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**Beerinkol** · 03-03-2011, 03:36 PM

That's called a settlement. Happens all the time. You have to give something to get something. I wouldn't call it leniency.

Yes, it was a settlement, but it was a very lenient settlement. Libya paid only a small portion of what the US said was owed, and got pretty big returns for it. I understand the reasoning behind it, I'm just trying to illustrate that the Bush admin hardly took a tough stance on Gaddafi. They were more than willing to negotiate and make concessions and show leniency. These are, of course, important tools to use in the world of diplomacy and normalizing international relationships, but they in no way point to the Bush administration being tougher on Libya than Obama, which seems to be the point of this thread.

Yeah, I don't think it's fair to say that Bush was more lenient than Obama. Bush's tenure was a time of relative peace with Libya when Gadhafi was trying to bring Libya back into the international fold and willing to make reparations of some sort to do so. One cay say that normalization of relations was a positive achievement, and I don't recall Mr. Obama or any other leading Democrats stoking the fires with Libya at the time. Mr. Obama didn't roll back any normalization of relations with Libya until Mr. Gadhafi started getting hassled by his own people. It's just simply an unfair charge IMO. I didn't intend it as a charge against Bush (leniency isn't inherently a bad thing), I meant to show that the Bush administration was hardly tough on Libya, in fact they were more friendly towards Libya than pretty much any other administration. This doesn't jive with the OP's suggestion that Libya would be more afraid of America's big stick under Bush than they are under Obama.

You and I agree on the topic of this discussion, it seems. I'm just trying to refute the larger idea behind the thread topic, which is "Obama = diplomatic pussy" and "Bush = hard hitting bad ass". They both used power along with diplomacy, depending on the situation. Obama doesn't hesitate to employ the power of the military, while Bush didn't shy away from using diplomacy to improve relations. The entire premise of the OP is based off the ridiculous political myth of Democrats being weak wimps and Republicans being tough bastards. In the real world, the two parties (or at the very least, their two most recent leaders) aren't all that dissimilar when it comes to foreign policy.

03-03-2011, 03:36 PM	#12
Beerinkol Join Date Dec 2006 Posts 5,268 Senior Member	That's called a settlement. Happens all the time. You have to give something to get something. I wouldn't call it leniency. Yes, it was a settlement, but it was a very lenient settlement. Libya paid only a small portion of what the US said was owed, and got pretty big returns for it. I understand the reasoning behind it, I'm just trying to illustrate that the Bush admin hardly took a tough stance on Gaddafi. They were more than willing to negotiate and make concessions and show leniency. These are, of course, important tools to use in the world of diplomacy and normalizing international relationships, but they in no way point to the Bush administration being tougher on Libya than Obama, which seems to be the point of this thread. Yeah, I don't think it's fair to say that Bush was more lenient than Obama. Bush's tenure was a time of relative peace with Libya when Gadhafi was trying to bring Libya back into the international fold and willing to make reparations of some sort to do so. One cay say that normalization of relations was a positive achievement, and I don't recall Mr. Obama or any other leading Democrats stoking the fires with Libya at the time. Mr. Obama didn't roll back any normalization of relations with Libya until Mr. Gadhafi started getting hassled by his own people. It's just simply an unfair charge IMO. I didn't intend it as a charge against Bush (leniency isn't inherently a bad thing), I meant to show that the Bush administration was hardly tough on Libya, in fact they were more friendly towards Libya than pretty much any other administration. This doesn't jive with the OP's suggestion that Libya would be more afraid of America's big stick under Bush than they are under Obama. You and I agree on the topic of this discussion, it seems. I'm just trying to refute the larger idea behind the thread topic, which is "Obama = diplomatic pussy" and "Bush = hard hitting bad ass". They both used power along with diplomacy, depending on the situation. Obama doesn't hesitate to employ the power of the military, while Bush didn't shy away from using diplomacy to improve relations. The entire premise of the OP is based off the ridiculous political myth of Democrats being weak wimps and Republicans being tough bastards. In the real world, the two parties (or at the very least, their two most recent leaders) aren't all that dissimilar when it comes to foreign policy.
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