‘Treason’? Bloggers accuse GOP of sabotaging US foreign policy

[babsbunny]

http://rawstory.com/2009/10/gop-sabotaging-foreign-policy/

By Daniel Tencer
Sunday, October 4th, 2009 -- 3:38 pm

The amusement and glee many prominent conservatives displayed at the US's loss of the 2016 Olympics to Brazil may have seemed like a harmless bit of partisan bickering, but underlying that attitude is a dangerous attempt to subvert US foreign policy at a critical time, left-wing bloggers are saying.

It is a generally accepted -- though sometimes broken -- rule of politics that competing parties criticize each other at home, not abroad. But that rule now appears to be ignored more often than it is observed, as Republican politicians take to the world's stages to criticize President Barack Obama's policies on everything from climate change to the coup in Honduras to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

[bluestateguy]

1. Patriotism means supporting the president, not opposing him

Anything otherwise gives aid and comfort to the enemy.

[mike_c]

3. please tell us this is sarcasm....

eom

[bluestateguy]

4. It is and it isn't

Are those my real, personal sentiments? Of course not.

But we had that kind of rhetoric thrown at us for 8 years, and I want to throw it back at them for awhile, and make the other side think that I am serious.

[mike_c]

2. this is a ridiculous notion....

First, it's ridiculous to suggest that opposing parties should refrain from foreign policy criticism-- bad foreign policy should be exposed, regardless of political niceties. We (liberals) vigorously opposed the neoconservative foreign policy of the Bush error era. Was that "treason?" I don't think so. I think it is incumbent upon all citizens in a democracy to debate the merits and failures of national policy. I certainly bet on Bush's failure-- and was not disappointed. I also worked actively to bring about failure of his foreign policy, at least as far as I could as a private citizen, marching against it, writing letters to leaders and newspapers, and so on. Was that treason? I am equally opposed to many of the central tenents of Obama's foreign policy and work to defeat them. Is that treason?

The real issue, in my mind, is the nature and quality of the discourse, but never one of treason when one party criticizes another in a democracy.

[invictus]

5. +1