It really kills me how Bush has been touting his record in the last week or so, listing as one of his major accomplishments that since 9/11, there have been no further foreign terrorist attacks on US soil.
With his approval rating running at a meager 22% – the lowest rating in history for a sitting president, I guess Bush feels like he has to try and clear his name. But his arguments don’t stand up to scrutiny.
Let’s take a quick look backwards and examine the validity of Bush’s claims.
Okay, Bill Clinton served from 1993 till 2001. There was one actual foreign terrorist attack on the US during Clinton’s presidency – the February 26, 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center where six people were killed.
However, since the attack took place only a little over one month from the time Clinton took office, it’s kind of hard to lay the blame on his administration.
Okay, so who was the slacker president that let this 1993 bombing happen? Why it was daddy Bush, that’s who. George H.W. Bush served as president from 1989 to 1993.
Looking back from 1993, we find that, well – there really aren’t any other attacks by foreign terrorists on American soil.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor doesn’t count. That was an actual country attacking us, not terrorists.
Looking further back, you come to the War of 1812 where the British sacked and burned Washington DC. But here again, we were at war, and it was British troops, not terrorists that did the damage.
So when it comes down to it, there really haven’t been any other attacks by foreign terrorists on American soil – ever. Just the two that happened during the presidencies of Bush 41 and Bush 43.
Given the fact that only two presidents in all history have ever allowed foreign terrorist attacks on US soil – George W. Bush and his daddy – then how in the hell is it an accomplishment to have no new attacks since 9/11?
What a load of tripe!
The most devastating foreign terrorist attack ever on American soil took place during the watch of George W. Bush.
Then afterwards, Bush bungled the hunt for the perpetrator – Osama bin Laden, when he withdrew all the troops from Afghanistan and sent them to Iraq. This allowed bin Laden to easily escape. Good job, Georgie!
Let’s look for a minute, at Bush’s other grand accomplishments.
Number one, the war in Iraq was a terrible, horrific mistake. A mistake Bush deliberately led us into – with malice and aforethought. He lied and distorted pre-war intelligence – the “Weapons of Mass Destruction – the WMD,” and he lied and distorted the facts trying to tie Saddam Hussein into 9/11 as the other part of his justification for the invasion of Iraq.
The facts of the matter is that Saddam Hussein was a despicable tyrant but he had no ties at all to the 9/11 terrorists, and he had no WMD – he was not a threat to anyone outside Iraq. There was no just cause for the US to invade Iraq and Bush knew it.
The real basis of the US invasion is that Saddam had tried to murder Bush’s daddy and Bush was trying to get even – and then also, there were the bucks – the other main motivation was that through the war, Bush and his oil buddies (can you say Halliburton – Dick Cheney’s company) were able to rape and pillage Iraq, raking in countless millions and millions and millions of dollars.
This is absolutely horrendous.
The fact that the US invaded another sovereign country with no just reason or provocation is a horrible, disgusting black blot on the good name of the United States. We may never recover from this.
But wait, there’s more.
Adding insult to injury, Bush tried and to a large extent succeeded in turning the United States into a police state – taking away our civil liberties in the name of protecting us and making us secure. Warrantless domestic wiretapping, the suspension of habeas corpus for terror suspects, holding terror suspects indefinitely without charging them, even demanding library patron lending records without warrants (using a “National Security Letter”) to see what books people were reading, and on and on, along with all the other changes under the “Patriot Act.”
If Bush had his way, we’d all have a bar code tattooed on our foreheads at birth. Joe McCarthy would be so proud.
And then how about the Bush administration’s use of torture? They admitted the use of waterboarding on terror suspects – which is the controlled drowning of a subject. And they admitted the use of all the other standard, lesser techniques like sleep deprivation, degradation and beatings and so on (which are mostly prohibited by the Geneva Convention).
There was the Abu Ghraib Prison episode, where it became public US soldiers had been torturing prisoners (remember Lynndie England walking her naked prisoner on a leash?)
While the Bush administration was able to distance themselves from this and publicly disavowed the events there, I suspect the real facts are that the soldiers were acting under orders from on high. Right from the top.
But all that was nothing compared to what some lucky people got.
When they really wanted to romp on someone, the Bush administration used “extraordinary rendition.” It was for those times when simple torture just wouldn’t do, and they wanted to really torture someone with absolutely no holds barred. Using rendition, they simply kidnapped the people and sent them to a country where torture was legal – countries like Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Morocco, and Uzbekistan.
But wait, there’s even more.
No list of Bush’s grand accomplishments would be complete without including the current world financial/economic crisis.
Okay, I suppose it isn’t fair to credit Bush with bringing about all the current economic woes, but he should certainly get the lion’s share of blame.
His policies of lax regulation with little or no government oversight allowed the business world to run rampant. And it was their blind greed run amok that brought on much of our current misery.
So now home foreclosures and business bankrupcies are hitting historic highs, unemployment is rising to record levels, and we’re lurching into what looks like the most signitficant economic downturn since the great depression. Our children’s children will be paying these bills.
Thanks, so much W.
It’s absolutely crystal clear that George Bush ran the United States right into the ground, on nearly every level that counts.
- He ruined the economy – not just of the United States, but also of the world.
- He blackened the name of the United States by needlessly involving us in an unjust war.
- He is responsible for the deaths of over 4,200 US service people in Iraq, and is responsible for the wounding and maiming of over 31,000 more Americans in that unjust war.
- He is responsible for the deaths of between 90,000 and 98,000 innocent Iraqi civilians.
- He let Osama bin Laden go free, by withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.
- He tried and nearly succeeded in turning the US into a police state.
- He tried to set himself up as “above” the law of the land. He flouted and disregarded the US Constitution any time it conflicted with his “God Given” goals.
Given all these facts, I don’t think there’s any question that Bush will go down in history as our worst president ever.
If someone wanted to, I think you could make a good case for trying Bush for genocide, and for treason.
I just hope the country can someday recover.