Just a couple of quick links to interesting stories of the day.
William Kristol, neo-con and Administration supporter, has gone completely mental. Even if you support the President's policies (I'm looking at you, Joe), this is way off the deep end. There's enough delusional thinking here to support a host of blogs for years.
Why Bush Will Be a Winner
And PZ Myers of Pharyngula, posts his thoughts and links to an ongoing story of a little girl dying of cancer in Seattle. PZ's take on this (as well as the Surgeon he links to) is right on. Very heartbreaking and utterly futile.
The great parasite and liar in the sky
11 comments:
I think it's pretty obvious that Bill Kristol isn't engaging in any real prognostication about Bush's place in history; he's trying to sound upbeat for the base. It's absurd to make any sort of predictions at this point in any Presidency; we simply don't have the perspective. Look at the last couple years of Reagan's second term; NASA had lost the Challenger the year before, Regan came back from Reykaik with a big fat goose-egg, the Iran-Contra scandal was all over the news, and Robert Bork got drubbed in his nomination hearing. And yet, despite that, Reagan turned it around and came out with the reputation as one of the century's best Presidents. I'm not saying that Bush will accomplish the same thing; simply that any sort of legacy-predicting right now is only about today's politics, not tomorrow's historical perspective.
That may be true, but Kristol is still so far off from reality that his article is irrational, intellectually dishonest, and ridiculous at best.
I do think we have enough perspective at the moment, however, to conclude that the Bush administration has pretty much been a disaster. I understand that you may disagree with that assessment.
I do indeed disagree. What are you basing your assessment on? The economy is doing great and there hasn't been a successful terrorist attack in the US since 2001. Our clout in the rest of the world is lower right now than it was, but that's the sort of transitory thing that I was talking about needing historical perspective to properly assess.
I'm sorry, I keep forgetting that you fell into a lake and were frozen in a block of ice over the past five years until you were recently thawed. You're right. Everything's peachy in America.
Still no specifics about what is so awful in America right now...
I find it really difficult to believe that you aren't aware of the huge list of blunders/scandals that this administration has precipitated.
How about:
The US now has a world-wide reputation for torturing prisoners. Why? Because we have tortured prisoners.
Guantanamo.
Abu Ghraib.
Thousands of US servicemen dead.
Tens of thousands of US servicemen wounded.
Thousands of Iraqis dead.
Al Qaeda reenergized and resurgent because of Iraq situation.
Initial success in Afghanistan threatened.
Middle East pretty much hates us.
Osama Bin Laden still at large.
Illegal wiretapping of US citizens.
Arrest and imprisonment of US citizens for five years without a trial or representation.
It took six years for the Administration to even admit global warming exists.
Religious beliefs being enacted as policy to slow science (stem cells).
Presidential signing statements ignoring laws, violating separation of powers.
Politicization of the Justice Department.
Separation of church and state threatened.
Millions of dollars being funded directly from government to religious groups.
Covert CIA agent outed by high-ranking administration officials as political payback.
Loss of respect for office of President.
The horrific fiasco that was the Administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.
We actually had a budget surplus in the late nineties. The Administration has run up the biggest deficits in history.
And the National Debt is now at an all time high, $8 trillion.
The Post has published another op-ed, a rebuttal to Kristol's piece. It demonstrates pretty conclusively how ridiculous Kristol's fantasies are.
http://tinyurl.com/3xtk24
Bear in mind that you were supposed to give examples as to why the Bush administration has been a "disaster". None of the things you cite are particularly awful compared to other administrations in recent memory.
Was Johnson a "disaster" because we tortured Vietnamese prisoners, and got thousands of US troops killed and wounded? Was Clinton a "disaster" because his complaicency after the first WTC bombing, the USS Cole, the embassy bombings in Africa, and Mogadishu encouraged Al Quaeda to attack us on 9-11? Has the Middle East ever _not_ hated us since Israel was founded? Was Lincoln a "disaster" for suspending Habeus Corpus? Was the addition of "Under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance somehow _not_ religious beliefs being imposed on Americans? Was Clinton a "disaster" for the disgrace he laid on the office of President? I could go on, matching every one of your criteria for "disaster" with another. But you have, I'm sorry to say, the same Bush-rage that many on the Daily Kos wing of the Democrat Party are afflicted with, and it clouds your judgement. I, at least, am saying to wait a few years to get some perspective.
The things you name are, indeed, not good; many are awful. However, they are hardly unique, and I maintain that they do not rise to the level of "disaster" unless you're prepared to apply that label to the vast majority of Presidents of the 20th century.
I would point out that you had to draw from many different Presidents for your examples. All of the ones I cited were under ONE President. No President has a record this horrible.
My judgement is not clouded on this. I voted for Bush in 2000. I admired the way he handled the aftermath of 9/11 and the Afghan invasion. But then Bush lost sight of what he should have been doing and royally screwed things up. I actually supported the invasion of Iraq because I thought they had a plan for what to do afterwards. I was obviously wrong.
History will judge Bush as one of the worst Presidents ever.
I don't know much about Johnson and Lincoln, but I believe all those other things were disasters. Clinton's presidency may not be as bad as Bush's, but it certainly qualifies on the whole as a disaster as well.
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