanity and should be a moral obligation for all powerful global players. Strict isolation would just be a crime against humanity.

[Mr. Goodbar]

Originally Posted by tompe

I thought it was: "this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take awhile." Giving the wrong quote seems to me to be a very serious twisting of the facts.

This sounds exactly like equating Islam of Muslims with terrorism.

My mistake. I was trying to point out that he was using crusade in reference to terrorism while some of the other comments tend to equate terrorism and Islam which is not what was said and is clearly not the position of the U.S.

I guess this just points out how volatile and open for misunderstanding and misinterpretation this whole area of conversation is. I probably should have stayed away from entering into this debate.

I do think this country has hurt it's international standing with some of our actions, but I also think that there is a lot that is not known about what drove some of the decisions. To think the basis of decisions was entirely on what is know in the public forum is probably not wise. Only history will be able to truly judge the performance of our past president.

[Mr. Goodbar]

Originally Posted by netseeker

Sometime the "aid" of your country is just not welcome. So yes, let countries fix their own mistakes if their customers don't want such aid. There are enough people in the world that really needs help and would welcome *any* helping hand. Offering aid to the helpless is a act of humanity and should be a moral obligation for all powerful global players. Strict isolation would just be a crime against humanity.

I would tend to agree with your sentiments, but it seems that all too often the U.S. is blamed for either taking action or not taking action. The view of a lot of people is that we seem to upset everyone no matter what we do and that all the money we spend offering aid could be better spent back home where many people also need help.

No easy answer to these issues and they can be debated endlessly with all sides having valid arguments. I hope everyone has a great weekend.

[Angst]

Originally Posted by vivaldirules

Bush has been an avid book reader for years, according to Karl Rove in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Bush read 40 books in 2008, 51 in 2007, and 95 in 2006, for example. I find it interesting to see what others - even presidents - like to read. Here are some titles:

David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter
Rick Atkinson's Day of Battle
Stephen W. Sears's Gettysburg
James M. McPherson's Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief
President Grant's Personal Memoirs
Jon Meacham's American Lion
Jacobo Timerman's Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number
Andrew Roberts’s History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900
Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower
Albert Camus’s The Stranger

Between his reading and his vacations, it doesn't look like he had much time for anything else.

[vivaldirules]

President Obama is also an avid reader. Some of his recent reads include:

Jonathan Alter's The Defining Moment
Larry Bartels's Unequal Democracy
Steve Coll's Ghost Wars
Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World
Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals

He has mentioned other books and authors that have impressed and influenced him:

Shakespeare's plays
Hermann Melville's Moby Dick
Marilynne Robinson‘s Gilead
Lincoln’s collected writings
Emerson’s Self Reliance
Reinhold Neibuhr's writings
Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters
James Baldwin
Ralph Ellison
Langston Hughes
Richard Wright
W.E.B. Du Bois
Toni Morrison
Doris Lessing
Derek Walcott

[vivaldirules]

Bill Clinton is a reader as well. Here's a list he compiled shortly after leaving office of his favorite 21 titles:

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou
Meditations Marcus Aurelius
The Denial of Death Ernest Becker
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963 Taylor Branch
Living History Hillary Rodham Clinton
Lincoln David Herbert Donald
The Four Quartets T.S. Eliot
Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
The Way of the World: From the Dawn of Civilizations to the Eve of the Twenty-First Century David Fromkin
One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes Seamus Heaney
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa Adam Hochschild
The Imitation of Christ Thomas a Kempis
Homage to Catalonia George Orwell
The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis Carroll Quigley
Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics Reinhold Niebuhr
The Confessions of Nat Turner William Styron
Politics as a Vocation Max Weber
You Can't Go Home Again Thomas Wolfe
Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny Robert Wright
The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats William Butler Yeats

[jj2me]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

GWB had another problem that's not really been mentioned. He surrounded himself you staff that were able to convince him to do things that benefited their agenda and not what was best for the country. Chaney was paranoid enough before 9/11 and 9/11 pushed him over the edge. Read The Dark Side by Jame Mayer and you'll see what sorts of things happened that should never have happened.

Great point. I don't know, but my geuss is that there aren't that many people in the U.S with neocon sentiments. Maybe in the tens of thousands? And yet they took over the country's foreign policy. Like what you see in the movies or TV shows depicting a U.S. Govt. coup. Bush didn't seem to be one of them, just fell under their spell. Luckily, they ran into too much failure to take it up another notch.

Thanks for the reading suggestion.

[Harmon]

Bush marries a librarian who is a school teacher and you leftwing geniuses think he's not a reader?

BTW, thanks to those who posted the reading lists. I think they have to be taken with a grain of salt, though. These guys are politicians, so you can be sure that the lists reflect what they want us to believe that they read, as much as what they really read.

But given that this is what they want us to think that they read, it's pretty pathetic. Not much decent fiction, no science, no letters, little non-political biography, not much by way of real literature. A man who has not read Boswell does not know how to read.

George has a K2. Well, I'm not surprised, given his reading list. I'll bet most of what he reads can be found in a K edition on Amazon. Even the Grant, http://www.amazon.com/Personal-Memoi...EK/ref=ed_oe_k (It's a well written book, a good read, IMHO, and should work well on an eReader.)

I wonder if the Mobipocket Reader is on Barry's Black...well...barry?

And why did Clinton leave The Story of O and the Adventures of an Edwardian Gentleman off of his list? Just askin'...