I think personally he is a good man who loves his family and loves his country. And I think he made the best decisions that he could at times under some very difficult circumstances.
- Barack Obama on George W. Bush, 1/16/09
There's no shortage of shortcomings in the administration of the forty-third president. If your ideology is liberal, you can think of scores of disagreements with Mr. Bush ranging from mild disapproval to sputtering apoplexy. If your ideology is conservative (as mine is), well, you can think of scores of disagreements with Mr. Bush ranging from mild disapproval to sputtering apoplexy.
But for today, I'd like to acknowledge the things Bush has done that I support and am proud of. My liberal friends won't necessarily like these things so much, but to each his own. It's a new era. Some graciousness in parting can't hurt.
Saddam Hussein no longer runs Iraq, and in the dark years of failure following the invasion it was president Bush almost alone who orchestrated and saw the surge through to the victory that it became. The Taliban no longer run Afghanistan, and Osama bin Laden has almost certainly been dead for years - sketchy and probably inauthentic audiotapes notwithstanding. Roberts and Alito have been appointed to the supreme court. He lowered taxes. He gave us the beginnings of a working missile defense system. He's improved relations with China, while never failing to promote human rights both in the People's Republic and other oppressive nations such as Cuba. He's forged what I think will be one of the most geopolitically significant alliances of the coming century between the US and India. He put NASA back on real human exploration. He gave reforming Social Security a good try, even if it didn't succeed.
Yes, I know all of these have caveats and problems even if you are a conservative. I know most of them are reasons to start throwing shoes if you're a liberal. Too bad. I agree with Obama. Bush is a good man who loves his family and loves his country. And I think he made the best decisions that he could at times under some very difficult circumstances. If I ever meet him, I'd like to shake his hand.
[As usual, comment with civility. There's plenty of other places who will be more than willing to accommodate incivility in the comments, but this isn't one of them.]
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Bush invaded Afghanistan so that UNOCAL could build a pipeline through Afganistan which would increase the efficiency of oil logistics(from the Caspian sea, although it didn't work out that way). Hamid Karzai, a former consultant for UNOCOL was then installed as a puppet leader.
Bush then invaded Iraq to control global oil production, an increase of which would reduce oil price per barrel, while oil companies kept the prices the same to increase their profit margins. Iraq would then become a dumping market for US agricultural exports as it was during the early reign of Saddam Hussein. The Israeli Iridium satellite also won the only contract to provide telecom infrastructure to Iraq. The US barred other GCC Arab countries, including Bahrain's Batelco, from the Iraq market.
As the leader of a Neo-imperialist plutocracy, Bush has pretty much stuck to the basics. His only major flaw was that he was not as discreet as Clinton. Other than that, he was a textbook imperialist and any corporate elected US president worth his salt would have done what Bush did.
The man eliminated our hard earned position of moral credibility worldwide. He formally instituted torture as US policy and, when caught, blamed the whole thing on low level soldiers (bloody coward). 9/11 happened on HIS watch, by the way. Mullah Omar was never caught. OBL was never caught. The anthrax killer was never caught. Then the second greatest economic crisis in US history happened. Our budget went from surplus to a $1.2 TRILLION deficit. Our national debt doubled. His reelection campaign strategy was to attack a tiny minority (gays) in order to role up his redneck followers. And he abused the scientific management process throughout the federal government. That you penned this idiotic defense without mentioning the word torture is all the evidence I need of your moral emptiness and stupidity.
For all the good that the outgoing administration has done, one need only finish the sentence with "...and then he tortured people" and all of these pale in comparison to the great evil that has been done in our name.
The singular good Bush the Lesser fomented was his bloodless departure.
You're missing the point though i think...
to me, what Obama was saying (and repeatedly, because there isn't much else he could say to be reasonable and not piss everyone off (and because he wants to embody non-partisan bickering)) was that Bush had a tough situation and did his best. basically this gives him credit for only his intentions. if Bush is incompetent the statement doesn't need to change at all.
i think Obama thinks that Bush really did what he thought was best for the country in a tough situation (and i agree with this idea). i just think (more openly because i'm not worried about alienating anyone) that his best was pretty sad. the support i offer for Obama agreeing with me is his speech which alluded to the idea that America was now going to return to its ideals (suggesting that Bush strayed from them) and that the rest of the world could trust us again now.
I am glad to see Husein gone. And after all the price was only a trillion dollars, a few hundred thousand civilians, a few thousand American military, the whole torture debate, loss of world credibility and the total implosion of the republican party. Mission accomplished.
Both the nation and the republican party would be in better shape if we had elected Edward Kennedy. A person isn't a conservative simply because they can look constipated while talking about god. The last eight years has seen an explosion in the reach and power of the government and the concentration of that power in the presidency. If Bush is a conservative I'm the tooth fairy.
But I agree that Bush is a "good" man in the sense that he acted with good intentions without malice. He was just not up to the job and government screwed up in the way that governments do. He is the very reason conservatives fear government.
It seems that republicans get elected by preaching about the dangers of government. Then they seem to be honor bound to demonstrate those dangers.
The irony of the Bush administration is that it made two fundamental errors. (1) It assumed that the attack on US territory (the USS Cole) that killed US servicemen was actually an attack on President Clinton rather than the US. The specific briefings from the Clinton administration and, later, Bush's own staff concerning Al Qaeda was ignored because, apparently, the President's blood never "boiled" until an office building was attacked. We were not defended when it mattered most. (2) After opposing a "police" approach to those who had attacked a US warship when he first took office, he ended up deciding to bring terrorists to trial. Unfortunately, this was after he decided to torture them, so people actually responsible for 9/11 may walk free. These are not minor shortcomings. Item 1 is clearly (based on the 9/11 Commission report) Bush's failure. Item 2 is less clear. See below. If torture was handled in a fashion similar to warrantless wiretaps, maybe he didn't actually (in the sense of knowingly) approve any of that either.
My wife got a preview bit of "Angler", the book about Dick Cheney's shadow government, on her Kindle. You can read an important bit here, in a WashPo article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/13/AR20080…
and the part 2 (which is far more important) that is linked from there.
One of the interesting things that could eventually be part of history may be that Bush did always follow basically good instincts if it is true that many of "his" actions were actually done without his knowledge. It is interesting that the NSA lawyers were not allowed to see Yoo's legal opinion on which their (illegal) activities were based, and thus never signed off on it. It was not, apparently, actually carried out by the President because the President's deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism was utterly ignorant of it. Only her boss, Condi Rice, knew about it, but Rice was not invited to the meetings where the documents were discussed. The President just signed what he was told to sign, and was not told for months that the DOJ had finally examined the program and found parts of it to be illegal. It took a threat of mass resignations, including the director of the FBI and the top 5 admin levels at Justice, to get the matter before the President himself. When it got there, Bush made the right decision. But it did not get there, to the President, for years.
I was, perhaps, most surprised that Ashcroft had not been fully briefed on the program before he approved it, and the characterization of the dog and pony show provided the 8 members of the Congressional Oversight group.
I don't think it's quite as bad as the picture you give, ppnl, but fundamentally we're in agreement. In fact, a good portion of the anger directed at Bush would perhaps be more justly pointed at our hideously appalling Republican congress from about 1998 to 2006. All but maybe 20 or so of them deserved to be run out of town on a rail. Many were, in 06 and 08.
I'm not completely familiar with the particulars you bring up, CC, but it sounds about right to me.
Are you high? The man condoned torture, is tapping your phone, undermined the constitution, went to war on massaged facts, destroyed our financial system and ruined our status as a positive force in this world.
As a scientist how can you respect him and his war on science?- you think collecting stem cells is a sin? You think global warming is a myth? You think homosexuality is a choice?
You call your blog Built On Facts, I suppose you like things to be built on facts, facts were often willfully ignored by Bush and his administration just to further their own agenda.
I guess I'll be double checking what I read on this blog before believing any of it's "facts".
"I guess I'll be double checking what I read on this blog before believing any of it's "facts"."
Dude, you're supposed to do that anyway. Nothing anyone writes should just be accepted without question. Including your first two paragraphs, for that matter. "Tapping my phone?" Seriously?
Look, I have no lack of criticisms of the former president, including a couple of the ones you listed. I mentioned this in the post. But as I said, that's not what this post is about.
Actually, that's an extremely good point, especially if you add (as CCPhysicist pointed out) a bunch of people all throughout the executive branch (up to the VP) to the list. Bush could have been a much better and more effective President if it wasn't for everyone else.
While I actually agree with you about a few of the things you mentioned here, and most of the others I understand why you view those things with pride (although my view differs because I am a liberal), I do strongly disagree with a few of the things you have stated here.
First of all, the surge was not a success, by it's own stated goals when it started. I do agree the decrease in violence and increase in security is partly, possibly even largely due to the surge (although definitely not only due to it), but all that ever was supposed to be was a means to an end. The surge was supposed to contain the violence enough the the Iraqi government could accomplish a concrete list of items that they had been unable to make any progress on. Some of those items have seen some progress, but not completion, and on others, al-Maliki has taken this relative peace to make matters even worse, in order to solidify his position. Just because most of our politicians (on both sides) have decided to retroactively change the victory conditions for their own reasons doesn't mean we should ignore the reality of the situation, especially since this peace looks to be temporary (one of my reasons for saying this is that insurgent groups have been refraining from violence only if we agree to pay them... in weapon form, which we have been doing. They've even directly told our soldiers that they only plan to stockpile this for use once the violence starts up again). So, in my opinion, I don't see how the surge can be classified as a success, even though it has had the extremely nice effect of decreasing violence in Iraq.
Also, it's no longer completely true that the Taliban no longer runs Afghanistan. Even according to the Director of National Intelligence, an office Bush created, the Taliban has regained control of about 10% of Afghanistan, and other sources place that number significantly higher. The simple fact of the matter is that Afghanistan has been so poorly managed that all the gains we made there are slowly disappearing.
Once again, I agree with some of your statements, and on the others, we can have civil disagreement and rational argument about the utility of those actions, but on these two matters, I feel you are just factually wrong. Hope I didn't offend you!
From the comments we now see how "bipartisan" the liberal "elite" are. I foresee a long difficult four years. I hope it does not foreshadow the end of United States of America.
"Bush could have been a much better and more effective President if it wasn't for everyone else."
Why did that make me laugh? I have been unable to laugh at Bush for eight years and that line caused a fit of uncontrollably giggling. Maybe because it so eloquently expresses his failure as the "commander guy". Maybe simply because it is finally over.
Lets hope sanity slowly seeps back into the republican party.
GWB may have made a good use of the missile system, but I feel obligated to point out that my girlfriend's former boss is the 'father' of the system, which had its beginnings in the 60s-70s cold war era.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_E._Meyer
Oh gag. I wonder how often the Romans had to put up with this crap? Or the English for that matter. Or the Russians.
Matt, from a "liberal" perspective I could certainly cheer on Bush for helping to expand Medicare in the Part D package. Or I could applaud his Aid to Africa. Or I could laud him for the massive spending increases and big government initiatives he embarked on in the face of a conservative Congress and citizenry. But it would all be sophistry.
The Medicare Part D expansion was a handout to drug companies, not a hand up to the elderly. Aid to Africa came with the Christian Caveat of funding churches over actual aid groups and preaching non-functional abstinence over sensible contraception, spending billions of dollars without concern over maximizing their effect. The big government spending went to K-street lobbyists and insider cronies without any oversight in spending or administration.
Bush lead a selfish cruel incompetent xenophobic party in a series of selfish cruel incompetent xenophobic endeavors ranging from blatant human rights abuses to shameless money laundering through the US Treasury. The nation resoundingly rejected him for a series of very good reasons. Coming in and padding his resume while white washing his failures doesn't do him any credit (damn these lying eyes!), it just injures your reputation.
If the Republican Party wants to right itself again, it can't continue to stick its head in the sand and chant "The Surge Worked! Missile Defense Is A Success! Low Taxes Raise Revenue! Embargoing Cuba Fights Human Rights Abuse, Trading with China Fights Human Rights Abuse, Secret Prisons Notwithstanding!"
We need an intelligent opposition party, one that can run on facts and deal with reality. The fact is that Iraq didn't "get better", it just killed itself out. The fact is that the missile defense system STILL can't hit missiles with any reliability. The fact is that Chinese human rights policy hasn't improved in the last 8 years and you don't have to look farther back than the Olympics or censorship of the Obama Inauguration Address to see it. The fact is that the Taliban didn't go away in Afghanistan and NASA isn't just a catapult to the moon and "lower taxes" doesn't mean jack shit when the price of everything else - from food to health care to transportation - goes up.
I really don't want to live in the lesser of two evil One-Party systems, but we're not talking about "Big Government" vs "Small Government" or "Interventionist" vs "Isolationist" anymore. We're talking about "Mildly Incompetent" vs "Fucking Disaster" and that's not an ideological issue people are going to be willing to waver on.
Saddam does not run Iraq, but who does? The central government is weak, and the violence in that country is appalling. Add to that the increased and closer ties to Iran and I find it hard to call this a positive.
The Taliban do not run Afghanistan? Well, they run huge parts of it. Again, a very weak central government and continued violence makes it hard to call this a win either.
Osama bin Laden has almost certainly been dead for years? Hmmm.. the security services sources that I have seen disagree with you, but hey, you have a blog so you must be right!
He gave us the beginnings of a working missile defense system. Well, since it doesn't actually WORK, that is a bit premature. Maybe one day it will work, but I am doubtful.
He's forged what I think will be one of the most geopolitically significant alliances of the coming century between the US and India. And yet the Indian government is terribly uneasy about the US relationship with Pakistan.
He gave reforming Social Security a good try, even if it didn't succeed. Its a real shame he didnt get the chance to put SS into the market place. After all, the market is doing brillian... what sorry? You were saying?
Saddam does not run Iraq, but who does? The central government is weak, and the violence in that country is appalling. Add to that the increased and closer ties to Iran and I find it hard to call this a positive.
The Taliban do not run Afghanistan? Well, they run huge parts of it. Again, a very weak central government and continued violence makes it hard to call this a win either.
Osama bin Laden has almost certainly been dead for years? Hmmm.. the security services sources that I have seen disagree with you, but hey, you have a blog so you must be right!
He gave us the beginnings of a working missile defense system. Well, since it doesn't actually WORK, that is a bit premature. Maybe one day it will work, but I am doubtful.
He's forged what I think will be one of the most geopolitically significant alliances of the coming century between the US and India. And yet the Indian government is terribly uneasy about the US relationship with Pakistan.
He gave reforming Social Security a good try, even if it didn't succeed. Its a real shame he didnt get the chance to put SS into the market place. After all, the market is doing brillian... what sorry? You were saying?
"Its a real shame he didnt get the chance to put SS into the market place. After all, the market is doing brillian... what sorry? You were saying?"
You know that Ponzi scheme that just collapsed under Madoff? Just saying... (And that's with the 2007 pre-crash projections)
http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2009/01/social_security_vs_ponzi_schem…
Read some other blogs.
Glad I made someone's day. Thanks, ppnl.
And I agree with your last sentence. Bush's central problem was that he was not in control of the executive branch. He never was the "commander guy". At best, he was the fall guy.
The talk of torture is pure bullshit. Waterboarding is not torture, despite what the liberal weenies say. Sure it's not nice, but there is a world of difference between that and *real* torture that involves horrific acts that maim, leave horrific scars and blood on the walls and floor, and often results in a painful and gruesome death. It's the same sort of shallow thinking that equates Bush with Hitler. It's not like the US even did first grade real torture like pulling fingernails off with pliers, breaking fingers with a hammer or administering electric shocks to the genitals. Let alone more advanced techniques that are best not to even think about.
I think that history will be a kinder judge on GWB.
"The talk of torture is pure bullshit. Waterboarding is not torture, despite what the liberal weenies say."
Which is why this country should never have prosecuted the use of it as torture. Thanks for clearing that up.
In the long run, Dubya will be ranked with Truman and Johnson, well ahead of Carter and Clinton and Kennedy. His greatest and most lasting achievement will be the establishment of a democratic government in Iraq, bringing to three such governments in the Middle East (Israel and Turkey the others).
He will also be remembered for grace under pressure, especially when confronted by the insults and abuse of his psychotic opponents, which include specifically Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, two sorry excuses for Congressmen. Not once did he return their vitriol in kind. Always, without exception he was gracious to his inarticulate, loathsome opponents.
Yeah, he'll be right up there with Johnson, since everyone thinks that escalation in Vietnam was a great move.
This thread rules.
Thanks, #9, that was LOL hysterically funny. And true.
Matt, read those articles when you get a chance. I thought I was guessing pretty well at what might be going on, but I was a bit wide of the mark. And now people like Russell Tice are coming out of the NSA woodwork the day after a new President took over (as Seymour Hersh predicted), so we may continue to learn even more. An NSA collection of all electronic communications by american news organizations? Did I hear that right? Wow.
#20, the French knew it was torture when they allegedly used it in Algeria, just as we knew it was torture when we trained some of our people to prepare for it if they were captured by certain countries. Similarly, regarding other "coercive" techniques, you would have to argue that McCain was never tortured and volunteered his statements to the NV if you apply your ideas consistently to all cases. I happen to think he was tortured, as he claimed in his book.
#22: Right. And no one ever attacked Clinton or claimed he had someone murdered. There have been 16 years of this sort of cancer on the US body politic. Sixteen years! Plenty of blame to go around. Time for it to end. Time to put the nation, and its laws, first before we have another entire generation that has never heard civil discourse in politics.
Donalbain, I find his argument unconvincing to the point of absurdity. It is definitional sophistry. The raw mathematical fact of the matter is that the system cannot sustain its obligations. Essentially no one disputes this, and in just a few years it will begin hemorrhaging money. The money I'm paying now I will never see again, as my retirement is far past the bankruptcy date. Invoking questionable technicalities to call it some type of financial disaster other than "Ponzi scheme" doesn't change the fact that every young person paying that "Social Security" line on their payroll is never going to see a Social Security check in the mail.
Now with regard to torture, I usually take the word "torture" to mean something I'd be seriously upset about if it were done to captured US prisoners. Lack of sleep, having their religion insulted, long periods of questioning - it's no fun but in most cases I wouldn't consider it torture were it done to me or a GI.
Waterboarding on the other hand... I don't know what else to call it. I'd call it torture if it were done to a captured US soldier or me. I don't think I can call it anything else even when done to a terrorist.
I'm not sure why this meme is still out there. The system is deployed, and it works. It just had a successful test last month as a matter of fact.
Matt, regarding SS as a Ponzi scheme, the single biggest difference is that SS was never supposed to turn a profit, while Ponzi schemes are. This would have made it much more sustainable, if the government had not stolen money from it every year for decades now (essentially turning it into a Ponzi scheme, yes, but the idea itelf is no more responsible than the owners of a house that has been robbed). Nevertheless, I do agree that now it is in need of fixing, but I would like the blame to be placed where it should, to the politicians (of both sides) and not the idea itself. Even the collapse looks like it's decades away, so even though it needs to be thought about and acted about soon (before it's too late to do anything), it's not imminent enough to require immediate action without thought, which your post indicated you understand perfectly well.
Also, although having their religions insulted and long periods of questioning are not torture, the lack of sleep is debatable. Sufficient lack of sleep can drive a person insane, or even kill them, and the only methods we have of keeping people awake that long are borderline torture, like keeping people in rooms so cold that they risk hypothermia and frostbite. Also, and this same objection pertains to periods of questioning that can last days, any testimony gathered from this is incredibly unreliable (especially lack of sleep since it affects brain function), and so there isn't really any point to doing it, since most of the things we are interested in can't be verified directly.
Stop whining about torture. Torture works. That is how we managed to catch all those witches!
Matt said: Lack of sleep, having their religion insulted, long periods of questioning - it's no fun but in most cases I wouldn't consider it torture were it done to me or a GI.
Maybe you want to rethink that? The line for torture can be easily crossed without ever coming to waterboarding. From the Washington Post:
"For 160 days his only contact was with the interrogators," said Crawford, who personally reviewed Qahtani's interrogation records and other military documents. "Forty-eight of 54 consecutive days of 18-to-20-hour interrogations. Standing naked in front of a female agent. Subject to strip searches. And insults to his mother and sister."
At one point he was threatened with a military working dog named Zeus, according to a military report. Qahtani "was forced to wear a woman's bra and had a thong placed on his head during the course of his interrogation" and "was told that his mother and sister were whores." With a leash tied to his chains, he was led around the room "and forced to perform a series of dog tricks," the report shows.
The interrogation, portions of which have been previously described by other news organizations, including The Washington Post, was so intense that Qahtani had to be hospitalized twice at Guantanamo with bradycardia, a condition in which the heart rate falls below 60 beats a minute and which in extreme cases can lead to heart failure and death. At one point Qahtani's heart rate dropped to 35 beats per minute, the record shows.
Matt,
George Bush may not be an unpleasant person to have a drink with. However, his abilities as a leader, a manager, a human being with responsibilities, would be stretched to their limit by being the social secretary of the Crawford amateur cactus growers association. He has demonstrated throughout his adult life that that is the limit to his abilities.
One only has to look at his record of failed oiled businesses, his "leadership" of Texas and now the US to understand that.
As for your rather dubious distinction as to what is, or what is not torture, I suggest a little experiment. Like Christopher Hitchens who voluntarily was water boarded to find out for himself if it was, or was not torture, I suggest you do the same for those things you consider not to be torture. My deep suspicion is that would come out of such an experience a very changed and rather broken man. Alternatively, you can educate yourself by looking at the psychological literature.
And as for your apparent achievements of GWB, it would appear that you too hold American values in such low regard that you are willing to drop them at the slightest whim. Invading a foreign nation without provocation, breaking the rules of war, breaking the principles that lay at the foundation of the US (as laid out in the Constitution), wold make it appear as if your values are mere hobbies. I really have to wonder what it is that you stand for.
As for the temerity you show with your rash statement about bin Ladin's fate, perhaps you could provide evidence for this? It is certain, not almost certain, that Rumsfeld's decision to move troops into Iraq led to bin Ladin's escape from Tora Bora. Since then, who knows? The fact that the US is unable to locate him is not a sign that he is dead. He may be. Given the region he is meant to be hiding in, and the history of that region, I would be extremely hesitant in making any such statement.
Just in case anyone is still reading this thread...
TBRP:
Very little of David Parnas' classic paper has been invalidated since it was written in 1985.