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Letters to Editor: Defending Bush, Thoughts on Getting Off
RE: The forgettable regime: Eight years of regrets in the Bush Adminstration
Dear Editor,
I am writing in response to a fantastic article found in the last issue of Mars’ Hill titled, “The forgettable regime: Eight years of regrets in the Bush Administration” by Graeme Esau. I would just like to offer my thanks to Graeme for putting in the effort that is required to produce pieces with this caliber of journalistic excellence. His efforts to provide a very well-balanced, non-subjective and impartial article have not gone unnoticed. I mean, it is obvious that there really weren’t any areas where Bush succeeded in his presidency, it was a complete failure and only an uneducated Midwestern farmer would disagree with the multitude of ideas brought forward in the article, all of which were backed up by undeniably objective facts… right.
As an American, I feel that it is my duty to provide some actual facts with regards to the claims that Graeme put forward. I do not have the space to go into nearly the detail that I would like on all of his arguments, but I will try to do justice to a couple of key arguments. First off, with regards to the 2000 election, it was the Supreme Court of the United States that ruled the recount to be illegal thereby giving the state to the Republicans. Bush did not win Florida based on family connections; he won based on the judgment of the highest legal entity in the country. In addition to this, Al Gore called Bush at 2:30 A.M. the day after the November 7 election, conceding the election and offering his congratulations to President Elect George W. Bush. This all happened long before a recount was even considered.
Regarding the economy, yes, I agree that Bush has increased the national debt, and that is most certainly a problem; however, that money went directly towards stimulating an economy that was, contrary to what Graeme writes, teetering at the brink of outright recession at the time that Bush took office. The dot-com bubble had just burst, and the stock market was falling at an incredible rate; investor confidence was shattered. Cash needed to be injected into the system. The methods employed may not have been the best, but they weren’t decisions made out of incompetence.
When Graeme mentions “the immense number of jobs that have been lost under Bush,” I’m not sure where he is getting those stats. I have found that the current level of unemployment (5%) is actually lower than the average for the past 60 years (5.4%), and is even lower than the average rate throughout the Clinton era.
Another area that Graeme went on to criticize was Bush’s handling of Iraq. Now to put it straight, I will concede that the war has not been the most well run war; many mistakes have been made. Now, however, the strategy put forward by General Petraeus seems to be working. The single biggest indicator of this is the silence on the part of democratic candidates with regards to the war. They are beginning to rethink their immediate withdrawal proposals.
Next, I will concede that this war has lasted longer than World War II, but it has cost far fewer lives, a small fraction of the devastation caused by WWII. It has also cost a substantial amount more than estimated, but that money goes straight back into stimulating the economy.
Last, Graeme calls the Iraq war a “colossal… ethical failure.” Would it have been any more ethical to allow Saddam to continue his genocidal actions against the Kurds?
In closing, I would like to once again thank the author for his commitment to journalistic excellence as embodied in this piece.
Sincerely, Matt K. Buys
Snow White takes offense
To Mr. Fidler,
I am writing in response to your article on the connections between porn and romantic movies. First, let me say that I admire your boldness on approaching such a topic. It is true that sexual content is continually invading romances and romantic comedy. The Notebook, as you cited, is a prime example of this. However, I would like to address your claims of the fantasy we watch dictating our idea of love.
You cited Cinderella as one such fantasy that clouds our perceptions of love. Let me direct you to one of the greatest Cinderella-type stories ever, Pride and Prejudice (if you don’t believe me, check the ticket sales for TWU’s upcoming production). Yes, there is a “prince” character and the story seems to be an ideal, happy-ending fantasy. However, it involves the two characters being able to see past each other’s faults and making compromises out of love for each other. Is that not what marriage is all about? It represents a real relationship. I highly doubt that any one watches Pride and Prejudice with the intent of “getting off ” as you put it.
While more and more romantic comedies offer up the faulted-but-charmingly-handsome boyfriend, most of those characters still retain redeeming qualities. The basic pattern of a romantic movie is:
1.Meet
2.Click
3.Get to know each other (i.e. fall in love)
4.Fight
5.Reconcile.
The reconciling usually involves both male and female partners changing and apologizing for their mistakes. The example they set is not wrong: it may offer a faster solution to a hurt, or embellished plea for forgiveness, but it involves resolving the conflict and moving on.
Marriage and love are hard work, involving concession and compromise on the part of both spouses. I do believe that many people do not realize that today. However, I do not think that you can call romantic movies a way to “get off” and blame the state of today’s marriages on such movies. If I may cite some popular movies such as Ever After, The Lake House, You’ve got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle which all contain no sex between the lovers. These movies are not perfect, nor are they a template to model our own lives after. But they contain a sweet center of the dream of love, in a world where love seems doomed to die.
My final thought is a question for you. Consider your favorite action movies. I would hazard that more than a few with ratings over 14A are on that list. Perhaps these movies, by glamorizing violence and adding in an “epic” romance/casual sex, are far more damaging than The Notebook could ever be. For example, The Matrix Reloaded has a rather intense sex scene if memory serves. What about films like The Godfather, Sin City or even Mission Impossible? Which do you think is more damaging?
Sincerely,
Snow White (Kirsten Knox)
If you’re too shy to leave comments on the articles on Mars’ Hill Online, you can also email us.
Wait, wait, wait. I’m being criticized for saying my opinion in the Issues & Ideas (aka Opinion) section? Hmm…interesting. If it was the News section, that would be a different story. But I hate to break it to you…people are allowed to write with a bias in the Opinion section, as crazy as that may sound.
As for the 2000 election…your entire logic is flawed. Gore was declared president. Then Bush. And then no one really knew. The vote was obviously close so Gore asked the Florida Supreme Court to do a recount; they complied. And for some reason, Bush tried vehemently to stop the recount. He went to the US Supreme Court and the Supreme Court stopped the recount. Why? Well, probably cause Bush was worried he wouldn’t win. But you can hold on to whatever reasoning you like. In any case, the Supreme Court somehow arbitrarily decided the winner without even doing a recount! You have to love democracy in action. How would the Supreme Court know who won without doing a proper recount? The answer is that they didn’t know. And it’s just very interesting that the person put in charge of the whole thing was a Republican and the Supreme Court who came up with this ruling was stacked with Republicans. I’m not claiming that I know what happened, but if you don’t think that there was something fishy going on then I have serious doubts about your critical thinking skills.
You can say what you want about the economy, but the fact of the matter is that it is worse now than it was when Bush came to power. Period. Can you say recession? The market isn’t some uncontrollable, mysterious and mystical entity that is out of control. It’s Bush’s job to run the economy. I’m no economist, but when you pour billions of dollars into a war and away from other more useful endeavors, the economy will suffer. Every company Bush ever owned, he ran into the ground. The country he’s running isn’t too different.
As for unemployment, it took a 5 second search to come up with this: “The nation’s unemployment rate shot up to 6.4 percent in June, the highest level in more than nine years, in an economic slump that has added nearly a million people to jobless rolls in the past three months.”
The highest level in nine years. That’s bad, right?
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0703-03.htm
Now, it was mentioned that Iraq has cost Americans far less lives than those that were lost in WWII. It almost sounds like you’re claiming Iraq is a more just war because of this fact. That would be incredibly ridiculous as WWII was probably the closest thing the world has ever seen to a completely just war.
Now we know it took America a couple years to sign on to that whole Hitler thing. But that was different; everyone knew he had weapons.
In any case, no one is going to deny that Hussein was a bad person and his atrocities could not be condoned. However, if that actually was the reason for going to war (and if you truly believe that that was the real motivation behind the war, I feel sorry for you) the war cannot be justified on the simple fact that there are countless more atrocities being committed around the world that are far worse than those in Iraq. If war was waged because of these in-humane acts, then the US should have gone to places where they were needed more such as North Korea and Sudan. The leaders are much worse there and the conditions are far worse. No one can deny that intervention is needed in Sudan FAR more than Iraq.
Maybe it begs the notion that there were other interests in Iraq. Isn’t there a lot of oil over there? Hmmm…no, not the American government; they wouldn’t do that. Of course not. For that reason and the inability to do something in other areas of the world, the war was a major ethical failure.
I should mention that it’s not wrong to criticize and question your government. In fact, it’s in your Constitution. Maybe people should focus more on that area of the Constitution rather than just the bear arms part. Because God knows, your country has listened to that aspect. And probably not taken it out of context at all. Err.
If Bush has done such a bad job with the economy, why are millions of illegal immigrants risking their lives to get to the US to work at jobs no one else wants? I will also point out that the Supreme Court is neither Republican or Democrat, and that there is a long history of judges ruling against the policies of the party they once were members of. Judges rule according to the Constitution. I don’t always agree with them, but they are definitely not partisan.
Just because America’s economy is better than Mexico, that doesn’t make the economy good. And it certainly doesn’t mean that Bush improved the economy; the facts certainly suggest otherwise.
Recession anyone?
And while the Supreme Court is supposed to be non-partisan, that doesn’t mean that it is. Fox News is supposed to be “fair and balanced”, buuuut that’s not exactly the case.
The fact of the matter is that there were more Republicans on it at the time.
You are indeed entitled to your own opinion, but I felt it neccesary to provide a differing opinion from yours, an American perspective (though by no means do I attempt to speak for all Americans on this issue). I wanted to insure that your side was not the only side heard by the readers of the Mars Hill.
So, highest unemployment in 9 years eh? wow, that sure is bad, but lets see, if the nearest time that unemplyment was that high (or higher) was nine years ago, wouldn’t that be right sort of towards the end of the Clinton administration? Thus, your claim that Bush’s supposed high unemployment numbers neccessarily dictate failure of his presidency, must mean that Clinton failed on the same point, and many other presidents. Okay, but it isn’t exactly the fault of Bush alone.
Now, i’m still waiting for this supposed recession to hit that you were so particularly certain about a couple of months ago. Sure the economy isn’t in some great era of expansion, but that doesn’t mean it is in a recession. The current situation was caused primarily by the sub-prime mortgage situation down here in the states, something that Bush had nothing to do with, nor should he have anything to do with it. You certainly are no economist, cause if you had even a vague sense of economics, you would understand that there are economic cycles, and there are aspects of the economy that are not under the control of the president of the United States. In order for the US economy to be controlled by the president, the amount of regulation required would stifle the free enterprise, capitalistic system of North America.
Now you also state that no matter what, the economy today is much worse than it was when Bush came into office. You state this fact very authoritatively. I’m looking for evidence of that, but I am failing to see it. Besides financial stocks, the stock market is performing very well. Banks are not in a good spot, and this is affecting the rest of the economy due to simple liquidity issues, but non financial industries are performing very well.
Next, economically speaking, it is not a bad idea at all to pour money into a war. Whether or not you agree with the war, the economic affects are splendid, particularly for us in the U.S. When we spend money on our war fighting capabilities, that money, as previously mentioned, stimulates the US economy. We outsource very little of our defense technology and equipment out of regard for our national interests, thus, the billions of dollars spent on this war stay in the U.S. helping, not hindering our economy.
Now, with regards to Saddam, Bush was not the first president to demand the ousting of this man as being essential for the safety and future interests of the US. the previous president (Clinton) stated towards the end of his presidency that if he, by the end of his presidency, was unable to oust Saddam, it would be imperative that his successor, whomever that would be, complete that task. It wasn’t Bush’s rogue actions that led to this war. We haven’t found WMDs, but we know for a fact that Saddam had them, he used them in millitary operations against Iran and against his own people.
You suggest that if we were to do something, we should have invaded some other nation instead, like North Korea, hmm i’m sure China would just be stoked to have a large American presence so near.
Anyways, I need to go to dinner with a friend, so I guess i need to cut this response a tad short
Matt